The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1909-08-04
BY w. T. Stead.

BY w. 7. Stead.
TT does not require much prescience
to foresee that ornaments will soon
i go the way of ar1nor, and that Finch
guns will soon be as obsolete as the 6-foot
bow. The coming of the aeroplane VIII
revolutionize everything.
Austria, 1t is said, is about to launcn
out into a huge expenditure on Dread
thoughts. The King of Italy showed
keener insight into the probabiiities OF
the future when he said two years ago.
.sWhy should we spend 100000 over
huge ironclad when there Is every reason
to believe an aeroplane costing no more
than a motor car may reduce 1t to OLD
iron before It leaves the stocks?
I still have lively sense OF the en-
phasis with which M. d'Aehrenthal as
sured me on the eve of the late Hague
conference that peace apostles could not
be more probably employed than In
urging the parliaments Of the world to
make grants for the building OF air
ships. for when the airship comes from
tiers. fortresses, fleets go-everything
goes. The German minister for foreign
affairs told me in 1907 that they never
for a moment allowed themselves to lose
sight of the airship. Because when tnat
comes It will revolutionize everything. The
airship has come, and has come to stay.
The deliberate judgment Of the Italian
military aeronauts that In 1912 there Will
be as many aeroplanes in the air as there
are now motor cars in the streets bids fair
to be an accomplished fact. l have been
repeating these warnings for the last five
wears. Every one is beginning to admit
that there may, after all. be something
in it.
But what that something Is few per-
sons save imaginative spectators like
II. G. Wells have even dimly begun to
perceive. What the airship carries be-
meath its planes is the most far-reach-
ing revolution that has ever trans
formed the world. That revolution may
be benehcient beyond the hopes OF the
greatest Utopians or 1t may be male
ficent beyond the fears of the worst
pessimist. The aeroplane may be called
the avant-courier of the international
world-state or the herald of the ruin OF
civilization
BE my brother or I will slay thee
the French revolutionists formula, VIII
now be revived with an infinitely WIDER
application, because the airship repre-
SCENTS an addition to the forces Of de-
struction so vast, so incalculable, that 1t
places human society at the mercy Of
any of its component parts.
40
air at 100 miles an hour capable of drop
ping 100 pounds of high explosives or of
asphyxiating shells on any point from
any height is the nearest approximation
which mankind has made to the discovery
of vril. 1t was by the invention of vril-
that potent compound of electricity and
dynamite by which child could destroy
an army by waving a wand-that Lord
Lytton prophesed the ultimate extinction
of war. The aeroplane is the next step
to yril. For 1t places illimitable forces of
destruction at the disposal of anyone who
can raise $4,000 and find half a dozen
desperadoes to do his bidding.
What this means is that the human
race, which has hitherto organized it.
self for defense from enemies on or be-
low the worlds surface, is absolutely
unprotected from attack from above.
The opportunity which this gives to the
anarchist and the desperate was per-
ceived years ago by M. Azeff when ne
recommended the Russian revolutionists
to resort to the aeroplanes as the most
effective means of destroying the gov
eminent.
If the governments do not cease their
absolutely fatuous habit OF preparing
for war with each other, they may md
| themselves confronted by forces or dis
order armed with new and invinclole
weapons, against which they themselves
will be powerless. Should they let heii
loose by making war upon each other'
heaven itself would rain hell nre upon
| the modern cities of the plain
In sheer sslf-defense the instinct OF