THE FUTURE OF AIR-SHIPS.
speed, the vigilance of their numerous crew, and their terrible offensive power. But are not whole sea fleets destroyed in war? Did the Russians give up the sea because of the destruction of their warships in the harbour of Port Arthur?
I concede that air-ships may be shot at and hit ; yet if it will not follow because they are hit that they must fall like a stone ; “ full speed ahead" commanded after the fatal puncture will take the wounded aerial craft far from the scene of its wounding. I concede that they may be shot at, hit, and even be brought down ; yet the French and English officers who watched the Boers shoot day after day at the captive balloon that rose above Ladysmith have ideas of their own about the practical difficulties of thus bringing down a bag of silk filled with gas.
I concede that air-ships may be destroyed in war ; but, at the worst, remember that the crew of a great aerial cruiser will not contain a tenth of the crew of a war-ship ; that its construction will cost far less than a tenth in both money and time. Yes, air-ships will be destroyed in war ; but reflect also how quickly a 20,000,000 francs war-ship may be sent to the bottom of the sea by dropping a moderate quantity of dynamite on the middle of its deck !
VI.
How soon are we to enter on the Air-ship Age? Probably the great change will come rapidly : once let an air-ship reach the Pole, once let an aerial cruiser make some action d’éctat in war—and within an astonishingly short time you will see hundreds of air-ships gliding overhead. The great change will have begun !
Hundreds of engineers and mechanicians will begin competing with each other in the improvement of aerial craft, copying from each other, improving on each other, racing with each other, exhibiting side by side in Air-Ship Salons. Factories will be devoted to air-ship construction, and the models of each succccding year will be more practical—by reason of the experience gained by a thousand experts in every-day competitive experiment.
At the beginning it will be as it was with automobiles when they bore no numbers, when no chauffeurs’ certificates were issued, and when the amateur going out for a spin was tolerated as an exception in one sense, and as a pioneer of French industry in another.
Month after month more air-ships will be seen manɶuvring over Paris ; but as they will not frighten horses, will not run over pedestrians, will not congest traffic, will not pollute the air of Paris with their odours, there will be less crying against them than you might imagine.
