FLYING MOTOR-CARS.
THEmechanical skill of the world, which is very great, greater perhaps than its originality in scientific inyeatigation, is directing itself for the moment to two definite ends,—the construction of an efficient submarine boat, and the invention of a machine that can travel with at least two persons on board through the air. The former object will, we think, be attained. The grand difficulty, that of bottling air sufficient to support life under water, has been surmounted, and the remaining difficulties of extending the time during which the bottled air is sufficient for healthy respiration, and of securing perfect direction, will doubtless be overcome. Neither of them involves impossibilities, and the Governments of the world are so greatly interested in success that money for careful and persistent experiment is sure to be forthcoming. Whether the result will be quite so great as those Governments fancy may be a little doubtful. A slight advantage will no doubt be given to poorer States because they can afford submarine boats when they cannot afford cruisers, but the rich State will still be able to build the larger fleets, and in a battle beneath the waves those who fight can only die just as they do above them. The dominion of the seas will, not be transferred to Holland or Portugal, and as regards the mercantile marine nothing will be accomplished. There is nothing to be gained in cash by going under the water, and though biases and wealthy men may choose that mode of travelling just for its novelty, the majority of travellers will pronounce it ennuyant and dangerous, and prefer fresh breezes on the surface. It is necessary for each maritime nation to keep its eyes open and see that no rival gets far ahead of it; but that being admitted, we see no particular effect to be produced by submarine boats. They cannot carry armies, and a defensive submarine police is quite as much within the range of calculation as any other defensive armament.
The aerial ship is not so near realisation, and there is a difficulty in the way. The inventors of the world scarcely have fair play. They are rarely rich, the experiments are very costly, and the Governments are not willing to find much money. They have been so often deceived that they are shy of aerial Fulton. The evidence of a model is nearly worth- less, for a model has nothing to carry, and succeeds almost to perfection when a real machine with perhaps 5 cwt. on board in flesh, bones, and apparatus for driving would inevitably fail. Nevertheless, success is not a physical impossibility, for a condor does fly a considerable distance with a lamb in its claws; and it is difficult to believe that with his new motive powers and his power of raising himself in the air man cannot imitate and beat the condor. Inventors are not infrequent who are half-crazy with interest in the subject, and even the Governments are stirring, France, Germany, Austria, and England being at this moment all engaged upon official experiments. They will not, it is true, do much with the ordinary balloon. That instrument, forced on the inventor rather by tradition than by thought, is too big to be of real service. It is as big as a house in the air, and as the object is to defeat or evade the wind, the surface it presents is far too large to make it useful. Even M. Santos-Dumont can do nothing except when the air is calm, and as it is not the function of air to be calm, his opportunities are limited. Nor m it at all likely that any aeroplane of the ordinary kind will succeed. The machine, to be of any practical use, must be able to pause in mid-air, and the moment an aeroplane pauses the strongest of known forces, gravitation, has it in its fatal grip. Its materials being heavier than air, must, if it is stationary, come down, as a bird must if it dies, and it does come down with unpleasant consequences. The inventors of the day, how- ever, seem to us, who write as outsiders, to be advancing towards a combination of small balloons, which are lighter than air, with motors, which are heavier than air, that may in the end produce the required result. They will always be at the mercy of great storms, as birds also are, but in ordinary weather they may fly for distances settled by their motive Power with tolerable safety and directness. The total result nay not be very great, for " argosies of magic sails " are as unlikely as "the nation's airy navies grappling in the central the:, but we should on the whole think it probable that within a few years, it may be even months, we may hear of aaellines which, carrying one or two skilful men, can, in the
absence of storms, cross the Mediterranean in safety at a height, say, of fifty feet. There is no object whatever in their going up into the sky, and one ultimate condition of useful aerial navigation will be that the drop, if drop there be, shall not smash everything into powder. Martyrs are rare products, and nothing is really useful which it takes a martyr to work.
Supposing this much to be accomplished—and some of the conditions must be altered if we are to achieve more—what will have been attained P A good deal. In war, for example, there will be a new power of throwing projectiles, and though the exercise of that power has recently been forbidden by international agreement, we distrust the effect of written laws upon angry populations. Some nation would declare itself independent of agreements it had never signed, and if it used war balloons it would be fought by war balloons,—we may take that as quite certain. The temptation to destroy a fleet while attacking a wealthy town would to that town be irresis- tible—fan cy Marseilles under shell fire attending to any rules whatever—and the fleet would be destroyed. That is rather a formidable result of the new invention, and one which seems to us pretty nearly inevitable. Then armies would be possessed of a new power. They could always see their enemies, to the delight of artillerymen, who could hunt a re- treating foe with greatly increased effect. At the present moment, for instance, war balloons capable of guidance and of flying far would render resistance by the Boers nearly hopeless. They would always be seen advancing, and always followed rightly. As we make few surprises, and do not dis- perse in retreat, the advantage of their possession would be entirely on our aide. The difficulty of maintaining high tariffs, again, would be considerably increased. Very short aerial voyages would be needed to overpass frontiers, which could hardly be protects d, especially at night and through all their length, by aerial police. It would still be possible to tax imported corn, or meat, or sugar, or salt, but hardly to levy Import-duties on tobacco or jewels, or the finer articles of dress. We can foresee much fiscal inconvenience from aerial machines, and bitter international quarrelling. Governments would be held responsible for allowing smugglers or spies to start.
Every advance in communication produces, however, some beneficial as well as mischievous result, and a motor that could drive through air would at least enable us to complete the survey of the planet. We should not only reach the Poles, where we should probably learn nothing of direct value, but we should know accurately whatever exists and is valuable in Central Africa, in the depths of Australia, in the Hinter- lands of Brazil, in the interior of Thibet, and in the marvellous and scarcely explored islands of the Eastern Archipelago. The aerial machines could, it is true, conquer nothing, make no roads, and discover nothing except topography, some new forests, and perhaps some tribes previously unknown, but they would tell us where to go, how to go, and what there was to be feared. The planet would become as well known to geographers as, say, India is now, and that must in the end be an advantage, if only by preventing waste of enterprise and effort. We should know for the first time the configura- tion and external features of the entire world, and be able a century or two earlier than we expected to utilise the whole of it. That is something to achieve, and in spite of the failure which has hitherto marked every successive attempt at flying, we think there is at last some ground for hope. The usual telegram has not, it is true, yet come in from America, but there also experiments are, of course, being made, and there invention is unfettered either by want of money or overmuch deference to the past. Nothing would delight an American millionaire more than to pay for a boat which flew, and in flying seemed to defy the laws of gravitation. That would be even more exciting than building a telescope which should reveal on sensitised paper the capital of the greatest country on Mars.
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