The very idea suggests a new “Peeping Tom.”
As far as communication is concerned, we shall have whole armies in instantaneous touch with each other: it may indeed make real secrecy more difficult. It should always be recollected that when we refer to wireless speech, wireless control, and Radio Vision, we do not necessarily mean the same form of electrical wave by which we now broadcast a comic opera.
It is with oscillation that we are really concerned, and we may discover many forms of electronic vibration at present occupying portions of the so-called spectrum which are as yet very little understood.
It may be impossible for the Commander-in-Chief of the future to conceal a document from the eyes of wireless; and who knows but that the electrical operation of thought may be reduced to a science so that our very ideas are not secret without protection?
How many of us to-day could risk all our thoughts being known? It would probably improve moral standards if they were published: science tends to effect an average improvement.
We have never yet really seen the extraordinary value of wireless in war. If we had solved the problem of selection, the transference of speech by phonograph records dropped from aeroplanes would never have arisen.
Undoubtedly, we shall see wireless controlled tanks, submarines, and torpedoes on both land, air, and water. All will be accurately controlled, and they will possibly be able to find their way home and to operate from a distance while out of sight.
Even to-day it is possible for an aeroplane to operate a torpedo, to steer it properly, to slow it down; and for a pilot of an aeroplane many miles away to work his will upon it with a reasonable degree of accuracy and with the help of a gyro control.
The day will undoubtedly come when the problem of defending an island is not that of the mainland itself but of all its dependencies.