The task is one of the greatest, the most vital, and the most promising which mankind has ever faced. With the general theories proved and demonstrated, the great crisis of invention has passed, and the slow, unspectacular process of development and application has set in. Now has come the time for serious, sober thought, for careful, analytical planning, for vision combined with hopefulness. It is well in these early days, when flight is with the general public a very special and occasional event, to remember what has happened since Watt developed the steam-engine only a few generations ago, when Columbus set the first ship westward, or when America's first train ran over its rough tracks near the Quincy quarries.
The development of aviation will be world-wide and will include all sorts and races of men. The nations all start pretty much abreast. Those which developed war air services have an advantage in material and experience, but this is a matter only for the moment. The main lines of progress are now pretty widely known and the field is wide open to those who have the imagination to enter it. There is practically no handicap at this early stage which cannot be overcome with ease.
There is, of course, an element of individual gamble to those who enter this competition. Undoubtedly there will be many failures, as in all new fields; failures come to those who put in capital as well as those who contribute their scientific knowledge. But by the same token there will be great successes both financially and scientifically. The prize that is being striven for is one of the richest that have ever been offered and the rewards will be in accordance. This has been the case at the birth of every great development in human progress and will undoubtedly be the case with the science of flight. Until a field becomes standardized it offers extremes on both sides rather than a dull, dreary, but safe average.
As aviation runs into every phase of activity it will require every kind of man—manufacturer, scientist, mechanic, and flier. It offers problems more interesting and more complex than almost any others in the world. The field is new and virgin, the demand world-wide, and the rewards great. For the flier there is all the joy of life in the air, above the chains of the earth, reaching out to new, unvisited regions, free to come and go for almost any distance at any level desired, a freedom unparalleled. For the manufacturer there is all the lure of a new product destined in a short time to be used as freely as the automobile of to-day; for the scientist there are problems of balance, meteorology, air pressure, engine power, wing spread, altitude effects, and the like in a bewildering variety; for the explorer, the geographer, the map-maker a wholly new field is laid open.
The best men of every type are needed to give aviation its full fruition. In Europe this is realized to a supreme degree. England especially, and also France and Italy, have put their best genius at work to fulfil the conquest of the air. Their progress is astonishing and should be a challenge to the New World. After the natural hiatus which followed the armistice the leading men have set to work with redoubled vigor to take first place in the air.
In twenty years' time our life of to-day will seem centuries old, just as to-day it is hard to realize that the automobile and motor-truck do not date back much over a generation. No change that has ever come in man's history will be so great as the change which takes him up off the ground and into the air. This swift and dazzling era that is so close upon us is hardly suspected by the great mass of people. The world will be both new and better for it. Less than the train or the motor-car will the airplane disturb its features. On the blue above white wings will glitter for a moment, a murmuring as of bees will be heard, and the traveler will be gone, the world unstained and pure. Meanwhile high in the clouds, perhaps lost to view of the earth, men will be speeding on at an unparalleled rate, guiding their course by the wireless which alone gives them connection with the world below.
Has there ever in all history been an appeal such as this?