II[ToC]
THE TRANSITION TO PEACE
Developments during the war, despite their startling sensational character, had, however, been so overshadowed by human suffering and desperation that but few minds were awake to the changes that were to influence man's future. Amid the disasters, battles, and unprecedented movements in the politics of nations, the achievements of flight could command but a passing notice. People looked and wondered, but were distracted from following their thoughts through to the logical conclusion by the roar of a seventy-mile gun, the collapse of a nation, or the shock of battle on a one-hundred-mile front.
Let us, however, weave together a few things that were done in those days of sensation, which may have a particular effect on the future of the science. Most conspicuous, perhaps, was the obliteration of distance and of all the customary limitations of travel. German airplanes in squadrons penetrated into snug little England when the German fleet stood locked in its harbor. The Italian poet D'Annunzio dropped leaflets over Vienna when his armies were held at bay at the Alps. French, British, and finally American planes brought the war home to cities of the Rhine which never even saw the Allied troops till Germany had surrendered.
None of the conventional barriers stood in the way of these long trips. A new route of travel had been opened up along which men flew at will. The boundary-lines of states below, which look so formidable on the map, were passed over with the greatest ease, as well as such natural obstacles as the Alps and the English Channel.
Tremendous saving in time was constantly being effected. Men were able to dart back and forth from the front to the rear and from England to France with a speed never dreamed of by other means of travel. To be sure, the front-line demands for planes were too severe to allow a very wide use in this way, but nevertheless the possibilities were there and were constantly availed of.[1]
Indeed, the British early established a communication squadron for this specific purpose. In the last three months of the war 279 cross-country passenger flights were made to such places as Paris, Nancy, Dunkirk, and Manchester, all of them without a single accident! Moreover, a Channel ferry service was created which in seventy-one days of flying weather made 227 crossings, covered over 8,000 miles, and carried 1,843 passengers.