“I am curious, indeed,” said Prince Victor Adolph to Franka. “Have you any idea what he is aiming at?”
“Certainly, I know Herr Helmer’s line of thought. He has been my instructor.”
“Your instructor?... You have a high opinion of him?”
“Indeed I have.”
The group to which the two Russian widows belonged had not been listening very attentively. Annette Felsen and Minister Rinotti were sitting close together and a scarf falling from Annette’s shoulder had arranged itself so conveniently that under its protection their hands could touch. Perhaps this electric contact was too powerful to allow any other to connect the speaker and these two. M. de la Rochère understood not a word of German, and so any criticism that he might be moved to utter concerned only externalities; but it was a favorable criticism:—
“The man has a fine voice and such intelligent hands! Have you noticed how he pressed the ends of his fingers on the top of the table,—as firmly and vibratingly as if he were table-tipping,—while with his other hand he made such eloquent and gracefully sweeping gestures that one might actually follow the drift of his discourse:—he was evidently speaking of the air in which he drew curves as elegant as those of Latham or Blériot.”
Helmer now proceeded with his address:—
“The making of fire by artificial means and the invention of speech were the first stages in our progress from animal to man. Articulate man belongs, at all events, to another species than did his dumb ancestor. What kind of a species flying man is to represent, only the scientists of the coming centuries will be able to decide. To-day I would merely call your attention to the conditions of social life, in which we can, even now, predict a change. There is, for example, the whole protective system of society, which might be designated as the ‘lateral system,’—for walls, hedges, gratings, shut us off on the sides,—but this now has lost its advantage. Only the places that are covered with a roof are entirely protected, yet we cannot build roofs over all gardens and all stretches of land. There are no more islands either, if by that term we designate a territory isolated by its coast-defenses and by its fleet. Since the day when Blériot sailed over the British Channel, Great Britain ceased to be an island. Like the concept ‘island,’ by means of aviation will also disappear the custom-house of the frontier ... aye, the frontiers themselves.
“Let us pause for a moment and consider that totality of things which bears the name of war: What modification will be likely to ensue in this domain by these new acquisitions? The militarists are quickly ready with their answer: ‘War will simply be carried on simultaneously in the air.’ But the business is not so simple as on the earth and on the water. All the methods of war, we might say, all the rules of the game, are based on the following hypothesis: the two opponents go forth against each other to the borders, try to cross them, try especially to prevent the enemy from crossing them; try to win and to command positions; to march, if possible, against the capital, and if they succeed, then they dictate terms of peace. In order to make this game more difficult, obstacles are erected in time of peace, forts are built along the borders and the soil is undermined; the farther one penetrates into the country, more and more fortifications are found, which must be captured one after the other by the invading army; and, moreover, every village, every farmstead where the belligerents might meet, is made into a stronghold. The game can be supported by sea, when the fleets approach the coast, which must be made more difficult to reach by means of fortifications and submarine mines.
“And now comes the third military arm—that of aviation. For this, the crossing of boundaries is child’s play. Fortifications would no longer be impediments; not merely that they could be blown up by a couple of pyroxin bombs;—they would be simply a negligible quantity. These artificial constructions, with their trenches and walls and casements, have also ceased to be defenses, just as the islands have ceased to be islands. Headquarters, hitherto the safest places, most protected by distance, places where the maps of the country used to be studied, and serving as the center from which the troops were directed, are now the most exposed; for an enemy’s flyer would make it his chief object to fling his explosives down on that particular spot. All the most modern methods of fighting, the concealment behind high-piled earthworks, are henceforth without object; the approach of great army corps offers these air-skirmishers the most favorable circle of trajectory to be imagined—but who will there be to endure this consciousness in addition to all the other hardships of the march? Still more vulnerable to attack from above would be every munition-train.