“The cavalry, which in modern warfare is employed only for recognizances, has become a mere article of luxury through the dirigible balloon, the usefulness of which in the task of spying out the country has been from the very beginning appreciated as its most brilliant service; but the cavalry, when the regiments ride in close order, would offer a fine mark for the troops of the air. But while all the attempts would be made on the ground with the object of penetrating the hostile country, the aerial troops of both armies would already have flown over both capital cities and would be turning them into smoking heaps of ruins. Likewise, a dirigible could in the dead of night glide over the fleet of twenty-five-thousand-ton ships arrayed in battle order, and annihilate it. High in boundless, unobstructed space there is no definite theater of war, no commanding position; consequently the decision of the campaign cannot be transferred into the air. Aerial machines of murder will not march up side by side in line, but each single one will work from up above downward; up above, there is nothing to conquer and nothing to annihilate.
“If now, under these newly created conditions, nations go forth to fight each other as before, it will be just as if two chessplayers should sit down at the board and should say: ‘We will allow the old rules to prevail; the pawn shall be just as valueless; the Knight shall make his jumps; Rook and Queen shall preserve their great power; the King shall have the privilege of “castling”; but we will add a new rule: either of us may throw something on the board from above and upset all the chessmen!’ A beautiful game—that would be—which would fail to please the chessplayers!”
He then added, as if in a parenthesis: “The chessmen fail to be pleased anyhow.”
Some sounds of dissatisfaction were heard in the auditorium. The military men present were expressing their disagreement. “If only civilians would not talk about things of which they haven’t the faintest notion,” remarked a retired colonel to his neighbor.
General Orell had demurred the most indignantly: “All nonsense!”
“I don’t find it so,” replied Victor Adolph.
But no great time was allowed for exchanging opinions, for Helmer now proceeded:—
“The opponents of war—and such I find to-day even in the most influential social positions”—he bowed toward the royal box—“the opponents of war might congratulate themselves that such a war-destroying element has entered into the very apparatus of war; but the chances are that the experiment would bring about a catastrophe involving not the destruction of war, but rather the destruction of civilization.
“In a book, which is the work of a prophet and of a forewarner, H. G. Wells, whose powerful imagination never leaves the solid ground of logic, there is a description of what must become of the present world if once the rain of fire should pour down upon it from out the clouds. Aye, ‘the conquest of the air’—we have little cause for rejoicing over it—conceals the most awful perils.
“And one thing more: What will henceforth be the sense of the term ‘sentinel’? Hitherto, those that were threatened could feel a certain degree of security, by surrounding themselves with a bodyguard; by keeping all the doors and entrances to their palaces and gardens closely watched, night and day; by stationing armed hedges on the right and left, when they went out into the streets; or, if they traveled, by protecting the railway track through its whole length by lanes of soldiers and police; but what will all this avail against assassination from above?