"Out of the unknown came these dread space-visitors to earth," he warns in an article, "and who knows but that somewhere in the unknown even today other grim vessels are winging through the void toward the earth? It may even be that our present peace is only a respite and that we have repelled the first attack of these unknown beings only to have them coming again upon us in infinitely greater numbers. Sometime in the future, I think, man will have advanced in knowledge to the point where he too will venture into the void, will be able to meet his attackers face to face. But until then the air-mines are our only protection.
"I want to see vast fields of them floating on the surface of earth's atmosphere, fields through which no invading space-ships from the void outside can make their way. For Providence may not again aid our efforts. Man is probably but one being among the universe's countless races of living creatures, and he can only hold his planet against others by his own wisdom and strength. Never again can he feel the false security that was ours before these space-visitors came."
This warning, surely, we are heeding; yet even with the loss of that old false security, we do not face the future with fear. Whatever beings of power the universe holds, we realize now that we too are beings of power. We have fought for our planet against the space visitors and have held it. As a race we have come of age.
THE END