Furthermore, with the coming of such rapid inter-communication it is conceivable that foggy and damp countries like the British Isles may be abandoned—save by the workers of minerals—as living and manufacturing places for more beautiful and delightful climates, such as France or Spain. Indeed, the pleasantly located gardens and plateaus of the world—like the one in Mexico, for instance—may be the favorite dwelling-places of the peoples of the world when all the fruits and foods and goods of the earth can be aerially transported to such places in a matter of hours.
Needless to say that when each country possesses a fleet of commercial aircraft numbered by tens of thousands, inherently convertible into bombers large enough to annihilate whole cities entirely—as French aeronautic military authorities have already stated they feared Germany would be able to do with ten thousand aeroplanes and Zeppelins in the next ten years unless she was limited in her construction programme—when many countries can be flown over in a matter of hours without anything to prevent them, then undoubtedly a league of nations will have been organized for self-preservation and war abolished as too horrible to contemplate. Thus by levelling boundaries and borders of nations and countries the aircraft promises to perform the greatest blessing of mankind by abolishing war, destroying nationalism, and establishing internationalism and the brotherhood of man throughout the world.
CHAPTER XIV
THE REGULATION OF AIR TRAFFIC
IMPORTANCE OF SAME—LAWS FORMED BY BRITISH AERIAL TRANSPORT COMMISSION LIKELY TO BE BASES OF INTERNATIONAL AERIAL LAWS—COPY OF SAME
With aircraft flying over cities, towns, countries, continents, and the oceans, carrying passengers, it is becoming absolutely essential that a code of laws for aerial navigation should be adopted by the United States, and an international code should also be adopted by the nations of the earth.
In the United States laws should be adopted to regulate the inspection of aircraft which carry passengers, just as sea and river navigation is now regulated, in order to protect the lives of the passengers, and also to protect the lives of the people living in the cities where these machines are apt to descend, on account of damages that could be collected, etc., in case a machine fell upon and destroyed private property. Unless this is done, with the tremendous increase of the number of aircraft in the United States, there is apt to be a considerable number of lives lost unnecessarily, and a great deal of damage done to private property, for which no compensation can be awarded.
In the matter of international regulation of aircraft it is a great deal more important because of the ease with which commodities could be smuggled in from one country to another, even though mountains or rivers intervene at the borders. Flying at one hundred miles per hour, carrying two or three tons, smuggling could be carried on very extensively between different countries of the world.
The aerial police and aerial navigation laws could restrain and stop such unlawful flying, but an international code is necessary to determine their rights.
It is more important, however, to determine and prescribe the places at which foreign aircraft could cross the border or land for customs inspection. In these regulations should also be incorporated a code of international law. The conditions under which the fleet should pass from one country to another should be prescribed. Unless this was done it would be possible for any country in Europe, operating a fleet of 10,000 or more commercial aircraft, to convert them into bombers, each carrying tons of inextinguishable incendiary bombs, which could destroy a city like Paris, Brussels, or London within a few hours. A menace of this last possibility is so great that the leading aeronautical authorities in Paris and London have asked for a specified written code of aerial navigation laws, to be adopted by the League of Nations. In conformity to that object of controlling all kinds of aircraft, the British Aerial Transport Committee have drawn up a draft of a bill for the regulation of aerial navigation. The principles laid down in this bill are so universal in their application that they could be very well adopted by the United States and other nations of the earth.