Adventures in Journalism

by Philip Gibbs

It was a little country village, though I cannot recollect its name or whereabouts, and after tramping across fields, we saw a house with lights shining from all its windows. It was the village rectory, remote from the world and all the excitements of life, until, out of the darkness, a great bird had dropped into the garden, with the noise of a dragon. From the wings of the bird a young man, dirty, half-dazed, freezing cold, and drunk with fatigue, staggered out, banged at the door, and asked for food and a place to sleep. The clergyman’s wife and the clergyman’s daughter rose to the occasion, as Englishwomen do in times of crisis. They dressed themselves, made some coffee, cooked some boiled eggs, lighted big fires, and unfroze the bird man. He was already abed, after a plea to be called at the first gleam of dawn, when we arrived. Presently other motorists arrived, all cold and hungry and muddy. The country rectory was invaded by these wild-looking people and the clergyman’s pretty daughter, with shining eyes, served us all with coffee and eggs, and seemed to enjoy the excitement as the greatest thing that had happened in her life. I have no recollection of the clergyman. I dare say the poor man was bewildered by the sudden tumult in his house of peace, and left everything to his capable wife and the swift grace of his little daughter.

Before the dawn Graham White was down from his bed, thoroughly bad-tempered and abominably rude, for which there was ample excuse, as word was brought that Paulhan was well ahead, although he, too, had dropped into a field. Perris and I urged him not to fly again before daybreak, but he told us to go to the devil, and insisted on getting away in the darkness. We took to the car again, waited until we heard the roar of Graham White’s engines, and saw him pass overhead like a great black bat. Then we chased him again, and lost him again. He came to earth with more engine trouble in a ploughed field not long after dawn. A little crowd of people gathered round him, and I saw some of the correspondents who had started from London at the same time as ourselves—now disheveled, pale, and dirty in the bleak dawn. One young man, belonging to the old Morning Leader, I think, carried a red silk cushion. His car lay overturned in a ditch, but he still clung to the cushion, he told me, as his one hold on the actuality of life, which seemed nothing but a mad dream.

Another historic event was the All-round-England race, which became a duel between two famous Frenchmen, Vedrennes and Beaumont. The first named was a rough, brutal, foul-mouthed mechanic, with immense courage and skill. The second was a naval officer of most charming and gallant personality. Beaumont came back to Brooklands after his successful and wonderful flight, only a few minutes ahead of Vedrennes. A great crowd of men and women, in which there were a number of pretty ladies who had motored out early from London, had assembled at Brooklands to cheer the winner, but, as always among English crowds, their sympathy was excited by the man who had just missed the first prize. When Vedrennes appeared in sight, there was a rush to meet him. He stepped out of his machine, and looked fiercely around. When some one told him that Beaumont had arrived first, he raised both his clenched fists and cried out a foul and frightful oath—fortunately in French. Then he burst into tears, and, looking round in a dazed way, asked if there was any woman who would kiss him. A little Frenchwoman in the crowd stepped shyly out, and Vedrennes flung his greasy arms about her and kissed her emotionally. It was characteristic of the French soul that in the moment of his tragic disappointment he should have sought a woman’s arms, like a boy who goes to his mother in distress. I have never forgotten that little episode, and I have seen similar things in time of war.

It was Alfred Harmsworth and The Daily Mail which put up all the prizes for these record-making flights, and the man who was afterward Lord Northcliffe deserved all the honor he gained for his generous and farseeing encouragement of aviation. It was he who offered a big prize for a cross-Channel flight, which then sounded almost beyond the bounds of possibility. Latham was the first favorite for that prize, and was determined to gain it. His first attempt was a failure, and he fell into the sea, and was picked up smoking a cigarette as he clung to the wreckage of his plane. After that, he established himself at the other side of the Channel, at a little place called Sangatte, near Calais, and waited for some improvements to his engine, and favorable weather.

Another competitor and pioneer, named Blériot, was tinkering about with a monoplane on the same strip of coast, but nobody seemed to think much of his chances.

The Daily Mail had an immense staff of correspondents on both sides of the Channel, and a wireless installation by which they could signal to each other. Without any assistance of that kind, I had to keep my eye on both sides of the Channel, which I crossed almost every day for about a fortnight. Latham was vague about the possibilities of his start. He might go any morning at dawn. But morning after morning passed, and the French destroyers which had been lent by the French government to patrol the Channel, in case he fell in again, prepared to steam away. Several correspondents—English and French—used to spend the night on a Calais tugboat lying off Sangatte, and I joined them there the night before Latham assured us all that he would go next day. Something happened at that time to Latham—I think his nerve gave way temporarily, owing to the strain of waiting and continued engine trouble. He went about looking depressed and wretched, and he was as white as a sheet after an interview with the commander of a French destroyer, who informed him that he could wait no longer.

I crossed over to Dover, deciding that the English side might be the best place to wait, after all, especially as nobody seemed likely to cross. That very morning Blériot came over in his aëroplane like a bird, and there was not a soul to see him come. The Daily Mail staff were in bed and asleep, and I and other men of other papers were, by a lucky fluke, first on the scene to greet the man who had done the worst thing that has ever been done to England—though we did not guess it at the time. For, by flying across the Channel, he robbed us for all time of our island security and made that “silver streak,” which has been our safeguard from foreign foes, no more than a puddle which might be crossed in a few minutes along the highway of the air. After Blériot came the bombing Gothas of the German army, and now, without air defense, we lie open to any enemy as an easy target for his bombs and poison gas.

It was in the war that I completed my studies of aviation and its conquest. On mornings of great slaughter, scores of times, hundreds of times, I saw our boys fly out as heralds of a battle. Day after day, year after year, I saw that war in the air which became more intense, which crowded the sky with single combats and great tourneys, as the numbers of squadrons were increased by the Germans and ourselves. I saw the enemy’s planes and our own shot down, so that the battlefields were littered with their wreckage.

In fair weather and foul they went out on reconnaissance, signaled to the guns, fought each other to the death. The mere mechanical side of flight had no more secrets, it seemed. The little “stunts” of the pioneer days, the records of speed and height, were made ridiculous by the audacities and exploits of aviation in war. Our young men were masters of the machine, and flight seemed as natural and easy to them as to the birds who were scared at their swift rush of wings. They flew through storms of shrapnel, skimmed low above enemy trenches, dropped flaming death into cities and camps. The enemy was not behindhand in courage and skill, not less lucky in human target practice, rather more ruthless in bomb dropping over civilian populations whose women and babes were killed in their beds. After tax collecting by bombing aëroplanes in Mesopotamia, we cannot be self-righteous now. The beauty and the power of flight came very quickly to mankind after Cody went up in that old homemade ’bus, and crashed after a few moments of ecstasy. And mankind has used it as a devil’s gift.