Lanny had got the impression that they liked Americans; but Robbie said: “Not so. All that talk about 'Hands across the sea,' don't let it fool you for a moment. They're jealous of us, and the best thing they can think of about us is that we're three thousand miles away.”
Lanny told about a talk with Sir Alfred, in which the baronet had deplored the great amount of graft in American political life, and had expressed satisfaction because they had nothing of the sort in Britain. “They have a lot more,” said the munitions salesman, “only they call it by polite names. In our country when the political bosses want to fill their campaign chest, they put up some rich man for a high office — a 'fat cat' they call him — and he pays the bills and gets elected for a term of years. In England the man pays a much bigger sum into the party campaign chest, and he's made a marquess or a lord, and he and his descendants will govern the Empire forever after — but that isn't corruption, that's 'nobility'!”
You could see the effect of such a system in the armaments industry, Robbie went on to explain; and he didn't have to do any guessing, he was where he could watch the machinery working. “I've come to England with a better gun than Vickers is making; but will the British Empire get that gun? I'm going to do my best, but I'll make a private wager that it'll be the Germans who come across first. The reason is Zaharoff and his associates. They're the besL blood, so called, in England. On the board of Vickers are four marquesses and dukes, twenty knights, and fifty viscounts and barons. The Empire will do exactly what they say — and there won't be any 'graft' involved.”
VIII
Robbie went about his important affairs, while Lanny learned to know the pictures in the National Gallery. Also he met Kurt's uncle, a stout and florid gentleman who told him about rubber plantations in the Dutch East Indies, and took them to lunch at a place where they could have a rijstafel. Rick came to town over the week-end, and they went to the opera and concerts, and to a cricket match. They had lunch with Robbie, who was glad Lanny had picked two such intelligent fellows as friends; he said he would take them to a place that would give them a thrill — the War Planes Review now being held on Salisbury Plain. Robbie had been invited by an army captain who had to do with his negotiations.
The boys were delighted, of course. They had been hearing a lot about the picturesque idea of battles fought in the air. The four of them were up early in the morning, and took a train for Salisbury, some eighty miles west of London, where Captain Finchley had a car to meet them and bring them to the camp. They spent the whole day wandering about seeing the sights. The Royal Flying Corps had put up sheds for seventy planes, and most of them were in the air or lined up on the field, a spectacle the like of which had never before been seen. The officers, of course, were proud of the enterprise and might of Britain.
The largest and newest of the machines was a Farman, and the men dubbed it “the mechanical cow.” It was a frail-looking structure, a biplane spreading nearly forty feet across, the wing frames of light spruce and the surface of canvas, well coated and waterproofed. The flier sat in the open, and of course a mighty gale-blew around him when he was in the air, so he was muffled up and wore a big helmet. The principal service expected of him was to obtain information as to enemy troop movements and the position of artillery; some planes were provided with wireless sets, others with photographic apparatus. That lone fellow up there was going to be pretty busy, for he also had a carbine and a couple of revolvers with which to defend himself; or he might have an explosive bomb attached to a wire cable, the idea being to get above an enemy plane and run the cable over him.
Many planes were diving and swooping, acquiring the needed skill. Some were learning a new art called “flying in formation”; others were practicing dropping objects upon stationary targets. The visitors watched them until their eyes ached, and the backs of their necks. Every now and then a new plane would take off, and the moment when it left the ground always came to the beholder as a fresh miracle: man's dream of ages realized, the conquest of the last of the elements. The visitors were introduced to some of the pilots, well-padded fellows who of course made it a matter of pride to take it all in the day's work; going up was no miracle to them, and flying around was, to tell the truth, a good deal of a bore, once you got the hang of it. One place in the sky was exactly like another, and the ground beneath was no more exciting than your parlor rug. They were practicing night flying — and that, they admitted, was something that kept you awake. Also, they were very proud because they had succeeded in “looping the loop” in a biplane, for the first time in history.
Lanny was interested to see the effect of all this upon his English friend. Eric Vivian Pomeroy-Nielson, young man of the world whose “note” was sophistication and whose motto was nil admirari, was stirred to eloquence by the idea of military aviation. He remarked to Lanny's father that after all England wasn't as backward as the Americans might have thought. He began asking technical questions of Captain Finchley and the fliers; he wanted to know if it wouldn't be possible to mount a machine gun in a plane, and they told him that the French were trying it. “That would be a fight to put a man on his mettle!” exclaimed Rick; a surprising remark from a youth who had been heard to speak of army men as “troglodytes.”
Captain Finchley was pleased by this enthusiasm. “I wish more English boys felt that way,” he remarked; “the failure of the recent recruiting is a cause of deep concern to all friends of the Empire.”