When Lord Surrey, before the battle of Flodden Field, outwitted the Scotch by throwing his army across the Till by the beautiful old Twizel Bridge; or when Charles the Second, routed at Worcester, fled by Old Pershore Bridge into the Bredon Hills, England received one of many warnings that a secure passage over rivers might be to her at any moment as valuable as an army corps. Why has she failed to take this lesson to heart? No railway is protected by two or three branch lines over an important river, so that two or three bridges—not near together, but separated by a mile or two—would have to be destroyed before the river would be closed to the passage of troops and of food supplies. Understudy lines and bridges would be invaluable to defensive strategy.

More than a century has gone over since Perronet warned France that bridges across great rivers ought to be of a kind which would facilitate makeshift repairs after mishaps in war. He spoke earnestly, but in vain; for the conception of trade as war had not yet been forced upon the world by modernised industrialism, with its civil strikes and its international competitions. If Perronet had been able to add his foresight to the great traditions of the Ponts et Chaussées, his countrymen, probably, would have been loyal to his excellent advice, because the French have a Roman logic and they love their roads and bridges. But in France, as in other countries, a craze for engineering feats took possession of the public mind, excluding many other considerations. I know not how many perishable bridges exist at this moment in France, but I can give the figures for 1873. In that year there were one thousand nine hundred and eighty-two. Their total length was 106 kilometres, and their total cost was 286,507,761 francs. Here are some of the more expensive examples:—

Compare these figures with those of some British bridges:—

We see, then, that the bridges of civilization, when viewed merely as financial investments, are valuable enough to be made self-defensive.[145] Yet it happens that I am the only writer who has tried to draw public attention to the ease with which any bridge in England could be crippled. And the trouble is that engineers hold the field, because the man of business finds in their work a hard routine that looks practical and mercantile. What we need is the influence of architects. For capable architects have the genius of artists, and when artists give their minds to practical affairs they show a range of common sense that men of trade rarely equal. It is in their nature to look at a question from all sides till they see it amply and as a whole, while men of trade isolate two or three things from many, and accept them tenaciously as the only things that merit attention.

But in our social life and strife there are certain newcomers that will compel the world to reconsider its wrong attitude to bridge-building. I refer to airships and to aviation, with their threatened wars from overhead. A good many bridges over strategical waterways can be displaced by tunnels, but many others must be armoured with cone-shaped roofs. Art and science have done wonderful things for the modern battleship, and now—now they must invent and perfect a new battle-bridge, fit to protect arterial highways from “progress.”

It is the morning of the 4th of August, and I have just read the latest war news. The whole life of Europe is a note of interrogation, infinitely sinister and tragic. What is destined to happen? Which nations are doomed to perish? What navy will go down into the deep? Which airmen will make the most successful attacks on those bridges that govern the distribution of food supplies? Will the equity of Europe triumph, or will German felony succeed?