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Title: Pegasus: problems of transportation
Author: J. F. C. Fuller
Release date: January 30, 2025 [eBook #75248]
Language: English
Original publication: United Kingdom: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd, 1925
Credits: Richard Tonsing, Tim Lindell, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PEGASUS: PROBLEMS OF TRANSPORTATION ***
PEGASUS
TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW
_For a full list of this Series see the end
of this Book_
[Illustration:
GUY ONE-TON LORRY
Hauling a full load up a one-in-two gradient (notice the vertical
stick hanging from string from lamp bracket)
[_Frontispiece_
]
PEGASUS
PROBLEMS OF TRANSPORTATION
BY
COLONEL J. F. C. FULLER
WITH 8 PLATES
LONDON
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO., LTD.
NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO.
_Printed in Great Britain by_
MACKAYS LTD., CHATHAM
PREFACE
The first part of this little book, namely “The Battle of the Iron
Horse,” appeared, very much as it stands, in the September number of
_The National Review_, 1925, and I have to thank the editor, Mr. Leo
Maxse, for his kindness in allowing me to republish it.
The second part is based partially on personal experience and
reflection, and partially on the lectures and papers of others. In the
war, the tank brought me to realize the enormous possibilities of
cross-country movement, and, in 1921, I set down my ideas as regards its
commercial future in a pamphlet entitled _Economic Movement_, which was
published in 1922.
Of the works of others, I have borrowed ideas from the following:—
“Improvements in the Efficiency of Roadless Vehicles.” A paper read
before the members of The Institution of Automobile Engineers, by
Colonel P. H. Johnson, C.B.E., D.S.O., December, 1921.
“Multi-Wheel and Track Motor.” A paper read before the members of the
above Institution by Major T. G. Tulloch, March, 1923.
“The Progress of Mechanical Engineering in the Military Service.” A
lecture delivered before the members of The Institution of Mechanical
Engineers, by Major G. le Q. Martel, D.S.O., M.C., January, 1924.
“Transport in Tropical Africa.” A paper read before the members of The
Royal Society of Arts, by Mr. R. H. Brackenbury, February, 1925.
“The Roadless Transport Problem.” A paper read before the members of The
British Association, by Colonel P. H. Johnson, C.B.E., D.S.O., August,
1925.
J.F.C.F.
_Staff College, Camberley.
November, 1925._
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION 9
THE BATTLE OF THE IRON HORSE
The Railway Centenary 13
The Protean Problem 17
The X-Ray Transporter 20
Erichthonius, Wheelwright 25
The Philosopher’s Steam 29
George Stephenson, Engine-wright 32
The Nature of the Beast 40
Protean Ignorance 44
THE CONQUEST OF THE ELYSIAN FIELDS
The Equation of Power and Movement 48
The Riddle of the Gordian Knot 52
The Problem of Unemployment 59
The Problem of Power 66
Problems of Movement 69
Two-Dimensional Movement 77
The Elysian Fields 87
The Wings of Pegasus 91
PEGASUS
PROBLEMS OF TRANSPORTATION
INTRODUCTION
Whatever man does entails movement, mental or bodily. Movement is, in
fact, the mainspring of his evolution and of the civilization which this
evolution engenders; consequently, in the economic growth of movement
must be sought the direction of all progress, both physical and
psychological. As the mind of man moves, so does the world, in which
this mind works, move round him, delivering up to his imagination and
his hands the mysteries it so sedulously hides. For it is through the
conquest of mysteries that man, the mystery of mysteries, strides out of
a dark and unknown past towards some unknown future.
It would be both logical and easy, I think, to start with the soles of
man’s feet and to work upwards to his brain. To show how, from simple
walking, man’s natural means of progression, he took to riding, and then
thought of the oar, the wheel and the sail, until to-day he rushes over
the surface of the earth, surges through the waves and roars through the
air, excelling the horse, the fish and the bird. But in so small a book
as this it is not my intention to write a history of transportation. In
place, I intend to consider two things: first, the reaction against
novelty of movement, and secondly, the possibilities of what to-day is
still a novel form of movement, namely, the movement of roadless
vehicles, that is of vehicles which do not require roads for their
locomotion. Also, I intend to show how these vehicles may help us solve
several of our most pressing problems, and above all that of
over-population at home and under-population in our Dominions and
Colonies.
If I can do this with any semblance of success, it may perhaps excuse
the restrictions I am placing on this subject, for I fully realize the
immense future possibilities of other means of movement. The railway has
not come to the end of its evolution, far from it to any reader of Mr.
Horniman’s book, “How to Make the Railways Pay for the War,” in which
Mr. Gattie’s “third-dimensional” railway system is described, a system
which bids fair, were it introduced, to prove as revolutionary as George
Stephenson’s locomotive itself. Nor has the steamship, except perhaps in
size, reached its utmost development, for every day heralds a further
improvement, and, as for aircraft, they are scarcely out of the nursery;
yet I am of opinion that, until a radical change in their engines is
introduced, and this change may demand a new motive force, their utility
in peace will be severely restricted, and, if restricted in peace, in
numbers they are not likely to be so numerous in war as some people
imagine. I mention these things here because of the limit I have placed
on the items I intend to examine when compared to the subject of
economic movement as a whole.
I have called this little book Pegasus, not only because this famous
steed had wings, which to me are the wings of imagination, but because
he was born near the sources of the ocean and sprang from the blood of
Medusa. To me, the sources of the ocean are symbolic of these little
islands of ours, which produced not only the first practical steam
engine and the first locomotive, but also the footed wheel which
developed into the caterpillar track. Further, Medusa, that monster who
turned all who gazed on her to stone, is surely the incarnation of that
obstructive ignorance which, by impeding originality of idea and novelty
of action, compels thought and things to grow, and through struggle with
her to prove their utility and worth.
THE BATTLE OF THE IRON HORSE
THE RAILWAY CENTENARY
I must begin somewhere, and since I refuse to begin at the soles of
men’s feet, which are the beginning of his anatomy, the earth is our
natural datum point, I will begin just a hundred years ago, when the
world we know to-day was as remote from the world as it was then, as the
world I hope to point the way to will, in many ways, be as remote from
the world as it is now.
On the 27th of September, of this very year in which I write, took place
the centenary of the opening of the Stockton and Darlington railway, and
though it was not the first line to be constructed in England (for the
Killingworth railway was built in 1814, and again this was not the first
upon which locomotives ran), its claim to priority is nevertheless well
founded, for it was the first railway the public noticed, and, in
democratic countries, the birth of anything original must date from the
moment the most ignorant in the land realize its existence. It flatters
ignorance to be always first—such is democratic pride.
The 27th of September, 1825, was a very remarkable day in the world’s
history, one of those birthdays which have no predictable date, but
which depend on the outburst of genius of some great man. The great man
was a humble and self-taught engine-wright from Killingworth, one George
Stephenson, albeit an honest and persevering man, a worker, a thinker
and a dreamer; one of those human thunder clouds which, from time to
time, beat up against the conventional currents of thought, and out of
which flash the lightnings of unsuspected things—a very remarkable and
creative man.
On the 27th of September, a hundred years ago, a great concourse of
people assembled at Brusselton Incline, some nine miles from Darlington.
There, the travelling engine, as it was called, driven by George
Stephenson, the greatest genius of his age, moved forward amidst shrill
blasts of its whistle, “with its immense train of carriages,”
thirty-eight in number; “and such was its velocity,” writes an
eye-witness, “that in some parts the speed was frequently twelve miles
an hour!” It took sixty-five minutes to cover the nine miles to
Darlington, and the multitude stood aghast!
But the other day, I travelled in the “Detroiter” from New York to near
by the front door of Mr. Henry Ford—another remarkable and self-taught
revolutionary—the distance, if I remember rightly, some seven hundred
and fifty miles, and the time taken was fourteen hours. From Brusselton
Incline the iron horse hauled away, amidst wild excitement, the
stupendous load of ninety tons. At Pittsburg, I have seen locomotives
hauling six and seven thousand tons of coal, puffing by all unobserved.
Surely Einstein is right, the relative is only true, and ninety tons in
1825 was almost as unbelievable as to-day would be a centaur galloping
between the taxis of Piccadilly or Fifth Avenue.
All this must have been remembered during the centenary celebrations
this year, and broadcast from meeting room, assembly hall and dinner
table, for centenaries lose their interest without much feeding. There,
little men in tail coats, morning jackets and lounge suits, some with
trousers creased and others somewhat baggy at the knee, according to the
political creed of the wearer, in port and beer, and, in America, I know
not what, toasted the memory of the great man. Pæans and praise gushed
from their arid heads like the water from the rock smitten by Moses.
These little men, sitting for a bare few minutes on the chariot wheel of
genius, did say, “What a dust do we raise!” And in our morning papers we
read of all this blather and pomposity, and overlooked an eternal truth.
For we got into our railway carriages next day and complained of their
unfitness for human habitation, even of the most temporary nature, and
condemned the line we were travelling on as impossible, because the
train was five minutes late. Outwardly a very ordinary picture, all
this—the drinking, speechmaking and travelling troubles of little men,
some strap-hangers to genius, but most quite normal nonentities; yet
behind it all lurks a somewhat interesting problem—the protean
psychology of the very ordinary man.
THE PROTEAN PROBLEM
Since that famous Brusselton gathering, the noise of which has long
deafened the world to the wonder of its sound, what changes do we see! A
whole earth rejuvenated, as humanity, like a shuttle, works the woof of
a new civilization through the warp of an old. Civilization is built on
movement, and the picture of life to-day is as different from that of
1825, in rough proportion, as a cinema show differs from a neolithic
rock painting. In this short hundred years, the life span of a very old
man, such a revolution has been brought about by the locomotive that the
world has been reborn. And, to our limited intelligence, always that of
a child, we have forgotten the events of this first birthday; and the
changes, which it conjured out of the depths of ignorance, are to-day
accepted by us all as the essentials of our surroundings and as
necessitous to our lives.
If some magician could appear to-day, and, by a wave of his wand, banish
all railroads to limbo, a calamity would fall upon this world to which
no parallel could be found since Noah entered the Ark. The greatest
plagues, famines and wars would vanish like wisps of smoke into the
night, when compared to its all-consuming horror. It would be like
dragging out of the human body the arterial and venous systems, and yet
leaving the man alive, an aching mass of bones and fiery nerves. The
picture is indescribable, it is beyond the grasp of intelligence to grip
it, and yet, in 1825, the ancestors, the grandfathers, and great
grandfathers, and great grandmothers, too, of all the little men who in
1925 were dressed in dinner jackets (or tuxedo, as they call it over the
Atlantic) morning coats and lounge suits, made to measure and “off the
peg,” were shouting down George Stephenson, even more boisterously than
their grandsons and great grandsons this year shouted him up. This, then
is the protean problem, that eternal truth overlooked as we read in our
newspapers that a workman has been killed in Walworth or a girl has
deposited a baby outside an A.B.C. in the Strand, and so on, _ad
infinitum_, the long categories of the normalities of life. This is the
inner problem George Stephenson has to teach us, and let us consider it,
for it is a live and moving problem, and one which will not be
masticated by very ordinary men, as they gulp down their beer, their
port or iced water. It is the problem of “‘Hail, king of the Jews,’ one
day and ‘Crucify Him’ the next.” It is, as I say, the veritable protean
problem of humanity, and nine hundred and ninety-nine human beings out
of every thousand are very, very, ordinary men.
THE X-RAY TRANSPORTER
Let us picture to ourselves another magician descending on this earth of
ours, a man of magic with the prosaic name of John Smith, yet none the
less a man of genius, for all such are magicians in very fact. He is a
very modern genius, and, I will suppose that he has discovered how to
transform any and all physical things into ether waves moving at 186,000
miles a second, and that he can precipitate in its original form any
article or being sent to any given spot; all this arrived at by tapping
a key or pressing a button.
What a traffic problem is here opened to this world; so immense that it
puts to blush the power of that horrid wizard who would remove our
railways. Its conception is no more impossible than that of
broadcasting. Even in so remote a village as Camberley (thirty miles
distant from London, and there I write), where electrical genius is
conspicuously absent, I can switch on to Paris and listen to Galli Curci
or any other human bird. And what appears to me far more marvellous,
simultaneously a fisherman in Trondhjem can do likewise. An immense
audience in fact this Galli Curci can command, and totally unknown to
her, totally unseen and out of contact even with itself, a dust of
individuals, each speck of which can travel on or off her song by mere
pressure of the hand, each speck of which can travel by ear at infinite
speed and to any civilized point on the globe. If this is not magic,
what is?
If song can be etherealized, why not then the singer? How much more
remarkable would it not be, in place of scanning bold headlines of dead
workmen and deposited babies, to read that Melba will sing in New York,
at a quarter past three next Saturday afternoon, and at the Opera House
in Paris, that very same day, and but twenty minutes later.
If we can transmit one thing, surely the day must soon come when we
shall be able to transmit all things, and my genius John Smith is the
man of that day. What could he not do? He could solve the traffic
problem in Regent Street or Broadway, for all, astonished reader, you
would have to do would be to sit on a transmitter, press a button, and
in the minutest fraction of a second, you would find yourself in Peter
Robinson’s, or Mr. Morgan’s office, or wherever you wanted to go, all
for a penny or a couple of cents! He could banish the Communists to the
moon, where there are no capitalists and where there is plenty of ice to
keep their heads cool. He could replace the League of Nations by a row
of chairs. The Grenadier Guards would fall in to the stentorian yells of
their Sergeant-Major to be seated. The button would be pressed by the
Army Council and, in less than a twinkle of an eye, they would be doing
their famous goose-step down the Sieges Alle, to the utter consternation
of the terrible Teuton.
Dear and crawling reader, what could he not do, and what could not you
do? Half-a-crown, or half-a-dollar, would take you round the world—bag,
baggage and all. And if you do not forget your purse, you can breakfast
in New York at a cafeteria, lunch with Ongo-Pongo on the shores of Lake
Chad, have tea in Yoshiwara, at the “Nectarine” for choice, and sup with
Doris in the Bois de Boulogne at 8.30—this, indeed, is to live.
But what would you do—you beefsteak-eating bull of a Briton, yes, what
would you do? You would don your lounge suit or your morning coat, or
your tuxedo, as your great grandfathers did right back in 1825. You
would become thoroughly traditional and would say: “Why, this man is
mad—a raving lunatic! Send me to Lake Chad?... Good God, man, what is he
thinking about ... Lock him up!”
Then the storm would burst. The leading engineers, “eminent” as they are
called by every newspaper, would say it was contrary to etheric law;
Harley Street would be thoroughly up in arms, for all their old lady
friends might suddenly betake themselves in a second to Madeira and get
cured of their ailments; the physicians would say the human frame cannot
stand this rush; the bath-chairmen would say that their occupation was
gone; the lawyers would say it was illegal and that it would lead to the
Cocos Islands becoming a refuge for criminals; the soldiers would say,
how could they be expected to protect this dash dashed land, why, it did
not fit their strategy, therefore it _must_ be wrong. And what would the
clergy say? Heaven alone knows, for whilst antiquity and things
antiquated separate the Churches, any novelty of a progressive nature is
apt to bring them together with amazing unanimity.
The reader may be beginning to think that I, the writer, am off my head,
but I am not. So far, all I have done is to reveal protean
possibilities, now I will turn to actualities of the same psychological
order. I will imagine that this genius Mr. Smith has, in disgust,
removed himself to Aldebaran, and that we are about to get back to the
Brusselton Incline.
ERICHTHONIUS, WHEELWRIGHT
I must have missed the Incline in my haste to get back to Brusselton,
for I find myself in Athens in the Minoan age, or thereabouts, for the
year is 1486 B.C. Everyone seems very excited; porters have thrown down
their baskets and are yelling unintelligible words, yet of a pronounced
and universal meaning; shoemakers are beating at a house door with their
lasts. Whatever is up? A dainty little creature, some now far away
Doris, approaches me and says: “Do you know what that old blighter (my
Attic is weak) has done? Why, he has invented a thing called a chariot,
and all these poor people have lost their jobs.”
Of course, Erichthonius never invented the chariot; the idea of a pure
inventor is but a piece of proletarian imagery, a morsel of that
ignorance which is the soul of the crowd. This old man, even if he ever
lived, which seems doubtful, did no more than Savery did, or Newcomen,
or Watt, or Stephenson, or Marconi did; that is, he was a link in that
great chain we call progress, each link being the great thought of a
great man. Tutenkhamon had his chariot as we well know, and many another
before him, and we read in the Acts of the Apostles of a eunuch of great
authority, a kind of Maître d’Hôtel of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians,
journeying to Jerusalem sitting in his chariot reading Esaias, the
prophet, which is no mean compliment to the Roman road-makers in
Palestine.
I must, however, hasten back to Brusselton, for there lies my goal; but
stop, what is this? “A whirlicote,” a “Noah’s Ark,” or, in common
language, an Elizabethan coach; for sure—a direct descendent of the
handicraft of Erichthonius. The Earl of Rutland, it is said, first built
whirlicotes in this country, in 1565, and, in spite of the villainous
condition of the roads, my lords and ladies soon took to them. This,
apparently, was a sure proof, in its day, that the country was going to
the dogs; for, early in the seventeenth century, a bill was brought into
Parliament “to prevent the effeminacy of men riding in coaches.”
Hitherto Englishmen had ridden or walked, why should they not continue
to do so, why not, indeed?
In the first quarter of the seventeenth century, the number of coaches
in London was reckoned at six thousand and odd, and in a curious old
book, published in 1636, and recently reprinted, called “Coach and
Sedan,” of these six thousand and odd whirlicotes we read:—
“I easilie (quoth I) beleeve it, when in certaine places of the Citie,
as I have often observed, I have never come but I have there, the way
barricado’d up with a _Coach_, two, or three, that what hast, or
businesse soever a man hath; hee must waite my Ladie (I know not whose)
leasure (who is in the next shop, buying pendants for her eares; or a
collar for her dogge) ere hee can find any passage.”
It is Regent Street or Fifth Avenue over again, for, according to this
author, when there is a new Masque at Whitehall, the coaches stand
together “like mutton-pies in a cooke’s oven,” and then he adds: and
“hardly you can thrust a pole between them!”
In its turn, the stage coach was opposed tooth and nail, because it was
something new. In 1671, Sir Henry Herbert, M.P., stated that: “If a man
were to propose to convey us regularly to Edinburgh in seven days, and
bring us back in seven more, should we not vote him to Bedlam?” Sir
Henry Herbert is what I call a psychological Proteus, a kind of
intellectual amoeba which propagates itself by simple division, the
parts of which are always with us and alike—they never die.
THE PHILOSOPHER’S STEAM
The Brusselton Incline is now in sight, so I will pause and look back
whilst I regain breath. The horse of Troy was a very wonderful beast,
and many strange things came out of it, for it was the strangest thing
man had seen since the Ark. But years after Troy was burnt, a stranger
thing was seen in Alexandria. It was called an aeolipile, a kind of
rudimentary steam engine, which was invented by one, Hero, in 130 B.C.
He used it to open and close the doors of a temple, yet it was
eventually destined to open the portal of a new world, a glimpse of
which would have sent Hero or Columbus completely out of their minds.
Yet these greater doors remained closed for seventeen hundred years,
when another, this time Battista della Porta, in the year 1601,
re-discovered the power of steam.
In 1641, Marion de Lorme, accompanied by the Marquis of Worcester,
visited the madhouse of the Bicêtre in Paris, and this is what he
writes:—
“We were crossing the court, and I, more dead than alive with fright,
kept close to my companion’s side, when a frightful face appeared behind
some immense bars, and a hoarse voice exclaimed, ‘I am not mad! I am not
mad! I have made a discovery that would enrich the country that adopted
it.’ ‘What has he discovered?’ asked our guide. ‘Oh!’ answered the
keeper, shrugging his shoulders, ‘Something trifling enough; you would
never guess it; it is the use of the steam of boiling water.’”
Who was this maniac? It was Solomon de Caus, he had a vision whilst
dabbling with steam vessels, and he had seen carriages and ships
propelled by steam. This was too much for men dressed in half hose and
doublets, or whatever was the tuxedo of their day. “Carriages driven by
steam ... lock him up!” So he was locked up. But the idea lived on, and
it grew. There was Giovanni Branca, Edward Somerset, Marquis of
Worcester, then Thomas Savery, who, in 1698, obtained a patent for a
water raising engine. There were others, Jean de Hautefeuille, who, in
1678, suggested the piston; Denis Papin, 1690, of cylinder and piston
fame. At length Thomas Newcomen, 1705, something near success; others
still, Humphrey Potter, Henry Beighton, but all waiting for _the_ man.
Then _the_ man came in the form of a poor instrument maker, and the new
Jerusalem of the steam age was Glasgow, for there did he work. This man
was James Watt, who, having realized that the cylinder of an engine
should always be as hot as the steam which entered it, in 1769 threw
open the doors of the most stupendous epoch in economic history. The
transmutation of heat into mechanical work had been discovered, it was
the true stone of the philosophers, the “Open Sesame” to another age.
GEORGE STEPHENSON, ENGINE-WRIGHT
In the very year James Watt built the first practical steam engine,
namely, the year 1769—the year Napoleon was born—fearful riots were
taking place in Russia, because some enlightened person had introduced
the potato, a useful vegetable as we all know, yet at this time one in
which the Russian peasant saw the Satanic thumb, for he was certain that
this humble vegetable was the “devil’s apple.” Though why this should
have detracted from its nutritive qualities I cannot say.
Looking back now, and we are nearing Brusselton, it seems to me that
there is no difference between the spirit of these deluded peasants and
those who, with shoe lasts, beat vigorously on the door of
Erichthonius’s house. They are one and all Sir Henry Herberts, though
the particular cut of their clothes may differ. George Stephenson,
having studied steam engines in general and Mr. Trevithick’s crude and
inefficient locomotive in particular, determined to build one of his
own, and, with the support of Lord Ravensworth, he accomplished this
feat at Killingworth in 1814. There the first efficient locomotive was
made. Had Lord Eldon been a Russian, he would probably have objected to
potatoes, but being an Englishman he preferred bigger game. “I am
sorry,” he said, “to find the intelligent people of the North-country
gone mad on the subject of railways.” A few miles had only been opened,
but this was quite sufficient to establish madness, and by some other of
his ilk, the adage, “A fool and his money are soon parted,” was applied
to Lord Ravensworth.
The Killingworth railway was followed by the Stockton and Darlington
line. Mr. Edward Pease, the Quaker supporter of Stephenson, had said:
“Let the country but make the railroads, and the railroads will make the
country.” Be it remembered that locomotives had been working at
Killingworth, and very efficiently, for ten years; but there were others
who, unlike Mr. Pease, were full of the spirit of old Herbert. The Duke
of Cleveland opposed the measure in Parliament, as the line would pass
through his fox covers, and, due to his influence it was thrown out. A
new survey was made, avoiding these precious earths, and the railway was
built.
The next line was that between Manchester and Liverpool. Lord Derby
turned out his farm hands to chase Stephenson’s surveyors off his
estates. Lord Sefton did likewise, and the Duke of Bridgewater
threatened to shoot them at sight. Stephenson had his theodolite so
often smashed that he deemed it wise to hire a prize fighter to carry
it. The “Quarterly Review” supported the project, and it is curious to
read what it said, for it will give the reader some idea of the
virulence of the opposition. It says:
“What can be more palpably absurd and ridiculous than the prospect held
out of locomotives travelling _twice as fast_ as stage coaches! We
should as soon expect the people of Woolwich to suffer themselves to be
fired off upon one of Congreve’s ricochet rockets, as trust themselves
to the mercy of such a machine going at such a rate.... We trust that
Parliament will, in all railways it may sanction, limit the speed to
_eight or nine miles an hour_, which we entirely agree with Mr.
Sylvester is as great as can be ventured on with safety.”
This was praise indeed, and it is amazing that the British Parliament,
which is always full of ordinary men, did not take the hint and limit
the speed of the locomotive to that of a trotting horse. Nevertheless,
though this grand opportunity was missed, the Parliamentary Committee
did all in its power to obstruct the measure. One of its members asked
George Stephenson: “Suppose a cow were to stray upon the line?” There
was a hush of horror, then he added: “Would not that, think you, be a
very awkward circumstance?” “Yes,” answered Stephenson, “very awkward
indeed—_for the coo_!”
The leading councils openly declared that this “untaught and
inarticulate genius” was mad.... “Every part of the scheme shows that
this man has applied himself to a subject of which he has no knowledge,
and to which he has no science to apply.” Not only would these
locomotive engines be a terrible nuisance, “in consequence of the fire
and smoke vomited forth by them,” but “the value of land in the
neighbourhood of Manchester alone would be deteriorated by no less than
£20,000!” “The most absurd scheme that ever entered into the head of man
to conceive,” shouted Mr. Alderson, the leading counsel. “No engineer in
his senses would go through Chat Moss,” solemnly declared Mr. Giles, the
most eminent engineer brought forward by the opposition. He estimated
the cost of such a project at £270,000. Stephenson did it for £28,000,
but the line was an expensive one as it had so many fox covers to avoid.
All this was but a preliminary skirmish, the main battle now began. The
beef-eating Briton was thoroughly aroused. George Stephenson was
considered to be an incarnation or certainly an implement of his Satanic
Majesty. The public were appealed to, and ever ready to hinder progress,
they took off their tuxedo, smocks, frocks, morning coats or whatever
covered their bodies, and formed phalanx against the common foe. A
meeting of Manchester ministers of all denominations was convened. This
meeting declared that the locomotive was “in direct opposition both to
the law of God and to the most enduring interests of society.” This set
match to powder. The doctors declared that the air would be poisoned and
birds would die of suffocation. The landowners, that the preservation of
pheasants and foxes was no longer possible. Householders, that their
houses would be burnt down and the air polluted by clouds of smoke.
Horse-breeders, that horses would become extinct. Farmers, that oats and
hay would be rendered unsaleable. Innkeepers, that inns would be ruined.
Passengers, that boilers would burst. Heaven knows who—“that the
locomotive would prevent cows grazing, hens laying, and would cause
ladies to give premature birth to children at the sight of these things
moving at four and a half miles an hour!”
Yet there was this consolation. The very, very ordinary man, the British
public at large, declared that “the weight of the locomotive (six tons!)
would completely prevent its moving, and that railways, even if made,
could _never_ be worked by steam power.” Yet for ten years now, and
more, the Killingworth engines were running daily!
The Stockton and Darlington line was a tremendous success; so also was
the railway between Manchester and Liverpool, yet opposition thickened
rather than lessened. In 1830, the “Rocket” had attained a speed of
thirty-five miles an hour, yet, in 1832, Colonel Sibthorpe (the Army now
come into the picture and oh! how bravely), declared his hatred of these
“infernal railroads,” and that he “would rather meet a highwayman, or
see a burglar on his premises, than an engineer!” When the Birmingham
railway bill was before Parliament, Sir Astley Cooper, that most eminent
of surgeons, declared: “You are entering upon an enormous undertaking of
which you know nothing. Then look at the recklessness of your
proceedings! You are proposing to destroy property, cutting up our
estates in all directions! Why, gentlemen, if this sort of thing be
permitted to go on, you will in a very few years _destroy the
noblesse_!” And this, from a man who had been knighted for cutting a wen
out of George IV.’s neck!
THE NATURE OF THE BEAST
All this is not only amusing, but vastly instructive—these beaters of
shoe lasts on the lintel of genius. Here we have a deep and vivid study
presented to us of popular ignorance, that universal coagulant of truth.
In 1824, George Stephenson had said to his son and a companion: “Now
lads, I will tell you that I think you will live to see the day when
railways will come to supersede almost all other methods of conveyance
in this country—when mail coaches will go by railway, and railroads will
become the Great Highway for the King and all his subjects. The time is
coming when it will be cheaper for a working man to travel on a railway
than to walk on foot.”
The victory was won in 1825, the year following this memorable prophecy;
yet, in 1835, the reactionaries were still fighting a rear guard action,
and we find the landed gentry sending forward their servants and luggage
by rail and condemning themselves to jog along the roads in the family
coach. On the Continent it was just the same, and even in 1862 the Papal
Government opposed the opening of the Rome and Naples railway. The rear
guard fought on until June, 1842, when, on a certain Monday, Her Majesty
Queen Victoria made her first railway trip. It was from Windsor to
London, and her coach had a crown on its roof. The reactionaries went
head over heels, donned their frock coats or whatever garment
appertained to their social rank, and declared the railway the greatest
blessing God had ever permitted man to discover. The Marquis of Bristol,
wildly excited, said that “if necessary, they might _make a tunnel
beneath his very drawing-room_,” and the Rev. F. Litchfield that he did
not mind if a railway ran through his bedroom, “with the bedposts for a
station.” Ever irrational and unbalanced, very ordinary men went as mad
on railways as they had been mad against them. The panic of 1844–1846
was the result. In the last-mentioned year applications were made to
Parliament for powers to raise £389,000,000 for the construction of new
lines.
On the 26th of June, 1847, a year before George Stephenson died, he
attended the opening of the Trent Valley Railway. Sir Robert Peel was
his host and proclaimed him “the chief of our practical philosophers.”
Seven baronets and two or three dozen members of Parliament, all in
frock coats and tall hats, did homage to the great engineer, whilst the
clergy blessed the enterprise and bid all hail to the new line as
“enabling them to carry on with greater facility those operations in
connection with religion which were calculated to be so beneficial to
the country.”
I wonder what passed in George Stephenson’s mind. In 1825 he was
universally proclaimed mad and a danger to society; in 1847 he is
proclaimed “the chief of our practical philosophers” and the saviour of
society. I wonder which he objected to most—their abuse or their praise?
Both, I should imagine, were largely overlooked by him, for he was a
very great man, and surely those who abused him and praised him—very,
very small—truly insignificant.
PROTEAN IGNORANCE
Protean ignorance never dies; this is the problem which confronts us.
George Stephenson has only been my peg upon which I have hung this musty
old skin, indeed no golden fleece, but just as magical, so that I might
the better examine it; and a fine stout peg it is—all of British oak.
Stephenson was the father of the locomotive; as to this there can be no
dispute, and equally can there be no doubt that the locomotive has
changed the superstructure of the civilized world, yet its foundations
remain permanently fixed. Matter fluctuates as the will of man unmasks
the material world; but the soul of man remains fixed, abiding in the
solitude of his ignorance.
Ignorance and stupidity are always with us, they are the Dioscuri of the
temple of life. To change the material world is like changing our
clothes, to change the spiritual world is like changing our intestines.
Spiritual, I admit, is not the exact word, neither is moral nor human.
To me, the spiritual is all-pervading and uninfluenced by intelligence
or reason. A man who is grossly ignorant is grossly religious, for he is
a worshipper of idols.
To-day we see the multitudes bending the knee to Baal, and yet we see
them surrounded by misery, woe and suffering. No disease is incurable,
no ill cannot be conquered. But every would-be saviour, however humble,
must prepare for crucifixion, because the very multitudes they would
save are in themselves their worst enemies.
Henry Herbert never dies, he was here before Adam took form from out the
dust of Eden, and he will be the last man to leave this earth when the
last trumpet sounds, and I have not the slightest doubt that he will
then question the wisdom of the Almighty. He will question the wisdom of
all things new, and yet, to-day, the world is groaning for novelty, for
material growth means also material decay. Though very ordinary men can
build middens, it is only the extraordinary man who can shift these
piles of refuse—accumulations of old traditions, customs and accepted
things. To me the moral of this centenary is not the power of steam, but
the power of the will of man. George Stephenson triumphed over all
difficulties, because he was possessed of a will to win. The stronger
opposition grew the more mighty grew his will. Protean ignorance has,
therefore, its virtue; it renders progress difficult to attain; it is
the whetstone of genius. When we realize this, in place of wringing our
hands in lamentation when Henry Herbert beats his last against our door,
we open it and look at him, and laugh, and then close it and go on with
our work—in one word, we persevere. Laughter and Perseverance, surely
these two are the shield and sword of progress.
THE CONQUEST OF THE ELYSIAN FIELDS
THE EQUATION OF POWER AND MOVEMENT
Power and Movement, these are the foundations of civilization and the
sire and dam of progress, and before the days of Watt, Fulton and
Stephenson, all Anglo-Saxons, how shallow were they laid; so shallow
that their social and industrial superstruction is, to-day, difficult to
visualize, let alone to understand. Here is a little glimpse, and if not
a very dramatic one, yet one which is apt to make us wonder at this lost
world of little more than a century ago, a world all but obscured in
clouds of steam.
In 1770, Adam Smith wrote (and be it remembered that for fifty years
after this date the picture remains true) the following:—
“A broad-wheeled wagon attended by two men, and drawn by eight horses,
in about six weeks’ time carries and brings back between London and
Edinburgh near four ton weight of goods. Upon two hundred tons of goods,
therefore, carried by the cheapest land-carriage from London to
Edinburgh, there must be charged the maintenance of a hundred men for
three weeks, and both the maintenance, and, what is nearly equal to the
maintenance, the wear and tear of four hundred horses, as well as of
fifty great wagons.”
To-day, when the trans-Siberian railway is in working order, a man can
travel in the same time, with four tons of baggage if he wishes, from
London to Tokio and back. Edinburgh is four hundred miles from London,
and Tokio is some eight thousand miles from this same city; such has
been the expansion of movement and the contraction of space, and
to-morrow aircraft may reduce the time taken to a fortnight.
The fire of Prometheus is as a rush-light compared to the volcano of
steam which, like all great world forces, is a mixture of Pandora and
her box; for it has given us beauty and wealth, and also ugliness and
starvation. It revived the world, bled white during the Napoleonic wars,
and, in place of conquering the world as the great Corsican attempted,
it recreated it.
When men began to move by steam power, Titans strode this earth. In
peace time we see science advancing as it had never advanced before,
industry growing beyond belief or imagination. Cities spring up in the
night, such as Chicago, for whilst, in 1830, its population numbered a
hundred souls, to-day it holds nearly three millions. Nations grew and
doubled, trebled and quadrupled their populations, and the wealth of
Crœsus is to-day but the bank balance of Henry Ford. Yet out of all this
prosperity, created by steam power, arose the Great War of 1914–1918,
which, in its four years of frenzy, was to show a surfeited civilisation
the destructive power of steam.
What do we see during this last period of roaring turmoil? A curious
picture. The railway and the steamship, which, during days of peace,
increased movement out of all belief, during war end by impeding it.
Like great funnels, we see the railways, pouring forth cataracts of men,
veritable human inundations, and then we see that, though it is easy to
move masses by rail, once the rail is left behind, it is next to
impossible to supply these masses by road, or to move them in face of
gun and machine gun. The war becomes a war of trenches, not a moving
war, but a stationary affair—men look at each other and sometimes shoot.
As peace begets war, power and movement are the foundation of the
second, just as they are of the first. On the battlefield or in the
workshop, power is useless without movement. It is no good setting up a
boot factory, unless you can get the boots on to the feet of the people,
and in war it is no good piling up bayonets, unless you can get them
into the intestines of your enemy. Thus, it happened that, before the
war was three months old, though each side possessed much power, power
in itself was useless, for it could not be moved. The remaining four
years of the war were spent in solving the equation of power and
movement.
This problem was partially solved by the tank, which possessed both
power and movement. And from the armies which used these machines, and
there were never very many of them, little streamlets of men trickled
forward out of these great stagnant human pools, and the war was won.
THE RIDDLE OF THE GORDIAN KNOT
What is our problem to-day? It is again the problem of power and
movement; not a new problem, but a very old problem, in fact the eternal
problem dressed up in a new frock. Our problem is to revive our old
industries, so far as they can be revived, and to establish new ones,
for industries, like the human beings who create them, grow old, come on
the pension list and die. Our problem is, as it was during the war, to
shift the population, to demobilize our great army of unemployed, and to
cause it to trickle from our over-populated little island into our
underpopulated Dominions and Colonies. Lastly, our problem is to secure
ourselves against another war.
To-day, we find ourselves in a veritable labyrinth of difficulties, but
there must be a way out, possibly several, for otherwise we could not be
standing in its centre. We have got into it, so we can get out of it, as
we have of many a former maze; but how?
It is here that I think the spirit of George Stephenson can help us, and
it is for this reason that I have taken up so much of this little book
with this great man’s name and work, and with the difficulties he faced
and, undaunted, conquered. His motto was “Perseverance”; let it be ours.
He did not talk over much, but he took his coat off and got to work. He
worked single-handed and was obstructed at every turn. The whole country
was against him, yet he conquered, and, more to him than to any other
man a century ago, it seems to me, were the problems, which then faced
England, solved, and they are the problems which face England now.
As it may be said, and with some truth, in fact a great deal of truth,
that the railway made the war, since it made the peace which preceded
the war, so with equal truth may it be said that the petrol engine,
encased in a tank, by making peace possible, may now make peace
profitable, even if in doing so it begets the germs of another war. In
other words, as the war was so largely won by the tank, so must the
peace which has followed it be largely won by the caterpillar tractor,
or roadless vehicle.
Henry Herbert will vote me to Bedlam, but this is the most encouraging
fact of all, for every new idea must start by being in a minority of
one, such as that of George Stephenson’s against the world. The stronger
the opposition the better the idea, may not be a law of Nature, yet it
is a pretty sound rule, and one with few exceptions. If we persevere and
laugh, the caterpillar tractor will win the peace, and to paraphrase the
words of George Stephenson, I will, in my turn, make a prophecy:
“Now lads, I venture to tell you that I think you will live to see the
day when tracked vehicles will supersede almost all other methods of
conveyance in roadless countries; when armies will be moved across
country and roadless traction will become the chief means of commercial
movement in all undeveloped lands. The time is coming when it will be
cheaper for a farmer or soldier to use a tracked machine than to travel
by rail.”
As it took Mahomet three years to collect thirteen followers, I shall
not be downcast if I collect no greater a number out of the readers of
this book, because perseverance was the motto of Mahomet as well as of
Stephenson, and as perseverance won them their battles, may it win me
mine.
Many will consider my prophecy ridiculous, and a multitude of Henry
Herberts will foam at the mouth. Protean ignorance is against me—a
resilient Everest of oiled rubber. A hundred years ago it was
boisterously hostile to novelty, to-day it is somnolently apathetic,
and, in this latter mood, it is almost more overpowering than in the
former. Nevertheless, let us smile, let us take off our coats and climb
this glutinous mountain, for the Elysian fields lie beyond.
A few years ago we were told that, once the war was won, this little
island of ours was going to be fit for heroes to live in, as if any
country ever had been or could be an Eldorado after a great war! To-day,
we have well over a million unemployed men and women in this country,
and I have no doubt there are many heroes and heroines amongst them;
certainly the conditions demand an heroic race to win through.
Our present difficulties all boil down to one recognizable sediment.
Great Britain is over-populated. Before the war we were over-populated,
and to-day we are still more so, and to-morrow matters are likely to be
worse.[1] There are three solutions to this problem. Either we must stop
breeding, or we must create new home industries and so absorb our
surplus population, or we must transport it to less thickly populated
areas overseas.
Footnote 1:
In 1913, 700,000 emigrated from this country; in 1923, only 463,000
left.
Six hundred and odd politicians in Westminster, some in black ties and
others in red, chatter like a wilderness of monkeys, whilst those who
were proclaimed heroes may consider themselves lucky if they are allowed
to stand in the gutter and sell bootlaces; and in this chatter the
problem is drowned, only to bob up again, between each breath.
We are told that the Government’s determination is “not to tolerate
propaganda for birth control in clinics and maternity centres supported
by public funds.” This settles the first solution, at least the
Government does not believe in it. Recently, because the coal mining
industry was unable to pay its way, it is now subsidized, and many new
industries are left unprotected, so the second solution joins the first.
As regards the third solution, very little has been done outside private
effort, because the problem has been tackled from the wrong end.
Attempts are persistently being made to shift the unemployed; who wants
them? In place attempts should be made to shift the employed, but this
question I will examine a little later on.
The point I want the reader, however, to realize is that, as the riddle
of the Gordian knot was _not_ solved by cutting it, so the problem of
over-population will not be solved by the dole. Cutting and doling can
be done by any fool with his coat on, they are too easy; for the problem
which faces us demands that we take our coats off and get to work, in
place of turning our less fortunate fellow citizens into unemployable
vagrants.
THE PROBLEM OF UNEMPLOYMENT
Birth control I rule out of discussion, and though I am of opinion that
it might well be made compulsory amongst politicians, my solution
demands not a restriction, but a vast increase in the birth rate.
The invention of the locomotive and steamship upset all birth rate
calculations.[2] During the last century it has been reckoned that
twenty-eight million people left Europe by sea, four millions during the
first half and twenty-four millions during the second, the period of
railway and steamship development. Out of these twenty-eight million
emigrants, twenty-two millions went to the United States, the population
of which was five and a quarter millions in the year 1800, seventy-six
millions in 1900, and is about one hundred and ten millions to-day, and
quite possibly, before the present century is out, this figure will be
doubled.
Footnote 2:
In 1750, before the industrial revolution set in, the population of
the United Kingdom was 6,517,000.
In the United Kingdom we see, if not so great, as startling an increase,
considering the smallness of the country. In 1801, the population
numbered about sixteen millions, and to-day, excluding Ireland, it
numbers about forty-four millions, which is probably four or five
millions more than the industry of the country can economically support,
as unemployment and the low standard of living, not only now but before
the war, testify to.
Let us remember always what has created the great civilizations of the
past, empires and kingdoms, prosperous lands and great cities. It is
movement and the means of movement. First man placed a bundle on his
wife’s head and gave her a kick, then he tamed the ox and beat it with a
stick, thus civilization became possible. At length, he invented the
wheel and the sail, and, by means of these inventions, mankind crept out
of primeval darkness into the dawn of history. In 1809 Fulton invented
the steamship, and in 1814 George Stephenson built his first locomotive.
It is, as I have already said, these inventions which have created not
only such immense cities as modern London and New York, but which have
shifted millions of men, women and children from one part of the globe
to the other. Why did they shift them, this is the question? Because the
steamship and the railway enabled them to tap sources of wealth which
did not exist in their own countries; for without prospects of wealth
there would be little or no movement.
To-day, we possess an Empire of over fourteen million square miles in
area, of which three-quarters is sparsely inhabited. In Canada we find
nine million two hundred thousand people; in Australia five million
eight hundred thousand; in South Africa eight millions, and in New
Zealand only one million two hundred thousand; yet New Zealand is as big
as the British Isles.
Without considering our immense Colonial possessions, the potential
wealth of the Dominions alone should eventually be sufficient to support
certainly one if not two hundred millions of Englishmen. On the one hand
we have room for at least a hundred millions, and on the other we have a
surplus of some five millions. The redistribution of this surplus should
not prove an insuperable problem, and even if it cost us twenty pounds a
head to arrive at a solution, it would be cheap when compared to
spending forty-six millions a year on doles and poor rates, which, far
from solving the problem of unemployment, only accentuate it.[3]
Footnote 3:
“Schemes to the value of approximately £466,000,000 undertaken in
connection with the relief of unemployment have, or are being assisted
by the Exchequer.”—_Whitaker’s Almanack._
In former times, the danger inherent in immigrations was the hostility
of the tribes in occupation of the new lands—the problem was a military
one. To-day, the difficulty is not military, but financial. To-day, it
is no longer bows and arrows which restrict immigration, but money.
To-day, it is not profitable to tackle a land owner with a rifle, and
nearly all land worth owning is owned; instead the settler must buy the
land, or be sufficiently skilled to dispose of his labour at a profit.
Our present-day unemployed have no money and little skill. To send such
people to the Dominions is no true solution of the unemployment problem,
for it only shifts the unemployed from one place to another, and this
does not solve the problem. In 1914, Germany attempted to gain the
French Colonies, not because she wanted to shift to them the vagrants of
Berlin and Hamburg; but, because the possession of these Colonies would
have enabled thousands of well-to-do Germans, the small capitalists and
skilled workers of the middle classes, to enrich themselves without loss
of nationality. Incidentally, as these people emigrated, room would be
made in Germany for the under-dog. Competition would have decreased with
a decrease in not the unemployed, but in the employed population. Wages
would have increased in proportion and, by degrees, the greater
percentage of the under-dogs, through increased wealth, would have
raised themselves into the middle class as small capitalists.
To-day, there is no necessity for us to covet the territories of other
nations. We possess ten million square miles of sparsely-populated land
in which Englishmen will not be lost to the Empire. To-day, we see this
problem mentioned in every paper, but writers will persist in thinking
in terms of the _unemployed_. It is the _employed_ we must shift, not
only because at home room will thus be made for the unemployed,[4] but
because it is the skilled man or the small capitalist who can thrive in
the Dominions and Colonies and the unemployed normally cannot.
Footnote 4:
It may be considered by some that this will mean that we in England
shall be left with the unworkable dregs of society. Such a view is a
gross libel on the bulk of the unemployed. Before the War, seventy per
cent. of the recruits for the army enlisted because they were
unemployed. During the War these men were universally proclaimed
heroes, and such they were. I can personally testify, after
twenty-seven years of service in the army, that less than five per
cent. of the men in any unit of regular soldiers would make
undesirable citizens if vocational training were fully established.
If, however, men are kept unemployed for years they will eventually
become unemployable.
THE PROBLEM OF POWER
To move we must not only possess the means of movement, but the will to
move; for, without this will, all the means in the world are but scrap
iron and dead timber. The men who first tamed the camel and the horse
must have had ideas in their heads—visions which impelled them to do
what they did. It may have been sympathy for his wife as she carried his
load which induced men to jump on a horse’s back, but much more likely
was it her low carrying power and possibly also to get away from her
restless tongue.
In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, the will to move is stimulated by
material gain. To possess something easily, cheaply, and, if possible,
for nothing, is the urge of both commerce and robbery, twins of Fear and
Greed, forces of vice as well as of virtue, the forces of the growth of
the human world, and forces not to be set aside lightly.
The nomadic hordes surged out of Asia in the search after food. It was
the desire to fill their stomachs which moved them. They trickled over
Europe until they met the sea, and then, as years passed by, they
conquered the ocean and swept into the New World. What will happen when
the Americans begin to swarm, it is difficult to say. Will they once
again set out to pursue the setting sun? Who knows?
So also with the wars of the world, as with these slow but steady human
inundations, it has nearly always been a material goal, however shadowy
in form, which has provided the urge. Security, what is this? The shield
of Prosperity and Liberty—a desert, a river, a range of mountains, or a
feeble neighbour; in one word, a secure frontier to shield a people, so
that they may enjoy the fruits of peace; this has been the urge of war.
Then, from war, which so often is but robbery on a national scale, to
turn to barter, amicable warfare; and from barter to turn to commerce,
amicable war on a national scale, what has been the urge? A gold field,
oil wells, land where corn will grow or cattle will breed; in one word,
the possibilities of wealth, which is the loadstone of movement.
The potential wealth of the Empire is stupendous, and potential wealth
is power asleep, power awaiting to be roused from its slumbers, the
power of coal, of oil, and water, of the air and the sun’s rays, of the
tides and of the atoms themselves. The whole world is a gigantic battery
of power, and our Empire covers a quarter of this world, and all that is
needed is to detonate it, and it can only be detonated by the will of
man.
The Romans conquered by building roads, the modern world, by building
railways. Yet both are but a one-dimensional means of movement, and, in
type, so near related, that even to-day the gauge of our railway lines
is the gauge of the Roman chariots. Suppose now that these roads and
railways could suddenly expand laterally, so that from a few feet broad
they could expand to a few yards in breadth, then to hundreds of yards,
miles, and hundreds of miles, until it is as easy to move over the
surface of the earth as over the surface of the sea. A second dimension
would be given to movement; a new world would be born, since a
stupendous sleeping power would be awakened. Stephenson improved the
chariot. In place of taking three weeks to go from London to Edinburgh
we can now travel there in eight hours. He conquered Time rather than
Space. The storming of the Bastions of Space, this is the problem of the
future, and one of our engines of conquest is the cross-country machine.
PROBLEMS OF MOVEMENT
Economic movement may be divided into five great categories, namely,
movement by air, by water, by rail, by road and by pack. Each may be
divided into two sub-categories. Thus, air movement by transport lighter
and heavier than air; water movement into sea transport and inland water
transport; railway movement into broad and narrow-gauge lines; road
movement into transport by wagon and lorry, and pack movement into human
and animal porterage or carriage.
I do not here intend to examine movement by air and water, and, as
regards the other three categories, I will limit my examination to their
use in undeveloped countries, more particularly within the Empire, and I
will start with the railway.
_The Railway._ The country through which a railway is built may be
divided into three economic areas:—
(i) A belt about eighty miles in width, through the centre of which the
railway runs.
(ii) Two belts, each about twenty miles wide, extending on the flanks of
the central belt.
(iii) The whole of the country concerned, excluding the above three
belts.
Whether the prosperity of the country is based on minerals, cattle, or
cereals, the first belt is normally prosperous, the second two less
prosperous, and the remainder of the country unremunerative. To bring
the whole country up to the prosperity of the first belt demands a
railway every eighty miles.
Obviously, in an undeveloped country, to build railways every eighty
miles is prohibitively costly, but as nearly every nation in the world
is prepared to spend millions of pounds on the construction and
maintenance of railways and rolling stock, and often with little
reference to the law of supply and demand, it is advisable, I think,
briefly to examine the question of cost.
The cost of a railway decreases as the load increases; the load must,
consequently, be sufficient to pay for the capital expenditure entailed
in constructing the line and also its maintenance. The cost of the
Nigerian railways was £11,000 per open mile; the estimated cost of new
construction in the Gold Coast lies between £13,000 and £17,000 per
mile. For railways costing as much as these, and the figures are not
abnormally high, to pay, the country they traverse must not only be
fertile or rich in minerals, but thickly inhabited.
I have already examined the question of population in the Dominions, all
of which are to-day sparsely inhabited, so I will now turn to another
area, namely, British Tropical Africa, a potentially immensely rich
country covering some two and a half million square miles and occupied
by forty million inhabitants. To run railways through this country would
be similar to running railways through Great Britain less its present
elaborate system of roads[5] and with a population numbering about two
and a quarter millions. In such conditions railways would most certainly
not pay, and would only begin to do so when road feeders had been built
and the country had become thickly populated.
Footnote 5:
There are 178,000 miles of road in Great Britain.
_The Road_. As economically the railway is length with little breadth,
in undeveloped countries it can only be looked upon as an artery,
depending for its freight on the roads and tracks which converge on it.
If these roads and tracks be few in number, generally speaking, freights
will be insignificant, and the railway, in place of fostering wealth,
will swallow it up or stifle it. The railway must, therefore, be skirted
by a network of roads.
The cheapest form of road is a rough cart track, and where the country
consists of grass land and the rainfall is low, as in South Africa,
extensive use can be made of bullock wagons for purposes of
transportation. The bullock wagon has reached, however, the zenith of
its evolution, and is by no means suited for countries where grazing is
difficult. If fodder has to be carried in bulk, it at once becomes an
uneconomical means of movement.
If the country to be traversed is unsuited to this means of transport,
we are left with the lorry, and though light box-cars, such as Ford
vans, can use rough tracks and frequently move across country, the load
carried is so small, that, unless it is of a particularly valuable
nature, or distance is short, the cost of carriage becomes prohibitive.
We are left, therefore, with the heavy lorry, varying from three to six
tons burden.
These vehicles obviously demand macadamized roads, which not only are
extremely expensive to build, but in a sparsely inhabited country
prohibitively expensive to maintain. Here in England, we spend yearly
£50,000,000 and more on road repair.[6] In Jamaica, £1,000,000 is spent
on the maintenance of lorry roads. In both countries this means that
each inhabitant has to pay slightly more than £1 a year to meet the road
repair bill. In tropical countries, where torrential rains fall and
vegetation luxuriates, the macadamized road is out of the question, so
also is it in desert land where the sand is apt to silt over the
roadways.
Footnote 6:
In 1914–1915 the maintenance of roads cost £19,000,000, in 1921–1922
this sum had risen to £45,500,000.
If the road will not suit the vehicle, the vehicle must be made to suit
the road. Here again the difficulty is economically almost insuperable.
Balloon tyres, the use of light trailers and of multi-wheel vehicles
will partially overcome the difficulty; but rubber rapidly deteriorates
in tropical countries, and though a vehicle, such as the Renault six
twin-wheel car, has carried out some wonderful performances in the
Sahara and elsewhere, the maintenance of twelve balloon tyres
practically rules it out of court in most undeveloped countries.
If the bullock wagon is restricted to certain areas, and if the lorry
demands a road which is prohibitively expensive, the only remaining
sources of transport which can feed the railway are the pack animal and
the human porter.
_The Pack Animal._ In examining this last system of transport, I will
begin with the human pack-animal, the native porter. Not only is this
means of carriage the most primitive of all, which renders it somewhat
of an anachronism in the twentieth century, but it is extravagant in the
extreme. Economically it is unsound, since the human pack-animal stands
in the way of the development of his country. In the first place his
productive work is lost, and in the second, the load carried is so small
as to offer little encouragement to the producer. Last, and by no means
least, unlike the railway, as the amount increases, so does the cost per
ton mile increase with it.
On a large scale the system is impossible, and the substitution of pack
animals for porters is but little less uneconomical, except in
mountainous countries and desert lands, and in the latter, it would seem
that the reign of the camel is approaching its end, since in most places
where a camel can go a car can follow.
TWO-DIMENSIONAL MOVEMENT
The above, I admit, is a very brief summary of an immense and complex
subject, namely, the bridging of the gap which exists between the
producer and the arterial railway, or the producer and his market, if it
be a distant one. Ruling out pack and porter as being too uneconomical
to be used on a large scale, we are left with the wagon, the lorry and
the light railway. All these three means can cover great distances, but
they do not solve the problem, because the solution does not only lie in
power to traverse distance, but in ability to cover the largest area in
the shortest time.
The difficulty so far has been that the wheel demands a road and
destroys a road, and that, whilst it is easy, though frequently very
costly, to make a road which will suit a wheel, it is most difficult to
make a wheel which will not damage a road; for failing a cheap and
simple form of Pedrail wheel, a system of multi-wheels has to be
resorted to, and this system leads directly to the tracked machine,
which not only can dispense with roads, but, what is equally important,
can make its own track, just as the feet of a man form a path by
frequently crossing the same piece of ground.
This is not the place to examine in detail the technicalities of
roadless vehicles; but to-day there are two main types of these
vehicles; an all-tracked machine of the tank type, and a half-tracked
machine which has wheels in front and tracks in rear. The first is more
suitable for heavy loads, and the second for light.
In the manufacture of these vehicles three main problems must be solved:
(1) The vehicle must be able to use roads without damaging them; nor
must it damage the surface of the ground it travels over.
(2) It must be able to move across country without damaging itself.
(3) The cost per ton-mile must be equal or lower than that of existing
vehicles.
It may seem a paradox to lay down that the first requirement of a
roadless vehicle is that it can negotiate roads, but, in fact, it is not
so; for it stands to reason that, when prepared tracks do exist, it is
only wasting time and energy to travel across country. Further, if the
tracks of the vehicle are so constructed that they do not damage roads,
they will not damage the surface of the ground, and, consequently, by
continually travelling over the same ground, they will compact and
consolidate its surface and rapidly form a road of their own which will
require no metalling. This advantage is one of the great secrets of its
success.
As movement across country entails traversing rough ground, the tracks
of a roadless vehicle must permit of the absorption of obstacles. This
absorption is attained by springing the tracks. In an unsprung machine,
obstacles are either crushed into the ground or the vehicle has to lift
itself over them. In both cases the result is injury to the machine, and
loss of power and discomfort.
It stands to reason that the vehicle must be durable, simple and easy to
maintain; also that the ton-mile cost must be low. As regards this
latter requirement, experimental machines have so far proved that this
is a possibility. A one-ton roadless Guy Lorry recently travelled from
London to Aldershot, and its ton mileage was fifty-two to the gallon. It
has also been worked out that the cost per ton-mile of the Sentinel
tractor, “including overhead charges, depreciation, interest on capital
and all running charges, and allowing for a 20-tons net load for a
reasonable number of working days in the year,” will be slightly under
twopence per ton-mile.
[Illustration:
SENTINEL TRACTOR
[_Face p. 80_
]
In the future, the types of roadless vehicles are likely to be great as
the surface of the ground differs in various countries; also fuels of
all kinds are likely to be burnt, such as petrol, oil and coal, and in
tropical countries, where these fuels are scarce or expensive, producer
gas is almost certain to become the main motive power.
The most remarkable achievement as yet carried out by roadless vehicles
is undoubtedly the crossing of the Sahara from Touggourt to Timbuctoo,
during the winter of 1922–1923, by Citroën motorcars fitted with half
tracks invented by Monsieur Kegresse. The distance travelled was three
thousand six hundred kilometres, and the time taken was twenty days,
that is on an average one hundred and twelve miles a day. All machines
returned safely, and the total journey there and back was over seven
thousand kilometres.
The nature of the country crossed was by no means uniform, for it was
sandy, rocky, mountainous and, in the neighbourhood of the river Niger,
covered with tropical vegetation. To build a railway from Touggourt to
Timbuctoo would cost, at the lowest reckoning, a thousand millions of
francs—possibly much more; this alone accentuates the importance of the
achievement and its interest to us, for the Empire contains thousands of
square miles of roadless country.
I fully realize that, though the roadless vehicle can replace the
motor-car, it cannot replace the railway, if the railway is an efficient
one. This is, however, not the problem. The problem is, first to bridge
the gap between the producer and the railway, and secondly to create in
undeveloped countries sufficient wealth to enable more railways to be
built. Co-operation with existing railways, this is what must be aimed
at.
[Illustration:
CROSSLEY-KEGRESSE CAR
[_Face p. 82_
]
For purposes of illustration, I will take British East Africa as an
example. A railway runs from Mombasa via Nairobi to the Great Lakes.
Forty miles on each side of this railway, generally speaking, is
commercially remunerative. This is the first belt I mentioned above, the
second two belts are productively a gamble for any but capitalist
pioneers, and the remainder of the country is but the playground of rich
colonists who can afford to speculate on likely railway extensions in
the future, or else of simple fools.
I will now suppose that a reliable roadless vehicle exists which can
transport across country five or ten tons of produce. What do we see? We
see the first belt extending from forty miles on each side of the
railway to a hundred miles, and the second two belts being pushed out,
in vastly improved circumstances, fifty to a hundred miles on each side
of the new central belt. In fact, we have more than doubled the central
belt and trebled the belts adjoining it, and, in doing so, have more
than doubled the commercial prosperity of the country.
What now is our next step in the evolution of economic movement? It is,
out of the wealth resulting, to extend from our main Mombasa-Nairobi
railway, metre gauge lines in herringbone fashion up to the confines of
the new central belt, and at the termini of these to build receiving
depôts. In place of metre gauge lines, huge roadless machines, carrying
and hauling from a hundred tons upwards, will in the end, I think, prove
more economical. Once these depôts have been established, the smaller
machines belonging to the farms and stations can bring produce to them
and dump it. Thus, by degrees, will the central railway be fed by a
prosperous area some four to five hundred miles in width.
[Illustration:
MORRIS ONE-TON LORRY
[_Face p. 84_
]
To take another example. A transportation problem which faces every
farmer is that of rapid door-to-door delivery. To-day, especially in
such countries as Canada, what do we see? We see chain-tracked machines
used for agricultural work, but we seldom see movement of the produce
grown carried out save by horse-drawn vehicles, which can negotiate
cultivated land if it be fairly dry.[7] Two horses cannot pull much more
than a ton over a heavy field to the farm itself. At the farm, which may
be fifty miles from a railway, the produce has either to be transported
by cart to the station, which may take three days and two to return, or
loaded into a lorry which, unless the roads are good, will take one day
each way. The loss of time is considerable, and the roadless vehicle
would appear to be the only practical solution. It can be loaded at the
extremity of a field in any weather and condition of ground, and moved
direct to the railway either by road or across country at a normal lorry
speed, and carrying from three to ten tons according to size. Delivery
is from door to door, and the only limitation as to load would appear to
be the factor of safety of the bridges which may have to be crossed.
Footnote 7:
In Canada, snow offers a serious difficulty to movement by wagon or
car during the winter months; there should be no great difficulty in
producing a roadless vehicle which will cross snow almost as easily as
grass land.
In waterless, as well as roadless areas, such as exist in Australia,
wagons and lorries are frequently useless, and the roadless vehicle is
again the solution, for it does not require a road to move along, or a
well at which to seek refreshment. It carries its own roadway and its
own water supply, and, if necessary, water for man and beast in
districts where water is scarce.
In mining countries, such as Chili and South Africa, and in
oil-producing countries, such as Mexico and Persia, the need for a
weight-carrying, roadless vehicle is much felt, and in these countries,
where again roads are few and bad, and water frequently scarcer, it
would prove as useful as in agricultural lands.
[Illustration:
VULCAN TWO-TON LORRY
[_Face p. 86_
]
THE ELYSIAN FIELDS
To conquer the Elysian Fields we must establish new industries at home,
we must move our surplus population to the lands which are
underpopulated, and we must be prepared to secure our Empire against
foreign aggression. All these problems can the roadless vehicle help us
to solve.
First, the vehicle itself is a new type of machine which will demand an
industry of its own. Twenty-five years ago, as many of us remember, it
was a rarity to see a motor-car; yet there were men who, even then,
could see them in legions, and one of these men was Mr. (now Earl)
Balfour. “In the House of Commons on Thursday, May 17, 1900, Mr. Balfour
said he sometimes dreamed—perhaps it was only a dream—that in addition
to railways and tramways, we might see great highways constructed for
rapid motor traffic, and confined to motor traffic, which would have the
immense advantage, if it could be practicable, of taking the workman
from door to door, which no tramcar and no railway could do. Is it
possible for Mr. Balfour’s dream to be realized?”—_Pall Mall Gazette._
To-day, this question is apt to make us smile, seeing that the motor-car
industry is one of the largest and richest in the world; that in 1924
there were half a million cars in this country and nearly fourteen
millions in the United States,[8] and that hundreds of millions of
pounds have been spent on motor roads.
Footnote 8:
In 1924 there was one car to every eight people in the U.S.A., and one
to every seventy-four in Great Britain.
Surely then, if I be right as regards the powers of the roadless
vehicle, its future should be as great as that of the motor-car,
possibly greater, seeing that most of the world is still in a roadless
condition. Surely, here is employment for many men, and a source of
wealth which can only be guessed at in thousands of millions of pounds.
[Illustration:
GUY TWO-AND-A-HALF-TON LORRY
[_Face p. 88_
]
And this machine will not only create industrial wealth, but
agricultural prosperity, for it will enable the farmer to settle in
lands which to-day are but wilderness and waste. The old means will
continue, but will be pushed more and more into the beyond. The porter
will bring in his small load and so will the pack animal. These loads
will be collected and loaded on small roadless machines which will
convey them to the depôts from which the giant machines work backward
and forward to the railway, which will carry its hundreds of thousands
of tons down to the sea. We shall see less porters, less pack animals
and less wagons, but more railways and more ships, and these demand men
to work them. The waste lands will become fertile; townships will spring
up; industries will be created, and the energy of millions of men and
women will be profitably expended.
Now follows a curious sequent. If, commercially, we want to expand the
Empire, strategically we want to contract it. Our object is not to
maintain an immense army to pursue a course of foreign wars, but to
maintain law and order throughout the Empire and safeguard its
existence. The fewer men we employ the less will the army cost, and, be
it remembered, military expenditure during peace time is unremunerative.
To contract the Empire is not to abandon large tracts of country, this
is to cut the Gordian knot in place of unravelling it; but, instead, to
move over it quicker than we can to-day. What we want to contract is
time and not space, the time taken in moving over ground and
particularly over roadless country. The roadless vehicle will help us to
solve this problem. A battalion may march a hundred miles in a week, but
if carried in roadless vehicles this distance can be multiplied by
seven; and what is even more important, for long periods a line of
communication can be dispensed with, because the battalion can carry
supplies with it for several weeks.
[Illustration:
DAIMLER THREE-TON LORRY
[_Face p. 90_
]
The main strategical importance of the roadless vehicle lies, however,
in the fact that it will, by degrees, fill the Dominions and Colonies
with virile men. Australia with a population of twenty-five millions has
little to fear from Asiatic races; with fifty millions—nothing. All
these changes and many others will be discovered in an Empire recreated
by a little iron, a little thought, and much perseverance.
THE WINGS OF PEGASUS
The wings of Pegasus are the wings of imagination—that telescope of the
mind which magnifies the glimpses of the future; and, once we have
focussed these glimpses, we must bring them down to earth, and chart out
their anatomy, so that we and others can set to work.
Rudyard Kipling mounted Pegasus when he said: “When a nation is lost,
the underlying cause of the collapse is always that she cannot handle
her transport. Everything in life, from marriage to manslaughter, turns
on the speed and cost at which men, things and thoughts can be shifted
from one place to another. If you can tie up a nation’s transport, you
can take her off your books.”
Shifting of thought, this is our first need, for the Great War destroyed
an epoch, yet we still hark back to this epoch. A new world requires new
ideas, and in the first half of this little book I have shown how ideas,
a hundred years ago, were throttled by the protean stupidity and
ignorance of man. To-day, these vices continue, but in their senile
forms of apathy and indolence. Every government is faced by trade
depression, unemployment and the cost of security, yet each in turn,
whether Liberal, Conservative or Labour, turns from these problems and
deflates itself on some patent shibboleth—protection, free trade,
capital levy, etc., etc., until it is pushed out of office by a blind,
but aggravated country.
[Illustration:
F.W.D. THREE-TON LORRY AND TRAILER
(Six tons useful load)
[_Face p. 92_
]
The crucial problem to-day is movement in all its forms. If to-morrow
you can move twice the speed you can to-day, you will have twice the
time at your disposal to work in. It is not gold standards and other
such humbug which produce wealth, it is work; and if, to-morrow, you
have twice as much time to work in as you have to-day, your existing
wealth will be doubled.
This is the problem which George Stephenson saw quite clearly, and
solved within the limits of the conditions he worked in. He gave the
world a one-dimensional movement of a superiority never dreamt of before
his day, and this superiority recreated the civilized world. To-day, we
can expand this movement to cover two dimensions and recreate the world
again. One day it will be done, because the world is a roadless planet,
but for us, as an Empire, it may be done too late. No government minds
spending millions of pounds on some pet hobby—doles, pensions, cruisers,
naval bases, worn-out coal pits, etc., etc., but no government so far
has spent sixpence on roadless vehicles. A hundred thousand pounds or so
judiciously expended on research and experiment might well result in the
production of half a dozen efficient types of cross-country machines.
Has no government the intelligence to understand this, or the
imagination to see what it may lead to?
Pegasus without his wings is a very ordinary animal; with them—most
extraordinary, for he flew to Olympus, a land fit for heroes to live in,
and not one in which no one but a hero can survive. Why not follow his
example, why not look around us and discover the pivot of our
difficulties, and then, why not from the mountain top of reason gaze
into the future and conjure up the images of things to be? Then, let us
descend into those tumultuous and dismal valleys below, and to Laughter
and Perseverance add Wisdom. With this trinity to lighten our way,
surely will our way grow straight and broad, and the clouds which are
gathering around us, disperse; and surely then shall we discover those
Fortunate Islands which to-day we are so blindly seeking.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_Each, pott 8vo, 2/6 net_ _Occasionally illustrated_
TO-DAY AND
TO-MORROW
This series of books, by some of the most distinguished English
thinkers, scientists, philosophers, doctors, critics, and artists, was
at once recognized as a noteworthy event. Written from various points of
view, one book frequently opposing the argument of another, they provide
the reader with a stimulating survey of the most modern thought in many
departments of life. Several volumes are devoted to the future trend of
Civilization, conceived as a whole; while others deal with particular
provinces, and cover the future of Woman, War, Population, Clothes,
Wireless, Morals, Drama, Poetry, Art, Sex, Law, etc.
It is interesting to see in these neat little volumes, issued at a low
price, the revival of a form of literature, the Pamphlet, which has been
in disuse for 200 years.
_Published by_
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO., LTD.
Broadway House: 68–74 Carter Lane, London, E.C.4
_VOLUMES READY_
=Daedalus=, or Science and the Future. By J. B. S. HALDANE, Reader in
Biochemistry, University of Cambridge. _Sixth impression._
“A fascinating and daring little book.”—_Westminster Gazette._ “The
essay is brilliant, sparkling with wit and bristling with
challenges.”—_British Medical Journal._
“Predicts the most startling changes.”—_Morning Post._
=Callinicus=, a Defence of Chemical Warfare. By J. B. S. HALDANE.
_Second impression._
“Mr. Haldane’s brilliant study.”—_Times Leading Article._ “A book to
be read by every intelligent adult.”—_Spectator._ “This brilliant
little monograph.”—_Daily News._
=Icarus=, or the Future of Science. By BERTRAND RUSSELL, F.R.S.
_Fourth impression._
“Utter pessimism.”—_Observer._ “Mr. Russell refuses to believe that
the progress of Science must be a boon to mankind.”—_Morning Post._
“A stimulating book, that leaves one not at all discouraged.”—_Daily
Herald._
=What I Believe.= By BERTRAND RUSSELL, F.R.S. _Second impression._
“One of the most brilliant and thought-stimulating little books I
have read—a better book even than _Icarus_.”—_Nation._ “Simply and
brilliantly written.”—_Nature._ “In stabbing sentences he punctures
the bubble of cruelty, envy, narrowness, and ill-will which those in
authority call their morals.”—_New Leader._
=Tantalus=, or the Future of Man. By F. C. S. SCHILLER, D.Sc., Fellow
of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. _Second impression._
“They are all (_Daedalus_, _Icarus_, and _Tantalus_) brilliantly
clever, and they supplement or correct one another.”—_Dean Inge_, in
_Morning Post_. “Immensely valuable and infinitely readable.”—_Daily
News._ “The book of the week.”—_Spectator._
=Cassandra=, or the Future of the British Empire. By F. C. S.
SCHILLER, D.Sc.
Just published. The book questions the power of the British Empire
to-day. Naval supremacy has been abandoned, the labour situation at
home is critical, England is entangled in European affairs, and
(consequently) the Dominions have more sympathy with the American
rather than the British view-point. The probable outcome of this
situation is indicated.
=Quo Vadimus?= Glimpses of the Future. By E. E. FOURNIER D’ALBE,
D.Sc., author of “Selenium, the Moon Element,” etc.
“A wonderful vision of the future. A book that will be talked
about.”—_Daily Graphic._ “A remarkable contribution to a remarkable
series.”—_Manchester Dispatch._ “Interesting and singularly
plausible.”—_Daily Telegraph._
=Hephaestus=, the Soul of the Machine. By E. E. FOURNIER D’ALBE, D.Sc.
“A worthy contribution to this interesting series. A delightful and
thought-provoking essay.”—_Birmingham Post._ “There is a special
pleasure in meeting with a book like _Hephaestus_. The author has
the merit of really understanding what he is talking
about.”—_Engineering._
=Lysistrata=, or Woman’s Future and Future Woman. By ANTHONY M.
LUDOVICI, author of “A Defence of Aristocracy”, etc.
“A stimulating book. Volumes would be needed to deal, in the
fullness his work provokes, with all the problems raised.”—_Sunday
Times._ “Pro-feminine, but anti-feministic.”—_Scotsman._ “Full of
brilliant common-sense.”—_Observer._
=Hypatia=, or Woman and Knowledge. By MRS BERTRAND RUSSELL. With a
frontispiece. _Second impression._
An answer to _Lysistrata_. “A passionate vindication of the rights
of women.”—_Manchester Guardian._ “Says a number of things that
sensible women have been wanting publicly said for a long
time.”—_Daily Herald._ “Everyone who cares at all about these things
should read it.”—_Weekly Westminster._
=Thrasymachus=, the Future of Morals. By C. E. M. JOAD, author of
“Common-Sense Ethics,” etc.
“His provocative book.”—_Graphic._ “Written in a style of deliberate
brilliance.”—_Times Literary Supplement._ “As outspoken and
unequivocal a contribution as could well be imagined. Even those
readers who dissent will be forced to recognize the admirable
clarity with which he states his case. A book that will
startle.”—_Daily Chronicle._
=The Passing of the Phantoms=: a Study of Evolutionary Psychology and
Morals. By C. J. PATTEN, Professor of Anatomy, Sheffield University.
With 4 Plates.
“Readers of _Daedalus_, _Icarus_ and _Tantalus_, will be grateful
for an excellent presentation of yet another point of
view.”—_Yorkshire Post._ “This bright and bracing little
book.”—_Literary Guide._ “Interesting and original.”—_Medical
Times._
=The Mongol in our Midst=: a Study of Man and his Three Faces. By F.
G. CROOKSHANK, M.D., F.R.C.P. With 28 Plates. _Second Edition,
revised._
“A brilliant piece of speculative induction.”—_Saturday Review._ “An
extremely interesting and suggestive book, which will reward careful
reading.”—_Sunday Times._ “The pictures carry fearful
conviction.”—_Daily Herald._
=The Conquest of Cancer.= By H. W. S. WRIGHT, M.S., F.R.C.S.
Introduction by F. G. CROOKSHANK, M.D.
“Eminently suitable for general reading. The problem is fairly and
lucidly presented. One merit of Mr. Wright’s plan is that he tells
people what, in his judgment, they can best do, _here and
now_.”—From the _Introduction_.
=Pygmalion=, or the Doctor of the Future. By R. MCNAIR WILSON, M.D.
“Dr Wilson has added a brilliant essay to this series.”—_Times
Literary Supplement._ “This is a very little book, but there is much
wisdom in it.”—_Evening Standard._ “No doctor worth his salt would
venture to say that Dr Wilson was wrong.”—_Daily Herald._
=Prometheus=, or Biology and the Advancement of Man. By H. S.
JENNINGS, Professor of Zoology, Johns Hopkins University.
“This volume is one of the most remarkable that has yet appeared in
this series. Certainly the information it contains will be due to
most educated laymen. It is essentially a discussion of ... heredity
and environment, and it clearly establishes the fact that the
current use of these terms has no scientific justification.”—_Times
Literary Supplement._ “An exceedingly brilliant book.”—_New Leader._
=Narcissus=: an Anatomy of Clothes. By GERALD HEARD. With 19
illustrations.
“A most suggestive book.”—_Nation._ “Irresistible. Reading it is
like a switchback journey. Starting from prehistoric times we rocket
down the ages.”—_Daily News._ “Interesting, provocative, and
entertaining.”—_Queen._
=Thamyris=, or Is There a Future for Poetry? By R. C. TREVELYAN.
“Learned, sensible, and very well-written.”—_Affable Hawk_, in _New
Statesman_. “Very suggestive.”—_J. C. Squire_, in _Observer_. “A
very charming piece of work. I agree with all, or at any rate,
almost all its conclusions.”—_J. St. Loe Strachey_, in _Spectator_.
=Proteus=, or the Future of Intelligence. By VERNON LEE, author of
“Satan the Waster,” etc.
“We should like to follow the author’s suggestions as to the effect
of intelligence on the future of Ethics, Aesthetics, and Manners.
Her book is profoundly stimulating and should be read by
everyone.”—_Outlook._ “A concise, suggestive piece of
work.”—_Saturday Review._
=Timotheus=, the Future of the Theatre. By BONAMY DOBRÉE, author of
“Restoration Drama,” etc.
“A witty, mischievous little book, to be read with delight.”—_Times
Literary Supplement._ “This is a delightfully witty
book.”—_Scotsman._ “In a subtly satirical vein he visualizes various
kinds of theatres in 200 years time. His gay little book makes
delightful reading.”—_Nation._
=Paris=, or the Future of War. By Captain B. H. LIDDELL HART.
A companion volume to _Callinicus_. “A gem of close thinking and
deduction.”—_Observer._ “A noteworthy contribution to a problem of
concern to every citizen in this country.”—_Daily Chronicle._ “There
is some lively thinking about the future of war in Paris, just added
to this set of live-wire pamphlets on big subjects.”—_Manchester
Guardian._
=Wireless Possibilities.= By Professor A. M. LOW. With 4 diagrams.
“As might be expected from an inventor who is always so fresh, he
has many interesting things to say.”—_Evening Standard._ “The mantle
of Blake has fallen upon the physicists. To them we look for
visions, and we find them in this book.”—_New Statesman._
=Perseus=: of Dragons. By H. F. SCOTT STOKES. With 2 illustrations.
“A diverting little book, chock-full of ideas. Mr. Stokes’
dragon-lore is both quaint and various.”—_Morning Post._ “Very
amusingly written, and a mine of curious knowledge for which the
discerning reader will find many uses.”—_Glasgow Herald._
=Lycurgus=, or the Future of Law. By E. S. P. HAYNES, author of
“Concerning Solicitors,” etc.
“An interesting and concisely written book.”—_Yorkshire Post._ “He
roundly declares that English criminal law is a blend of barbaric
violence, medieval prejudices, and modern fallacies.... A humane and
conscientious investigation.”—_T.P.’s Weekly._ “A thoughtful
book—deserves careful reading.”—_Law Times._
_VOLUMES JUST PUBLISHED._
=Euterpe=, or the Future of Art. By LIONEL R. MCCOLVIN, author of “The
Theory of Book-Selection.”
Shows the considerable influence which commercial and economic
factors exert on all branches of art—literature, painting, music,
architecture, etc. It analyses the various factors responsible for
the present low standard of popular taste and suggests methods for
improvement.
=Atlantis=, or America and the Future. By Colonel J. F. C. FULLER,
author of “The Reformation of War,” etc.
In the turmoil and materialism of the United States the author sees
the beginning of a new civilization which, if it can find its soul,
is likely to exceed in grandeur anything as yet accomplished by the
civilizations of the Old World.
=Midas=, or the United States and the Future. By C. H. BRETHERTON,
author of “The Real Ireland,” etc.
A companion volume to _Atlantis_. Four main sections deal with the
U.S.A. as a Melting Pot, the Future of American Government, the
Future of American Character, and the Intellectual Future of
America. The conclusion deals with Industrial Potentialities.
=Nuntius=, or the Future of Advertising. By GILBERT RUSSELL.
Shows that advertising has become, not merely an economic necessity,
but a real benefit to social life. Examines its present position as
a factor in civilization and outlines its potentialities, not merely
as a commercial, but as a social and political, influence.
=Pegasus=, or Problems of Transport. By Colonel J. F. C. FULLER. With
Plates.
The author, after a brief review of the history of the railway,
shows that roadless vehicles, which in the form of tanks did so much
to win the recent war, in the form of commercial machines, may do as
much to win the present peace, by solving the problem of
over-population and, consequently, of unemployment.
_READY SHORTLY_
=Artifex=, or the Future of Craftsmanship. By JOHN GLOAG, author of
“Time, Taste, and Furniture.”
After a suggestive sketch of the history of craftsmanship, the
author examines the possibilities in the use of machinery to extend
craftsmanship and make beautiful articles of commerce.
=Birth Control and the State=: a Plea and a Forecast. By C. P.
BLACKER, _M.C._, M.A., M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P.
A level-headed examination of the case for and against birth
control, summing up in its favour.
=Sybilla=, or the Future of Prophecy. By C. A. MACE, University of St.
Andrew’s.
An examination of the possibilities of scientific forecasting, with
special reference to certain volumes in this series.
=Gallio=, or the Tyranny of Science. By J. W. N. SULLIVAN, author of
“A History of Mathematics.”
An attack on the values which science is so successfully imposing
upon civilization.
=The Future of the English Language.= By BASIL DE SELINCOURT, author
of “The English Secret,” etc.
An analysis of the present condition of the English language and the
paths along which it is progressing.
=Mercurius=, or the World on Wings. By C. THOMPSON WALKER.
A brilliant picture of the world as it will be when inevitable
developments in aircraft take place.
=Lars Porsena=, or the Future of Swearing. By ROBERT GRAVES, author of
“Country Sentiment,” etc.
An account of the popular decline in swearing, the possibility that
it will regain its lost prestige, and new influences which are
affecting it.
=Plato’s American Republic.= By J. D. WOODRUFF.
A series of witty dialogues in the Platonic manner dealing with
aspects of American life and manners.
=The Future of Architecture.= By CHRISTIAN BARMAN, editor of “The
Architects’ Journal.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
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● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
● Enclosed bold font in =equals=.
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