It is most astonishing as a reminder of the rapid progress of
mechanical science during the past twenty-one years that a journalist
like myself, still young, and almost a babe compared with veterans
of Fleet Street still on active service, should have seen the first
achievements in aviation, the first motor cars plying for hire in the
streets, and the first moving pictures--three inventions that have
changed our human destiny and mentality in an incalculable way, and the
last not least.
It was, I think, in 1900 that I encountered the first motor “taxi”
in Paris, one of those rattle-bone machines which, as far as Paris
is concerned, have not improved enormously since that time. But it
seemed nothing short of a miracle then, and it was not until several
years later than they ousted the dear old hansom of London, which now
survives only as a historical relic.
It is difficult to think back to the time when the klip-klop of horses’
hoofs was the most characteristic noise of London by night, when one
sat in quiet rooms above the street. It had a sound of its own, and a
touch of romance which is missed by the older generation, accustomed
now to the honking of motor horns. The younger generation cannot
imagine life without that trumpeting.
I remember being sent by my paper to describe a night journey in a
motor car as a new and exciting adventure, as it certainly was to me
at that time when I traveled down to the Lands End, and saw, for the
first time, the white glare of headlights on passing milestones and
bewildered cattle, and passed through little sleeping villages where
the noise of our coming was heard as a portent, by people who jumped
out of bed and stared through the window blinds. In those days a man
who owned a car was regarded as a very rich and adventurous fellow,
as well as something of a freak, and he was ridiculed with immense
enjoyment by pedestrians when he was discovered, frequently, lying in
the mud beneath his machine which had hopelessly broken down. Indeed,
many people had a passionate hostility to motorists and motoring, and
a great friend of mine so hated the sight of an automobile that he
used to throw stones after them. He was a rich man, with carriages and
horses, which he vowed he would never abandon for “a filthy, stinking
motor car.” Now he never moves a yard without one. I am the only
consistent enemy of motor cars left in the world. I hate them like
poison.
For professional purposes, however, I have been a great motorist, and
I suppose that during the four and a half years of war I must have
covered sixty thousand miles. I have hired motors in England, France,
Italy, Portugal, Spain, Germany, Austria, Poland, Russia, Turkey, Asia
Minor, and the United States. I have had every sort of accident that
may happen to a motorist this side of death. Wheels have come off and
gone rolling ahead of me down steep hills. Axles have broken beneath
me. I have been dashed into level crossing gates, I have escaped an
express train by something like three inches, and I have had my car
smashed to bits by a collision with a lorry which laid my right arm out
of action for three months.
Yet I was not such a “hoodoo” as a motorist as a delightful friend of
mine named Coldstream. Whenever he sat in a motor car he used to expect
something to happen to it, and it always did. The door handle would
drop off, just as a preliminary warning. Then one of the cylinders
would miss fire, as another sign of impending disaster. Then the back
axle would break, or something would happen to prevent any further
journey. Once, going with him from Arras to Amiens, we put two motor
cars out of action, and then borrowed an ambulance, about ten miles
from Amiens. After the first four miles it broke down hopelessly, and,
finally, we had to walk the rest of the way.
Moving pictures have caused something like a revolution in social life,
and on balance I believe they have been and are an immense boon to
mankind--and womankind, especially in small country towns and villages
which, until that invention, had no form of entertainment beyond an
occasional magic-lantern show, or “penny reading.” They bring romance
and adventure to the farm laborer, the errand boy, the village girl,
and the doctor’s daughter, and despite a lot of foolish stuff shown
on the screen, give a larger outlook on life, and some sense of the
beauty and grace of life, to the great masses. They give them also
a comparison of the present with the past, and of one country with
another. Perhaps in showing the contrast between one class and another,
in extremes of luxury and penury, they are creating a spirit of social
discontent which may have serious consequence--but that remains to be
seen.
I was an actor, for journalistic purposes, in one of the first film
dramas ever produced in England. The first scene was an elopement by
motor car, and the little company of actors and actresses assembled in
the front garden of a large empty mansion in a suburb in the southeast
of London, namely Herne Hill. The heroine and the gentleman who played
the part of her irate father entered the house, and disappeared.
Meanwhile a number of business men of Herne Hill, on their way to
work in the city, as well as various tradesmen and errands boys, were
astonished by the sight of two motor cars, half concealed behind the
bushes in the drive, and by the group of peculiar-looking people,
apparently engaged in some criminal enterprise. They were still more
astonished and alarmed at the following events:
(1) A good-looking youth advanced toward the house from a hiding place
in the bushes, and threw pebbles at a window of the house.
(2) The window opened, and a beautiful girl appeared and wafted kisses
to the boy below. Then disappeared.
(3) The front door opened, and the beautiful girl rushed into the arms
of the boy. After ardent embraces, he came with her to one of the motor
cars, placed her inside, and drove off at a furious pace.
(4) Another window in the house opened, and an elderly gentleman looked
out, waving his arms in obvious indignation, bordering on apoplexy.
(5) Shortly afterward, he rushed out of the front door after the
departing motor car (which had made several false starts), with
clenched fists, and the words, “My God! My God!... My daughter! My
daughter!”
By this time the Herne Hill inhabitants gathered at the gate were
excited and distressed. One gentleman shouted loudly for the police.
Another chivalrously remarked that he was no spoil-sport, and if the
girl wanted to elope, it was none of their business. A fox terrier
belonging to the butcher boy, ran, barking furiously, at the despairing
father, who was still panting down the drive. Then the usual policeman
strolled up and said, “What’s all this ’ere?” Explanation and laughter
followed. Nothing like it had ever been seen before in respectable
Herne Hill, but they had heard of the cinema and its amazing drama. So
this was how it was done! Well, well!
Astonishing things happened in that early film drama, as old as the
hills now, but novel and sensational then. The irate father giving
chase in another powerful motor, (which moved at about ten miles an
hour) was arrested by bogus policemen with red noses, thrown off the
scent by comic tramps, and finally blown up in an explosion of the car,
creating terror in a Surrey village, which thought that anarchists were
loose. After many further incidents the runaway couple were married
in a little old church--I walked in front of the camera as one of the
guests--while two of the actors were posted as spies to give warning
of any approach of the country clergyman. He, dear man, appeared in
the opposite direction, and was horrified to find a wedding going on
without his knowledge, and an unknown parson (who had dressed behind
a hedge) officiating in the most unctuous way. For me it was a day of
unceasing laughter, for there was something enormously ludicrous about
the surprise of the passers-by, who could not guess at what was the
real meaning of the mock drama. Now it is a commonplace, and no one is
surprised when a company of film actors takes possession of the road.
Looking back upon the almost miraculous progress of aviation, it seems
to me, and to many others, that humanity rose very high and fell very
low when it discovered at last the secret of flight. For thousands
of years, perhaps from the days when primitive man stood in a lonely
world and watched the easy grace, the swift and joyous liberty of the
birds above his head, there has been in the soul of man the dream of
that power to fly. Men lost their lives in vain attempts, as far back
as the myth of Icarus, whose waxed wings melted in the sun. Scientists
studied the mechanism of birds, tethered their imagination to rising
kites, sought vainly for the power to lift a heavy body from the earth.
At last it was found in the petrol-driven engine, and men were seen to
rise higher than the clouds, and to travel through the great spaces
of the sky like gods. A pity that this achievement came just in time
for world war, and that the power and beauty of flight was used for
dropping death upon crowded cities and the armies of youth, crouching
in ditches beneath those destroying dragons!
I had no clear vision of that, in spite of the wonderful prophecy of
H. G. Wells, when I watched the first feeble attempts of the early
aviators in England and France. Those first aviation meetings did not
promise mastery of the air except by the eye of faith. For hours, and
sometimes for days, we waited on the edge of flat fields while men like
Graham White, Latham, Blériot, Hamel, and other pioneers whose names,
alas! I have forgotten--there is something terrible and tragic in that
quick forgetfulness of heroic adventure--tinkered with their machines,
stared at the wind gauge, would not risk the light breeze that blew,
or rose a little, after running like lame ducks around the field, and
crashed again like wounded birds. Death took a heavy toll of them.
There was hardly one of those early meetings in which I did not see one
or more fatal accidents.
I was close to the Hon. Charles Rolls, a very gallant and splendid
fellow, when he fell. That was at the meeting in Bournemouth which I
have mentioned before, when the Mayor challenged noonday itself in
an artificial nose, and everybody seemed bewitched by some spell of
midsummer madness. There was a flower carnival in progress and pretty
girls all in white and sprigged muslin, mounted on floral cars, flung
confetti and bouquets at the crowd, who pelted them back. From the
flying field, while this was going on, Charles Rolls rose in his
machine to perform an evolution which had been set as a competition. It
was a death trap at that period of flying, for he had to fly four sides
of a small square, and then alight in the center of it. No breeze was
stirring, or very little, and the sky was cloudless. But rising sharply
to form one side of the square, Rolls’s machine side slipped and fell
like a stone. His body lay there for a moment before the spectators
were conscious of tragedy. Then they rushed toward him.... A few yards
away, the floral cars continued their procession, and the pretty girls
pelted the laughing crowds with blossoms.
That was later than the beginning of flight. The first time I realized
the almost limitless possibilities of heavier-than-air machines was at
Doncaster, when Colonel Cody was among the competitors. The Doncaster
meeting had been a great failure from the public point of view. There
was very little flying, owing to bad weather and elementary aëroplanes.
The aviators sulked in their tents, and the gloomy atmosphere was
deepened by some financial troubles of the organizers, so that the
gate money was seized to liquidate their debts. At least, that was the
rumor, as I remember it. But there was one cheerful man, ever ready
with a friendly word and jest. That was Colonel Cody who, after many
kite-flying experiments, on behalf of the British government, which
had failed to give him any financial aid, was putting the finishing
touches to a homemade biplane, with the help of his son. It was a
monstrous and clumsy affair. It had great struts of bamboo, an enormous
spread of wing space, and a petrol tank weighing half a ton. This
structure, which was tied up with string, and old wire, and bits of
iron, was nicknamed St. Paul’s Cathedral, and Noah’s Ark, and all
kinds of ridiculous names, by correspondents who did not believe in
its powers of flight. But they loved to talk to old Cody, dressed like
“Buffalo Bill” (though he was no relation of the original Colonel Cody
of showman fame), with long hair which he used to wind up under his
hat and fasten with an enormous bodkin with which he also used to pick
his teeth. I laughed loud and long at the first sight of his immense
aëroplane, and refused to credit his childlike assertion that it would
fly like a bird. But one morning early, he enlisted volunteers to haul
it out of its hangar and set its engine going with the noise of seven
devils. “Poor old Cody!” said a friend of mine. “One might as well try
to fly with a railway engine!”
Hardly were the words out of his mouth, than the great thing rose,
and not like a bird, but gracefully and gently as a butterfly, was
wafted above our heads, and flew steadily across the field. We chased
it, shouting and cheering. It seemed to us like a miracle. It was a
miracle--man’s conquest of flight.
Presently, after three minutes, I think, “something happened.” The
great aëroplane staggered back, flagged, and took a nose-dive to earth,
where it lay with its engine dug deep into the soil and a confusion
of twisted wires and broken canvas about it. With two or three other
men--among them a brilliant and well-remembered journalist, Harold
Ashton--I ran forward, breathlessly, and helped to drag Cody from
beneath the wreckage, dazed and bloody, but not badly hurt. His first
words were triumphant: “What did I tell you, boys? It flew like a bird!”
It was patched up again, and flew again, until Cody was killed. He was
truly one of the heroic pioneers, obstinate in faith, heavily in debt,
unhelped by any soul, except that son of his who believed in “the old
dad.” It was he who cured me of scepticism. After seeing his heavy
machine fly around the course, I knew that the game had been won, and
that one day, not one man, but many, might be carried in an aëroplane
on great strong wings.
Edgar Wallace, war correspondent, novelist, poet, and great-hearted
fellow, was at Doncaster with Harold Ashton and others, and I remember
we played poker, which was new to me, after the day’s work. The
landlord of the inn in which we stayed watched the game for a few
minutes, and saw Wallace scoop the pool with a royal flush. The old
man’s eyes fairly bulged in his head. “It’s a great game, that!” he
remarked, and insisted on taking a hand. Wallace had phenomenal luck
with his hands and so raked the landlord’s money out of his pockets
that he fled in dismay. “It’s a devil’s game!” was his final verdict.
However, that has nothing to do with the triumph of flight, except on
the part of the landlord.
Another revelation of progress rapidly achieved happened at Blackpool,
which coincided with the Doncaster meeting. I went on from one to the
other and found the weather at Blackpool frightful, from the point of
view of flying. Rain poured down heavily, and the wind was violent--so
savage, indeed, across the flat fields of the flying ground that it
uprooted the poles of the press tent and made the canvas flap like
clothes hung out to dry on a gusty day. Before this pavilion finally
collapsed in the gale, I used it as a writing place, and remember
sitting there with Bart Kennedy, with our collars tucked up, trying to
keep our paper dry and our tempers cool. Bart Kennedy who, as a young
man, had tramped about the world, not as a literary adventurer but as
a real vagabond of the old style, earning his bread by casual labor,
discovered in later life the gift of words, which he used in a crude,
forceful, ungrammatical, but somewhat biblical, style to describe his
experiences of life in the wild places of the world, and the philosophy
which he had extracted therefrom. He posed as a rebel and a man of
primitive soul in the artificial environment of civilization, and was
adopted by the Harmsworth Press as an amusing freak. Although he was
conscious of his own pose, and played it for all it was worth, it was
based on sincerity. He was truly a rebel and a natural man, with the
honesty, brutality, simplicity, and courage of the backwoodsman. In
that tent at Blackpool, I remember his talking to a carpenter who was
trying to fix the tent poles.
“Say, old friend, have you ever heard of Jack Cade?”
The carpenter scratched his head, thoughtfully.
“Can’t say I remember any lad of that name. He isn’t one of my pals.”
“He was a carpenter like you,” said Bart Kennedy. “Lived five hundred
years ago, and tried to gain liberty for the workingmen of England. An
honest rebel, was Jack Cade. Why don’t you fellows learn the spirit of
revolt? You’re all as tame as sheep, without the pluck of a louse.”
The collapse of the tent interrupted this dialogue, in which “Bart,”
as we called him, endeavored to raise rebellion against the British
Constitution.
There was “half a gale,” as seamen would have called it, with the wind
at sixty miles an hour, and to the amazement of the spectators, who had
given up all hopes of watching a flight that day, an aviator mounted
into the fury of the storm. It was Latham, the most dare-devil of the
early adventurers of flight, the most passionate and ill-tempered
of them. I think it was a kind of rage which made him go up that
afternoon. He was “fed up” with waiting for moderate weather, and with
the little ladies who surrounded him with adulation and rivalry, as
many of those aviators were surrounded by girls who were their hero
worshipers and their harpies. It was the most astounding flight that
had been seen up to that time. Latham’s machine was like a frail craft
in a rough sea. The wind furies shrieked, and tried to tear this thing
to pieces. It staggered and strained, and seemed to be tossed like a
bit of paper in that wild wind. At times the power of the engine seemed
to be exactly equaled by the force of the wind, and it remained aloft,
making no progress but shuddering, as it were, until Latham wrenched it
round and evaded the direct blast. He flew at a terrific speed, with
the wind behind him, rising and dipping with tilted wings, like a sea
gull in a storm. The correspondents on the press stand went a little
mad at the sight and rose and cheered hoarsely, with a sense of fear,
because this man seemed to be courting death. We expected him to crash
at any moment. One voice rose above all the others, and roared out
words which I have never forgotten. “You splendid fool! Come down! Come
down!”
It was Barzini, the Italian correspondent, the most brilliant
descriptive writer in the world. Like an Italian of the Medici family,
with long nose and olive skin and dark liquid eyes, Latham’s heroic
exploit stirred him to a passion of emotion, and tears poured down his
face. His description of that flight was one of the finest things I
have ever read.
One of the most exciting episodes of those early days of record
making was when Graham White competed with Paulhan in a race from
London to Manchester. With Ernest Perris, the news editor of _The
Daily Chronicle_, and Rowan, one of the correspondents, I set out in
a powerful motor car to follow the flight, which began shortly before
dark. Graham White’s plan was to fly by night--the first time such an
exploit had been attempted--and he thought that our headlights might
help as some guide outside London. We lost him almost at once, and
after a wild motor ride at a breakneck pace in the darkness, decided
that we should never see him again. He had probably hit a tree, and was
lying dead in some field. Many other correspondents had motored out,
but we lost them all, and halted at the side of a lonely road where we
heard voices shouting to each other in French.
“Perhaps they are Graham White’s mechanics,” I said to Perris.
This guess proved to be right, and upon inquiry from the men, we found
that Graham White had had engine trouble, and had alighted in some
garden not far from where we stood.
It was a little country village, though I cannot recollect its name
or whereabouts, and after tramping across fields, we saw a house with
lights shining from all its windows. It was the village rectory, remote
from the world and all the excitements of life, until, out of the
darkness, a great bird had dropped into the garden, with the noise of
a dragon. From the wings of the bird a young man, dirty, half-dazed,
freezing cold, and drunk with fatigue, staggered out, banged at the
door, and asked for food and a place to sleep. The clergyman’s wife
and the clergyman’s daughter rose to the occasion, as Englishwomen do
in times of crisis. They dressed themselves, made some coffee, cooked
some boiled eggs, lighted big fires, and unfroze the bird man. He was
already abed, after a plea to be called at the first gleam of dawn,
when we arrived. Presently other motorists arrived, all cold and hungry
and muddy. The country rectory was invaded by these wild-looking people
and the clergyman’s pretty daughter, with shining eyes, served us
all with coffee and eggs, and seemed to enjoy the excitement as the
greatest thing that had happened in her life. I have no recollection
of the clergyman. I dare say the poor man was bewildered by the sudden
tumult in his house of peace, and left everything to his capable wife
and the swift grace of his little daughter.
Before the dawn Graham White was down from his bed, thoroughly
bad-tempered and abominably rude, for which there was ample excuse, as
word was brought that Paulhan was well ahead, although he, too, had
dropped into a field. Perris and I urged him not to fly again before
daybreak, but he told us to go to the devil, and insisted on getting
away in the darkness. We took to the car again, waited until we heard
the roar of Graham White’s engines, and saw him pass overhead like a
great black bat. Then we chased him again, and lost him again. He came
to earth with more engine trouble in a ploughed field not long after
dawn. A little crowd of people gathered round him, and I saw some of
the correspondents who had started from London at the same time as
ourselves--now disheveled, pale, and dirty in the bleak dawn. One young
man, belonging to the old _Morning Leader_, I think, carried a red silk
cushion. His car lay overturned in a ditch, but he still clung to the
cushion, he told me, as his one hold on the actuality of life, which
seemed nothing but a mad dream.
Another historic event was the All-round-England race, which became a
duel between two famous Frenchmen, Vedrennes and Beaumont. The first
named was a rough, brutal, foul-mouthed mechanic, with immense courage
and skill. The second was a naval officer of most charming and gallant
personality. Beaumont came back to Brooklands after his successful and
wonderful flight, only a few minutes ahead of Vedrennes. A great crowd
of men and women, in which there were a number of pretty ladies who had
motored out early from London, had assembled at Brooklands to cheer
the winner, but, as always among English crowds, their sympathy was
excited by the man who had just missed the first prize. When Vedrennes
appeared in sight, there was a rush to meet him. He stepped out of
his machine, and looked fiercely around. When some one told him that
Beaumont had arrived first, he raised both his clenched fists and cried
out a foul and frightful oath--fortunately in French. Then he burst
into tears, and, looking round in a dazed way, asked if there was any
woman who would kiss him. A little Frenchwoman in the crowd stepped
shyly out, and Vedrennes flung his greasy arms about her and kissed
her emotionally. It was characteristic of the French soul that in the
moment of his tragic disappointment he should have sought a woman’s
arms, like a boy who goes to his mother in distress. I have never
forgotten that little episode, and I have seen similar things in time
of war.
It was Alfred Harmsworth and _The Daily Mail_ which put up all the
prizes for these record-making flights, and the man who was afterward
Lord Northcliffe deserved all the honor he gained for his generous and
farseeing encouragement of aviation. It was he who offered a big prize
for a cross-Channel flight, which then sounded almost beyond the bounds
of possibility. Latham was the first favorite for that prize, and was
determined to gain it. His first attempt was a failure, and he fell
into the sea, and was picked up smoking a cigarette as he clung to the
wreckage of his plane. After that, he established himself at the other
side of the Channel, at a little place called Sangatte, near Calais,
and waited for some improvements to his engine, and favorable weather.
Another competitor and pioneer, named Blériot, was tinkering about with
a monoplane on the same strip of coast, but nobody seemed to think much
of his chances.
_The Daily Mail_ had an immense staff of correspondents on both sides
of the Channel, and a wireless installation by which they could signal
to each other. Without any assistance of that kind, I had to keep my
eye on both sides of the Channel, which I crossed almost every day
for about a fortnight. Latham was vague about the possibilities of
his start. He might go any morning at dawn. But morning after morning
passed, and the French destroyers which had been lent by the French
government to patrol the Channel, in case he fell in again, prepared
to steam away. Several correspondents--English and French--used to
spend the night on a Calais tugboat lying off Sangatte, and I joined
them there the night before Latham assured us all that he would go next
day. Something happened at that time to Latham--I think his nerve gave
way temporarily, owing to the strain of waiting and continued engine
trouble. He went about looking depressed and wretched, and he was as
white as a sheet after an interview with the commander of a French
destroyer, who informed him that he could wait no longer.
I crossed over to Dover, deciding that the English side might be the
best place to wait, after all, especially as nobody seemed likely to
cross. That very morning Blériot came over in his aëroplane like a
bird, and there was not a soul to see him come. _The Daily Mail_ staff
were in bed and asleep, and I and other men of other papers were, by
a lucky fluke, first on the scene to greet the man who had done the
worst thing that has ever been done to England--though we did not guess
it at the time. For, by flying across the Channel, he robbed us for
all time of our island security and made that “silver streak,” which
has been our safeguard from foreign foes, no more than a puddle which
might be crossed in a few minutes along the highway of the air. After
Blériot came the bombing Gothas of the German army, and now, without
air defense, we lie open to any enemy as an easy target for his bombs
and poison gas.
It was in the war that I completed my studies of aviation and its
conquest. On mornings of great slaughter, scores of times, hundreds of
times, I saw our boys fly out as heralds of a battle. Day after day,
year after year, I saw that war in the air which became more intense,
which crowded the sky with single combats and great tourneys, as the
numbers of squadrons were increased by the Germans and ourselves. I saw
the enemy’s planes and our own shot down, so that the battlefields were
littered with their wreckage.
In fair weather and foul they went out on reconnaissance, signaled to
the guns, fought each other to the death. The mere mechanical side
of flight had no more secrets, it seemed. The little “stunts” of the
pioneer days, the records of speed and height, were made ridiculous
by the audacities and exploits of aviation in war. Our young men were
masters of the machine, and flight seemed as natural and easy to them
as to the birds who were scared at their swift rush of wings. They flew
through storms of shrapnel, skimmed low above enemy trenches, dropped
flaming death into cities and camps. The enemy was not behindhand in
courage and skill, not less lucky in human target practice, rather
more ruthless in bomb dropping over civilian populations whose women
and babes were killed in their beds. After tax collecting by bombing
aëroplanes in Mesopotamia, we cannot be self-righteous now. The beauty
and the power of flight came very quickly to mankind after Cody went up
in that old homemade ’bus, and crashed after a few moments of ecstasy.
And mankind has used it as a devil’s gift.