Future achievements in this new field are of course matters of
speculation. Man has flown across the Alps, the Rocky Mountains, the
English Channel, the Straits of Florida and the Mediterranean Sea. Even
now there is reported a contemplated airship for the crossing of the
Atlantic.
Thus far the chief use of the aeroplane has been for sport and armament.
The leading nations of the world have equipped their armies with flying
machines from which it will be possible at a safe height to spy out the
position of the enemy, carry messages across besieging lines and drop
destructive explosives in the midst of hostile fortifications. What
effect this will have on the future of war can only be conjectured. Some
have predicted that when further perfected it will bring to an end this
era of vast armaments and defenses by making them useless. If it does
this, it may indeed be hailed as the beneficent invention of this new
century, for it will have realized the vision of the poet Tennyson who
crowned with his immortal verse the century that is gone:
"For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;
"Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales;
"Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rained a
ghastly dew
From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue;
"Far along the world-wide whisper of the south wind rushing
warm,
With the standards of the peoples plunging through the
thunder-storm;
"Till the war-drum throbbed no longer, and the battle-flags were
furled
In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world."