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.