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.
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_Each, pott 8vo, 2/6 net_ _Occasionally illustrated_