PEGASUSPROBLEMS OF TRANSPORTATION
PEGASUSPROBLEMS OF TRANSPORTATION
PEGASUSPROBLEMS OF TRANSPORTATION
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 assome 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.