THE WINGS OF PEGASUS

DAIMLER THREE-TON LORRY[Face p.90

The main strategical importance of the roadless vehicle lies, however, in the fact that it will, by degrees, fill the Dominions and Colonies with virile men. Australia with a population of twenty-five millions has little to fear from Asiatic races; with fifty millions—nothing. All these changes and many others will be discovered in an Empire recreated by a little iron, a little thought, and much perseverance.

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.

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 straightand 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.

Each, pott 8vo, 2/6 netOccasionally illustrated

Back to Index Next