An Englishman Looks at the World | Page 3

His schools are places for
vigorous education instead of genteel athleticism, and his home has
books in it, and thought and conversation. Our homes and schools are
relatively dull and uninspiring; there is no intellectual guide or stir in
them; and to that we owe this new generation of nicely behaved,
unenterprising sons, who play golf and dominate the tailoring of the
world, while Brazilians, Frenchmen, Americans and Germans fly.
That we are hopelessly behindhand in aeronautics is not a fact by itself.
It is merely an indication that we are behindhand in our mechanical
knowledge and invention M. Blériot's aeroplane points also to the fleet.
The struggle for naval supremacy is not merely a struggle in
shipbuilding and expenditure. Much more is it a struggle in knowledge
and invention. It is not the Power that has the most ships or the biggest
ships that is going to win in a naval conflict. It is the Power that thinks
quickest of what to do, is most resourceful and inventive. Eighty
Dreadnoughts manned by dull men are only eighty targets for a quicker
adversary. Well, is there any reason to suppose that our Navy is going
to keep above the general national level in these things? Is the Navy
_bright_?
The arrival of M. Blériot suggests most horribly to me how far behind
we must be in all matters of ingenuity, device, and mechanical
contrivance. I am reminded again of the days during the Boer war,
when one realised that it had never occurred to our happy-go-lucky
Army that it was possible to make a military use of barbed wire or
construct a trench to defy shrapnel. Suppose in the North Sea we got a

surprise like that, and fished out a parboiled, half-drowned admiral
explaining what a confoundedly slim, unexpected, almost
ungentlemanly thing the enemy had done to him.
Very probably the Navy is the exception to the British system; its
officers are rescued from the dull homes and dull schools of their class
while still of tender years, and shaped after a fashion of their own. But
M. Blériot reminds us that we may no longer shelter and degenerate
behind these blue backs. And the keenest men at sea are none the worse
for having keen men on land behind them.
Are we an awakening people?
It is the vital riddle of our time. I look out upon the windy Channel and
think of all those millions just over there, who seem to get busier and
keener every hour. I could imagine the day of reckoning coming like a
swarm of birds.
Here the air is full of the clamour of rich and prosperous people invited
to pay taxes, and beyond measure bitter. They are going to live abroad,
cut their charities, dismiss old servants, and do all sorts of silly,
vindictive things. We seem to be doing feeble next-to-nothings in the
endowment of research. Not one in twenty of the boys of the middle
and upper classes learns German or gets more than a misleading
smattering of physical science. Most of them never learn to speak
French. Heaven alone knows what they do with their brains! The
British reading and thinking public probably does not number fifty
thousand people all told. It is difficult to see whence the necessary
impetus for a national renascence is to come.... The universities are
poor and spiritless, with no ambition to lead the country. I met a Boy
Scout recently. He was hopeful in his way, but a little inadequate, I
thought, as a basis for confidence in the future of the Empire.
We have still our Derby Day, of course....
Apart from these patriotic solicitudes, M. Blériot has set quite another
train of thought going in my mind. The age of natural democracy is
surely at an end through these machines. There comes a time when men
will be sorted out into those who will have the knowledge, nerve, and
courage to do these splendid, dangerous things, and those who will
prefer the humbler level. I do not think numbers are going to matter so
much in the warfare of the future, and that when organised intelligence
differs from the majority, the majority will have no adequate power of

retort. The common man with a pike, being only sufficiently indignant
and abundant, could chase the eighteenth century gentleman as he
chose, but I fail to see what he can do in the way of mischief to an
elusive chevalier with wings. But that opens too wide a discussion for
me to enter upon now.

MY FIRST FLIGHT
(EASTBOURNE, _August 5, 1912--three years later_.)
Hitherto my only flights have been flights of imagination but this
morning I flew. I spent about ten or fifteen minutes in the air; we went
out to sea,