The War in the Air | Page 3

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THE WAR IN THE AIR by H. G. WELLS

CONTENTS
I. OF PROGRESS AND THE SMALLWAYS FAMILY II. HOW BERT SMALLWAYS
GOT INTO DIFFICULTIES III. THE BALLOON IV. THE GERMAN AIR-FLEET V.
THE BATTLE OF THE NORTH ATLANTIC VI. HOW WAR CAME TO NEW YORK
VII. THE "VATERLAND" IS DISABLED VIII. A WORLD AT WAR IX. ON GOAT
ISLAND X. THE WORLD UNDER THE WAR XI. THE GREAT COLLAPSE THE
EPILOGUE

PREFACE TO REPRINT EDITION
The reader should grasp clearly the date at which this book was written. It was done in
1907: it appeared in various magazines as a serial in 1908 and it was published in the Fall

of that year. At that time the aeroplane was, for most people, merely a rumour and the
"Sausage" held the air. The contemporary reader has all the advantage of ten years'
experience since this story was imagined. He can correct his author at a dozen points and
estimate the value of these warnings by the standard of a decade of realities. The book is
weak on anti-aircraft guns, for example, and still more negligent of submarines. Much, no
doubt, will strike the reader as quaint and limited but upon much the writer may not
unreasonably plume himself. The interpretation of the German spirit must have read as a
caricature in 1908. Was it a caricature? Prince Karl seemed a fantasy then. Reality has
since copied Prince Carl with an astonishing faithfulness. Is it too much to hope that
some democratic "Bert" may not ultimately get even with his Highness? Our author tells
us in this book, as he has told us in others, more especially in The World Set Free, and as
he has been telling us this year in his War and the Future, that if mankind goes on with
war, the smash-up of civilization is inevitable. It is chaos or the United States of the
World for mankind. There is no other choice. Ten years have but added an enormous
conviction to the message of this book. It remains essentially right, a pamphlet story--in
support of the League to Enforce Peace. K.

THE WAR IN THE AIR

CHAPTER I
OF PROGRESS AND THE SMALLWAYS FAMILY
1
"This here Progress," said Mr. Tom Smallways, "it keeps on.
"You'd hardly think it could keep on," said Mr. Tom Smallways.
It was along before the War in the Air began that Mr. Smallways made this remark. He as
sitting on the fence at the end of his garden and surveying the great Bun Hill gas-works
with an eye that neither praised nor blamed. Above the clustering gasometers three
unfamiliar shapes appeared, thin, wallowing bladders that flapped and rolled about, and
grew bigger and bigger and rounder and rounder--balloons in course of inflation for the
South of England Aero Club's Saturday-afternoon ascent.
"They goes up every Saturday," said his neighbour, Mr. Stringer, the milkman. "It's only
yestiday, so to speak, when all London turned out to see a balloon go over, and now
every little place in the country has its weekly-outings--uppings, rather. It's been the
salvation of them gas companies."
"Larst Satiday I got three barrer-loads of gravel off my petaters," said Mr. Tom
Smallways. "Three barrer-loads! What they dropped as ballase. Some of the plants was
broke, and some was buried."

"Ladies, they say, goes up!"
"I suppose we got to call 'em ladies," said Mr Tom Smallways.
"Still, it ain't hardly my idea of a lady--flying about in the air, and throwing gravel at
people. It ain't what I been accustomed to consider ladylike, whether or no."
Mr. Stringer nodded his head approvingly, and for a time they continued to regard the
swelling bulks with expressions that had changed from indifference to disapproval.
Mr. Tom Smallways was a green-grocer