ion that
vitiated her international outlook profoundly. With the coming of these
new weapons her collective intelligence thrilled with the sense that now
her moment had come. Once again in the history of progress it seemed she
held the decisive weapon. Now she might strike and conquer--before the
others had anything but experiments in the air.

Particularly she must strike America, swiftly, because there, if
anywhere, lay the chance of an aerial rival. It was known that America
possessed a flying-machine of considerable practical value, developed
out of the Wright model; but it was not supposed that the Washington War
Office had made any wholesale attempts to create an aerial navy. It was
necessary to strike before they could do so. France had a fleet of
slow navigables, several dating from 1908, that could make no
possible headway against the new type. They had been built solely for
reconnoitring purposes on the eastern frontier, they were mostly
too small to carry more than a couple of dozen men without arms or
provisions, and not one could do forty miles an hour. Great Britain,
it seemed, in an access of meanness, temporised and wrangled with the
imperial spirited Butteridge and his extraordinary invention. That also
was not in play--and could not be for some months at the earliest.
From Asia there, came no sign. The Germans explained this by saying the
yellow peoples were without invention. No other competitor was worth
considering. "Now or never," said the Germans--"now or never we may
seize the air--as once the British seized the seas! While all the other
powers are still experimenting."

Swift and systematic and secret were their preparations, and their plan
most excellent. So far as their knowledge went, America was the only
dangerous possibility; America, which was also now the leading
trade rival of Germany and one of the chief barriers to her Imperial
expansion. So at once they would strike at America. They would fling a
great force across the Atlantic heavens and bear America down unwarned
and unprepared.

Altogether it was a well-imagined and most hopeful and spirited
enterprise, having regard to the information in the possession of the
German government. The chances of it being a successful surprise were
very great. The airship and the flying-machine were very different
things from ironclads, which take a couple of years to build. Given
hands, given plant, they could be made innumerably in a few weeks.