out that all industry involved waste. That millions of pounds
had been spent in experiments in evolving the machines we were using
to-day. He also mentioned that he remembered, when in America, that
millions of dollars were spent in attempting to tunnel under the Hudson
River, at New York, and that many failures were met with before the work
was successfully achieved.

He might also have mentioned that all this expense was borne by the
capitalist, and that if the State had had charge of it, the enormous
waste of money in experiments would have caused a public panic.

He pleaded that all great inventions were developed on expensive
experimenting, and the perfect flying machine could only be won in the
same way.

The State flying machine factory was, therefore, given another
opportunity, and the second flying machine was made. On its first test
it failed to rise, so the public objected to the mad enterprise and
refused to support the experiments in unprofitable labor. The factory
was closed, and the workers put at employment that "showed results."

I mention this incident of the flying machine, as the same opposition
was met in other branches of science.

Thus the spirit of invention was suppressed. There was no anxiety to
achieve, no desire for individual excellence. With invention ceasing the
Age of Brain went out--that Age of Brain that brilliant period in the
world's history which only covered one hundred years, yet saw the rise
and development of the most brilliant scientists the world had ever
seen!

Great brains rose in one brief space of a century, and gave the world
railways, steam navigation, electric telegraphs, the telephone, gas and
electric lighting, photography, the phonograph, the X-Ray, spectrum
analysis, anaesthetics, antiseptics, radium, the cinematograph, the
automobile, wireless telegraphy, and the aeroplane; all perfectly new
departures from anything previously devised!

That wonderful Age of Brain passed out, giving place to the Age of
Brawn!

It was the sunset of ambition, and the remarkable events that followed
are all so recent that to give details seems like telling news of
general knowledge.

CHAPTER XXIX.

The Trumpet Blast.

It will be remembered that, at the close of the European War, the allied
nations of Western Europe had requested Canada, India, Australia, and
Africa to open their ports to free admission of German-made goods. Those
colonies at first demurred, but