A BOOK OF THE MOMENT

THE METAPHYSIC GF TRANSPORTATION

[COPYRIGHT IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY THE New York Times.]

TRANSPORTATION in its widest sense is so much the thing of the moment that no apology is needed for classing any study of its problems amongst " Books of the Moment." As Mr.

Kipling has 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."

That is not only true but may even be carried a step further. We cannot doubt that the greatness of the Jews was due to their dynamic qualities. As a people they were always on the move. What helped them to acquire this restless, or rather anti-rust, habit was in no small degree the religious obligation imposed upon all Jews to visit Jerusalem at the times of the Great Feasts. This ritual impulse-in favour of movement was further enforced by the persecutions of the Jews and by their instinct for trade. In their journeys to and from Mount Zion and in their sojourns there, the Jews, men, women and children, rubbed not only shoulders but ideas, and were awakened to influences far greater than those apparent to mere sedentary peasants. Movement and practical studies in the metaphysic of transportation made the small hill tribe one of the chief moral and intellectual forces of the world. Wherever men congregated, wherever there was big trade and exchange in thoughts or material things, there also was a group of Jews ready and eager to do business whether of the brain or the heart. Long before the home Jews had dashed their heads against the might, majesty and dominion of Rome, the Jews had dispersed themselves throughout the world and, unknown to themselves, by living among the Gentiles, were making a portion of Israel ready, as it were, to be the advance agents of Christianity. The new religion was at first known as a Jewish religion and in its initial manifestations were immensely helped by the power of transportation belonging to the Jews. In a word, to use our author's happy title, the Jews early learnt how to use Pegasus.

Colonel Fuller may in many ways seem whimsical, fantastic, and almost visionary in his devotion to the purely intellectual

and imaginary side of his subject.. This, however, must not be allowed to hide the practical, timely and very important, reactions of his book.

His main object is to make us understand that we have- got a new world to conquer and occupy through the develop-, ment of roadless vehicles. Up to the present, on land, though not, of course, in .the air or on the water, two things have been required for transportation—the vehicle and the path

along which the vehicle can move. Except for .men on foot and on horses or camels, there was in ordinary circumstances

no movement in places where wheels could not freely. operate. Then came the discovery of the caterpillar system of trans- portation—that employed by the Tanks and similar vehicles— under which you take, as it were, your 'own roadway with you and lay it as you go along. At first this process was heavy and difficult, but improvement in the motor engine

and in the methods of applying the caterpillar system to

the wheels has produced a machine which will now go almost anywhere—except, • of course, through deep water and very deep mud--at quite a good pace. In a word, we have now got vehicles which- do not require roads for their locomotion,

and they arc cheap and• powerful.

It does not require every much. imagination to see how greatly this will affect the development of the wilder parts of the earth and make them serviceable to man. There is plenty of raw material and cultivated material throughout the world -for man's wants, but the difficulty- is to bring them and the man who wants them into physical contact. Mountains,

deserts, and forests intervene, and up till now men have often starved, as they did in the Crimea, because there were no usable roads. Now' we have got a machine which makes every carrier his own roadmaker I No doubt, even for tank vehicles a road makes things quicker and easier. A. road, too, is often a guide as well as a piece of smooth surface ; but the road in itself has ceased to be a sine qua non.

Remember this also : The roadless vehicles as they follow each other across a piece 'of wild, open country tend to make a smooth road. They beat the track down flat and smooth as has often been done by the feet of men, of horses, or of camels, or, as happened in the American prairies, of herds of buffaloes. Napoleon in one of his military incursions into the Alps in winter made a road for his armies to cross the Juliet. Pass by driving many thousands of cattle in front of the troops: So now a brigade of roadless vehicles might soon make a marching track for the army which followed behind.

Here I may interpose a quotation from Colonel Fuller's book to show how the solution of transportation problems provided by the roadless vehicle will work out when applied to the British Empire. He has been discussing war, but continues :— " Then, from war, which so often is but robbery on a national scale, to turn to barter, amicable warfare ; and from barter tot turn to commerce, amicable war on a national scale, what has been- - the urge ? A goldfield, oil wells, land where corn will grow or cattle, will breed ; in one word, the possibilities of wealth, which is the loadstone of movement. The potential wealth of the Empire is stupendous, and potential wealth is power asleep, power awaiting to be roused from its slumbers, the power of coal, of oil, and water, of the air and the sun's rays, of; he tides and of the atoms themselves., The whole world is a gigantic battery of power and our Empire covers a quarter of this world, and all that is needed is to detonate it, and it can only be detonated by the will of man. The Romano conquered by building roads, the modem world by building railway.s Yet both are but a one-dimensional means of movement, and, in type, so near related, that even to-day the gauge of our railway lines is the gauge of the Roman chariots. Suppose now that these roads and railways could suddenly expand laterally, so that from; a few feet broad they could expand to a few yards in breadth, then to hundreds of yards, miles, and hundreds of miles, until it is as easy to move over the surface of the earth as over the surface of the sea. A second dimension would be given to movement ; a new world would be born, sinee a stupendous sleeping power would be. awakened. Stephenson improved the chariot. In place of taking three weeks to go from London to Edinburgh we can now travel there in eight hours. He conquered Time rather than Space. The storm- ing of the Bastions of Space, this is the problem of the future, and one of our engines of conquest is the cross-country machine."

In a word, the cross-country vehicle will make us free of the deserts of Australia, Africa, and South America. Instead of people wringing their hands and saying, " Oh ! If we could only have a railway for five hundred miles inland, what wealth we could tap for the world ! " they will organize a fleet of cross-country vehicles to do the job.

I have not the space, let alone the knowledge, to discuss i n detail the various forms of roadless lorry suggested by the author of Pegasus, but it seems to me that what is most wanted at the moment is something in the nature of a cross-country vehicle race. Why should not one of our great daily news; • papers do what -Lord Northcliffe. did in the matter of air transport and organize, say, on Dartmoor or Exmoor, a cross- country race of vehicles capable of carrying loads from one to ten tons, and also perhaps an event for lighter dispatch and postal vehicles. The problem of the trailer should 'be' obviously considered.

Colonel Fuller ends his very interesting book by declaring that movement in all its forms is the crucial problem of to-day. If you should be able to move to-morrow at twice the speed of to=day, you will have, as he points' out, twice as'intieh time at your'disposal to work in. ' George Stephens-on gave. us One-dimensional -movement of a superiority never dfeaint of before *his day; and this' superiority re-created

the world: ' - - ' -

'l'o-day, we can expand this movement to cover two dimensions and re-create the world again:' One day it will be' done, because the world i9 a roadless planet, but for us, as an-Empire, it may be donee

too late." ,

Taken as a whole, Pegasus must be pronounced to be a game and fascinating steed. What is wanted is not merely proof of practicability—for that, I take it, is already assured--J but the education of ordinary business people into understand- ing that here is a new method of exploiting the resources of the wilder portions of the world. - J. ST.' LOE STRACHEY. -