Читать книгу A Year of Prophesying - H.G. Wells - Страница 8

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27.10.1923

IT is probable that the first adequate and successful inauguration of air transport will be in North and South America, but it is in Europe that the needs and possibilities are greatest; and were it not for the short-sightedness and petty competitiveness of the Europeans it is in Europe that flying might first become the usual method of travel for distances of over three hundred miles. Europe is so cut up by channels, sands, bays, Zuyder Zees, Adriatics and Baltic Seas and the like, she has so clumsy and ill-planned a railway network, planned upon national lines to restrict too ready movements across frontiers, that she calls aloud for the aeroplane to soar over these wet obstacles and tangled confusions. But the chief intent and occupation of European administrators nowadays lies in spoiling the efforts of and making life insupportable for other Europeans, and naturally flying presents itself to them chiefly as a provocation to international sabotage. Most of the air services we hear about in Europe are hopelessly inadequate to the needs of civilised people who want to travel conveniently and beautifully. They are uncomfortable, unpunctual, dangerous, ridiculous, and—in view of what might be—pitiful.

It is as absurd to think of an air tour of Western Europe as it would be to think of an automobile tour of the Balkans and Asia Minor. The countries concerned are not sufficiently civilised to allow of such methods of transport.

Occasionally one sees maps in the newspapers showing the most wonderful network of air routes all over Europe: London to Moscow, Manchester to Constantinople, and the like. Any travel bureau will hand the credulous inquirer neat little handbills of air services, showing how he may breakfast in London and dine in Berlin, and so forth. Let the credulous inquirer try these services. He will find a few tired and badly overhauled machines run by companies with entirely insufficient supplies, plying in a mood of hectic uncertainty over some of these routes. On others the only thing he will find soaring will be soaring promises. And he will find very little hope in the future of any better services.

I tried an air tour of Europe this summer. I did not warn any of the new companies concerned that I meant to write about them. I went as an ordinary passenger. Let me tell my experiences very briefly.

I started with a ticket for Berlin from London, and my first flight was to Amsterdam. I started on a perfect day for flying. But as we approached the Channel it became evident that we were not going to cross the water, but that we were swerving round to Lympne. Something had gone wrong. We landed at Lympne. The aviator apologised; he had an oil leakage. Matters were patched up, and we got up again and flew to Amsterdam. There the oil leakage was worse than ever, and we could not have gone much farther. A head-wind or a sudden storm might have got us into serious trouble. We had been flying in a machine that had not been sedulously overhauled, an overworked machine.

Next day I should have flown on to Berlin. When I went to the Amsterdam office to start, I learned that no aeroplane had come from Berlin for two days—though it was admirable flying weather—and the office could not tell me when a machine would be available. Apparently there had been some financial dislocation of the German service. I had to get round to various European towns I wanted to visit by means of the shabby, disheartened railway services of Central Europe. Returning, I did secure tickets for Paris from Prague by the Franco-Rumanian Air Company, which professes to run a swift and regular service from Bucharest to Paris. At the Prague aerodrome there is a vainglorious monument, an obelisk, to commemorate the foundation of this company. That and the office in Prague, where I got my money back, was as much as I saw of the Franco-Rumanian Company. Thanks to certain fortunate chances, which made me independent of private enterprise aeroplane companies, I had had some beautiful flying in Czecho-Slovakia. I made three delightful flights on three separate days, and on two of these days the French machines were not going to Strassburg "on account of the weather."

The real trouble of that particular company, however, was not the weather, but a shortage of machines. The company has no understanding with the German Government, and its route lies over German territory from Czecho-Slovakia to Strassburg. Badly overhauled machines are never safe to get to their destination, and, I was told, eleven Franco-Rumanian aeroplanes, forced to descend on German territory, had been seized by the Germans.

'Planes were coming to Prague from Warsaw and Vienna and depositing passengers there to get through to their destinations as well as they could, but there was nothing going on to Strassburg. I got to Paris from Prague by train via Amsterdam! That is the present route between these two places, and I suppose it will remain so until our great grandchildren, if any, see what is left of the French removed from what is left of the Ruhr Valley.

From Paris I started by an English service for London. We started with an air of tremendous punctuality and efficiency from the Hotel Crillon at three in the afternoon. I reckoned we should be up by 3.30, and that I should dine in London at half-past seven or eight. But we muddled about at the aerodrome of Le Bourget until nearly five, booking luggage, fooling with passports, packing the all too big and clumsy omnibus machine. I sat in a seat with a lot of valises and hat boxes, tied precariously with string, swaying in front of my nose. The saloon had a worn and weary look; it was not nearly so pretty as it is in the advertisement pictures. We made a fairly good flight to the coast except that now and then the engine popped a little. We rose over the water, as usual, to about five thousand feet. Then as we came within distant sight of Dungeness, one engine began to miss badly. I noticed that we were dropping rapidly. However, we escaped a ducking. We crossed the coast-line while still at nearly two thousand feet and landed at Lympne. Apologies. The defective engine, we were told, was in a hopeless condition, and the company must send us passengers on in cars to a rural railway station and so by slow train to London, to arrive at heaven knows what hour. There was no attempt whatever to bring up a reserve aeroplane from Croydon; I presume because the company has no reserve aeroplanes available. I had the good luck to find a friend at Lympne who took me to his house for the night and turned my misfortune into pleasure, but my fellow-passengers were not so fortunate.

Luckily I was not a passenger in the French Goliath which crashed at West Mailing in August last. I have flown successfully on one occasion from Paris to London in a French Goliath, and on another have started from London to Paris and had a forced landing at Lympne. These Goliaths are quite good machines, but they seem to be unlucky ones. That West Mailing disaster was only another such story of "private enterprise" flying as I have told, but carried to the pitch of tragedy. The unfortunate machine must have been in a shocking condition of maladjustment. It had already been down at Lympne for patching, and was going on to Croydon. The radiator of the port engine had been leaking. Then as it went on to Croydon the starboard engine failed completely. But we have always been told, perhaps untruthfully, that even if one engine of these double engine machines fails the other suffices to carry on to a safe landing. The port engine was still going. The aviator declared at first that there was a panic among the passengers, and that is why he crashed in a nut plantation. I doubt about the panic. But at any rate, here again was a machine in use in a condition quite unfit for passenger traffic, so that it needed only a momentary nervous failure to destroy it.

The moral I draw here to-day is to repeat exactly what I maintained upon the British Civil Air Transport Commission in 1918. "Private enterprise" cannot run successful European air services. Moreover, it is impossible to control the air services of Europe on nationalist lines. You cannot have nearly forty sovereign countries each trying to wreck the air service of the other thirty-nine. Europe must be one area for air transport under one control, or there can be nothing but a few ferry services in operation. One comprehensive European air trust, with hundreds and presently thousands of aeroplanes in daily flight and two or three in reserve and under overhaul for every one in the air, would have in the end an enormously profitable organisation. But Europe to-day is as morally incapable of producing such an organisation as Central Africa. These risky trips in dud machines and these flowery prospectuses of defective services are as much organised public flying as this generation is likely to see in Europe.