Poetry

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Neptune feels a draught

This whimsical illustration, showing Father Neptune beset by all manner of aerial pests, appeared in Murray F. Sueter's Airmen or Noahs: Fair Play for our Airmen; The Great 'Neon' Air Myth Exposed (London: Isaac Pitman & Sons, 1928), opposite 410. Sueter had been a technically-minded naval officer (torpedoes, airships, armoured cars, tanks and of course the first head of the Royal Naval Aerial Service). After retiring with the rank of rear-admiral (albeit an unemployed one), he won election to the House of Commons (succeeding Noel Permberton Billing, and with his blessing) as an independent, but soon joined the Conservatives.

Airmen or Noahs is, in part, an attack on Neon's attack on the airminded. (Defence was not Sueter's style, just as it wasn't Neon's.) But it's also an attack on the Admiralty, and all those boat-obsessed 'Noahs' who preferred battleships to bombers, for being shortsighted in relation to aviation: hence this drawing, 'Neptune feels a draught'. From page 410:

Father Neptune has raised some sturdy sons, but even he is beginning to see, as he watches the transatlantic flights, that they are not the only pebbles on the beach.

A piece of doggerel (I assume by Sueter himself) accompanies the drawing, pointing to the problems airpower posed for the navy, but also how it could also help control the seas:

Shiver my shiny scales!
These bird-men maketh a draught!
They have stolen my trident!
And broken the barb.
And my Crown and Kingdom are threatened.
Unless I rouse myself
I am undone.

Boat ahoy! Boat ahoy!
Good old Noahs!
Take Aphrodite and mermaids too.
For I intend to fly with Ruth
Around the seven seas,
And thus control my kingdom
With efficiency, speed and ease.

And Ruth? Who is Ruth? The picture gives a clue. To the right of Father Neptune sits an aviatrix on the wing of a sinking aeroplane, waving an American flag. She must be Ruth Elder, who attempted in October 1927 to become the first woman to fly across the Atlantic. Her aeroplane -- the American Girl, which she flew from Florida with her flight instructor, George Haldeman -- suffered engine trouble near the Azores and ditched in the ocean. She and Haldeman were extraordinarily lucky to be rescued by a passing freighter. (See here for a vastly amusing collection of contemporary opinions on her flight.)

That Sueter has Father Neptune say he intends to fly with a woman may be a reference to the suspected identity of Neon (a woman who didn't think much of flying at all). But I'm not sure why he singled out Elder, an American, for this honour. He refers in the text to 'Miss Ruth Elder and Captain Halderman's [sic] very fine effort' (410) as part of a long list of aviation feats which attracted the interest and admiration of thousands and tens of thousands of people, whom he invited to join him in laughing at the 'Earthbound Noahs' (411) like Neon who thought aviation pointless and impractical. But the list also mentions Lady Bailey and Lady Heath, two British aviatrices of the day, so he could have chosen them instead of Elder. Perhaps I'm cynical in suspecting he didn't think them pretty enough, but the attention paid to the likes of Amy Johnson and the New Zealander Jean Batten the following decade does tend to support this line of thought.

Hmm, how did I end up here?

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The new Fortnightly Review (actually a monthly, of course) is out today. Each issue opens with a review of 'Imperial and foreign affairs', which is usually written by J. L. Garvin, editor of the Observer and a figure of great influence in Conservative politics. Assuming that it is he who penned this Review's review, Garvin uses the scareship episode as an excuse to attack the Liberal government. It's part of a long excursion which takes in the recent death of novelist George Meredith (who, although a Liberal, supported conscription); the collapse of Britain's diplomatic position (somewhat at odds with the Foreign Secretary's opinion, it would seem); the deleterious effect of a lack of British military power on its seapower; Lord Robert's recent statement that the Army is 'sham'; and so on. Returning to Meredith, Garvin quotes (1006) his recent poem 'The Call' for its evocation of how weak Britain is without a real Army to defend it:

Under what spell are we debased
By fears for our inviolate isle,
Whose record is of dangers faced
And flung to heel with even smile?

Garvin goes on to show just how debased the British are, when instead of facing the 'real and immense dangers' facing the nation, with a 'silent and settled resolution worthy of a great people',

we bemuse ourselves with irrelevant hysterics about German waiters and phantom airships and secret squadrons hovering about our coasts.

Meredith would have known what to do, to steel the national nerve: introduce compulsory service!

Who can doubt that he was right, and that all the democracies of all the Britains must follow him if they mean to hold the Empire together by their united strength and severally to preserve their national liberties under a common flag.

As an indication of just how much defence issues have come to dominate the national press recently, the first five issues of the Fortnightly this year had at most one article on the topic (excluding Garvin's column). This month there are four: 'Our duty to our neighbour: the defence of France' by Cecil Battine; 'The Admiralty Board and the Army Council' by George T. Lambert; 'Do dreadnoughts only count?' by Navalis; and 'War and shipping' by Benjamin Taylor. Nothing about airships, though, it must be said.

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PHANTOM AIRSHIP. PROBABLE SOLUTION OF THE MYSTERY / Standard, 21 May 1909, 21

After yesterday's excitement, today is something of an anticlimax as far as scareships are concerned. In fact, it's more like a backlash.

There are some new sighting reports, from Wales again and from Birmingham. The Manchester Guardian reports (p. 7) that Oliver L. Jones, a Monmouth auctioneer (of Messrs. Nelmes, Poole, Jackson and Jones), his wife and two passengers were driving from Tregarog late on Sunday night when they saw an airship.

"I can believe my own eyes and ears. It was about eight miles from Monmouth when I first saw it. It came from the direction of Raglan, and seemed to go towards Chepstow. It then turned right round and came back towards Raglan and over the mountain. I continued to drive slowly on, and watched it for about half an hour. I was driving eight or ten miles an hour, but the airship seemed to go faster than that. I could see the cigar shape quite distinctly, and noticed the perfect control the occupants had over the airship."

The other report is sketchy: it seems that 'for several nights people living in Small Heath, a suburb of Birmingham, have seen what is stated to be an airship passing over the district'. Interestingly, it is described as cigar-shaped although no lights were seen. Local opinion is that it belongs to 'a local inventor [...] making trial trips'.
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SWIFT DEVELOPMENTS AT BERCHTESGADEN / PRIME MINISTER RETURNING TO-DAY / CONSULTATION WITH THE CABINET / FURTHER TALKS IN GERMANY NEXT WEEK / LORD RUNCIMAN COMING TO LONDON / The Times, 16 September 1938, p. 12

So after Chamberlain's sudden departure for Germany yesterday comes his equally sudden return to Britain. As the above headlines (from The Times, p. 12) hint, it had been expected that he would be gone for several days in order to talk to Hitler. It's unclear what conclusions, if any, were actually reached, but we do have an account of the tea party Hitler hosted for Chamberlain:

The conversation over the tea table was on non-political lines. Mr. Chamberlain was able to say to Herr Hitler that he had enjoyed very much his first experience of air travel.1

He mentioned that he had been much impressed by the beauty of the scenery, although to-day clouds and mists spoiled the prospect, and his surprise that cars could climb so easily the precipitous road leading from Berchtesgaden to the Berghof.

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  1. It's certainly widely believed that this was Chamberlain's first flight. However, recent authors have claimed that it was only his first international flight, and that he had flown domestically on political or ministerial business. But no actual evidence is offered, and it's hard to think where he would have needed to go that he couldn't have got to just as easily by train. [↩]

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"Slough" by John Betjeman (1937):

Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!
It isn't fit for humans now,
There isn't grass to graze a cow.
Swarm over, Death!

Come, bombs and blow to smithereens
Those air-conditioned, bright canteens,
Tinned fruit, tinned meat, tinned milk, tinned beans,
Tinned minds, tinned breath.

Mess up the mess they call a town-
A house for ninety-seven down
And once a week a half a crown
For twenty years.

And get that man with double chin
Who'll always cheat and always win,
Who washes his repulsive skin
In women's tears:

And smash his desk of polished oak
And smash his hands so used to stroke
And stop his boring dirty joke
And make him yell.

But spare the bald young clerks who add
The profits of the stinking cad;
It's not their fault that they are mad,
They've tasted Hell.

It's not their fault they do not know
The birdsong from the radio,
It's not their fault they often go
To Maidenhead

And talk of sport and makes of cars
In various bogus-Tudor bars
And daren't look up and see the stars
But belch instead.

In labour-saving homes, with care
Their wives frizz out peroxide hair
And dry it in synthetic air
And paint their nails.

Come, friendly bombs and fall on Slough
To get it ready for the plough.
The cabbages are coming now;
The earth exhales.

David Brent's analysis of "Slough":

'Right, I don't think you solve town planning problems by dropping bombs all over the place, so he's embarrassed himself there' -- brilliant.
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[Cross-posted at Revise and Dissent.]

Nanotechnology is now starting to move out of science fiction and into the real world, though currently it's more advanced chemistry than the molecular-scale engineering foretold by K. Eric Drexler more than two decades ago. So no Strossian cornucopia machines yet, no swarms of nanobots swimming in our blood to clean out the cholesterol. But some people are already trying to think through the implications of what might lie over the technological horizon.

The November/December 2007 issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists contains a review, by Mike Tredar of the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology (blog here), of Jürgen Altmann's Military Nanotechnology: Potential Applications and Preventive Arms Control (Routledge, 2006). The 'potential applications' of the book's title are both direct, for example 'specially designed warfare molecules'; and indirect, with the application of nanotech manufacturing techniques to the production of weapon systems of all types.

Thus, he [Altmann] warns, "MNT [molecular nanotechnology] production of nearly unlimited numbers of armaments at little cost would contradict the very idea of quantitative arms control," and would culminate in a technological arms race beyond control.

This is because anyone could -- with access to a nanofactory and the requisite blueprints -- construct vast quantities of very lethal weapons in very little time. Rogue states, terrorist groups, Rotary clubs. Anyone. There would be no way to police this. No hope for the future. Unless ...
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