THE BATTLE OF THE IRON HORSE The Railway Centenary 13 The Protean Problem 17 The X-Ray Transporter 20 Erichthonius, Wheelwright 25 The Philosopher’s Steam 29 George Stephenson, Engine-wright 32 The Nature of the Beast 40 Protean Ignorance 44 THE CONQUEST OF THE ELYSIAN FIELDS The Equation of Power and Movement 48 The Riddle of the Gordian Knot 52 The Problem of Unemployment 59 The Problem of Power 66 Problems of Movement 69 Two-Dimensional Movement 77 The Elysian Fields 87 The Wings of Pegasus 91 PEGASUS PROBLEMS OF TRANSPORTATION INTRODUCTION Whatever man does entails movement, mental or bodily. Movement is, in fact, the mainspring of his evolution and of the civilization which this evolution engenders; consequently, in the economic growth of movement must be sought the direction of all progress, both physical and psychological. As the mind of man moves, so does the world, in which this mind works, move round him, delivering up to his imagination and his hands the mysteries it so sedulously hides. For it is through the conquest of mysteries that man, the mystery of mysteries, strides out of a dark and unknown past towards some unknown future. It would be both logical and easy, I think, to start with the soles of man’s feet and to work upwards to his brain. To show how, from simple walking, man’s natural means of progression, he took to riding, and then thought of the oar, the wheel and the sail, until to-day he rushes over the surface of the earth, surges through the waves and roars through the air, excelling the horse, the fish and the bird. But in so small a book as this it is not my intention to write a history of transportation. In place, I intend to consider two things: first, the reaction against novelty of movement, and secondly, the possibilities of what to-day is still a novel form of movement, namely, the movement of roadless vehicles, that is of vehicles which do not require roads for their locomotion. Also, I intend to show how these vehicles may help us solve several of our most pressing problems, and above all that of over-population at home and under-population in our Dominions and Colonies.