THE WAR IN THE AIR By H. G. Wells CONTENTS I. OF PROGRESS AND THE SMALLWAYS FAMILY II. HOW BERT SMALLWAYS GOT INTO DIFFICULTIES III. THE BALLOON IV. THE GERMAN AIR-FLEET V. THE BATTLE OF THE NORTH ATLANTIC VI. HOW WAR CAME TO NEW YORK VII. THE “VATERLAND” IS DISABLED VIII. A WORLD AT WAR IX. ON GOAT ISLAND X. THE WORLD UNDER THE WAR XI. THE GREAT COLLAPSE THE EPILOGUE PREFACE TO REPRINT EDITION The reader should grasp clearly the date at which this book was written. It was done in 1907: it appeared in various magazines as a serial in 1908 and it was published in the Fall of that year. At that time the aeroplane was, for most people, merely a rumour and the “Sausage” held the air. The contemporary reader has all the advantage of ten years' experience since this story was imagined. He can correct his author at a dozen points and estimate the value of these warnings by the standard of a decade of realities. The book is weak on anti-aircraft guns, for example, and still more negligent of submarines. Much, no doubt, will strike the reader as quaint and limited but upon much the writer may not unreasonably plume himself. The interpretation of the German spirit must have read as a caricature in 1908. Was it a caricature? Prince Karl seemed a fantasy then. Reality has since copied Prince Carl with an astonishing faithfulness. Is it too much to hope that some democratic “Bert” may not ultimately get even with his Highness? Our author tells us in this book, as he has told us in others, more especially in The World Set Free, and as he has been telling us this year in his War and the Future, that if mankind goes on with war, the smash-up of civilization is inevitable. It is chaos or the United States of the World for mankind. There is no other choice. Ten years have but added an enormous conviction to the message of this book. It remains essentially right, a pamphlet story--in support of the League to Enforce Peace. K. THE WAR IN THE AIR CHAPTER I. OF PROGRESS AND THE SMALLWAYS FAMILY 1 “This here Progress,” said Mr. Tom Smallways, “it keeps on.” “You'd hardly think it could keep on,” said Mr. Tom Smallways. It was long before the War in the Air began that Mr. Smallways made this remark. He was sitting on the fence at the end of his garden and surveying the great Bun Hill gas-works with an eye that neither praised nor blamed. Above the clustering gasometers three unfamiliar shapes appeared, thin, wallowing bladders that flapped and rolled about, and grew bigger and bigger and rounder and rounder--balloons in course of inflation for the South of England Aero Club's Saturday-afternoon ascent.