Chapter VIII: A World at War
1
It was only very slowly that Bert got hold of this idea that the
whole world was at war, that he formed any image at all of the
crowded countries south of these Arctic solitudes stricken with
terror and dismay as these new-born aerial navies swept across
their skies. He was not used to thinking of the world as a
whole, but as a limitless hinterland of happenings beyond the
range of his immediate vision. War in his imagination was
something, a source of news and emotion, that happened in a
restricted area, called the Seat of War. But now the whole
atmosphere was the Seat of War, and every land a cockpit. So
closely had the nations raced along the path of research and
invention, so secret and yet so parallel had been their plans and
acquisitions, that it was within a few hours of the launching of
the first fleet in Franconia that an Asiatic Armada beat its
west-ward way across, high above the marvelling millions in the
plain of the Ganges. But the preparations of the Confederation
of Eastern Asia had been on an altogether more colossal scale
than the German. "With this step," said Tan Ting-siang, "we
overtake and pass the West. We recover the peace of the world
that these barbarians have destroyed."
Their secrecy and swiftness and inventions had far surpassed
those of the Germans, and where the Germans had had a hundred men
at work the Asiatics had ten thousand. There came to their great
aeronautic parks at Chinsi-fu and Tsingyen by the mono-rails that
now laced the whole surface of China a limitless supply of
skilled and able workmen, workmen far above the average European
in industrial efficiency. The news of the German World Surprise
simply quickened their efforts. At the time of the bombardment
of New York it is doubtful if the Germans had three hundred
airships all together in the world; the score of Asiatic fleets
flying east and west and south must have numbered several
thousand. Moreover the Asiatics had a real fighting
flying-machine, the Niais as they were called, a light but quite
efficient weapon, infinitely superior to the German
drachenflieger. Like that, it was a one-man machine, but it was
built very lightly of steel and cane and chemical silk, with a
transverse engine, and a flapping sidewing. The aeronaut carried
a gun firing explosive bullets loaded with oxygen, and in
addition, and true to the best tradition of Japan, a sword. Mostly they were Japanese, and it is characteristic that from the first it was contemplated that the aeronaut should be a swordsman. The wings of these flyers had bat-like hooks forward, by which they were to cling to their antagonist's gas-chambers while boarding him. These light flying-machines were carried with the fleets, and also sent overland or by sea to the front with the men. They were capable of flights of from two to five hundred miles according to the wind.