action that vitiated her international outlook profoundly. With
the coming of these new weapons her collective intelligence
thrilled with the sense that now her moment had come. Once again
in the history of progress it seemed she held the decisive
weapon. Now she might strike and conquer--before the others had
anything but experiments in the air.

Particularly she must strike America, swiftly, because there, if
anywhere, lay the chance of an aerial rival. It was known that
America possessed a flying-machine of considerable practical
value, developed out of the Wright model; but it was not supposed
that the Washington War Office had made any wholesale attempts to
create an aerial navy. It was necessary to strike before they
could do so. France had a fleet of slow navigables, several
dating from 1908, that could make no possible headway against the
new type. They had been built solely for reconnoitring purposes
on the eastern frontier, they were mostly too small to carry more
than a couple of dozen men without arms or provisions, and not
one could do forty miles an hour. Great Britain, it seemed, in
an access of meanness, temporised and wrangled with the imperial
spirited Butteridge and his extraordinary invention. That also
was not in play--and could not be for some months at the
earliest. From Asia there, came no sign. The Germans explained
this by saying the yellow peoples were without invention. No
other competitor was worth considering. "Now or never," said the
Germans--"now or never we may seize the air--as once the British
seized the seas! While all the other powers are still
experimenting."

Swift and systematic and secret were their preparations, and