Bleriot has set quite another
train of thought going in my mind. The age of natural democracy is
surely at an end through these machines. There comes a time when men
will be sorted out into those who will have the knowledge, nerve, and
courage to do these splendid, dangerous things, and those who will
prefer the humbler level. I do not think numbers are going to matter so
much in the warfare of the future, and that when organised intelligence
differs from the majority, the majority will have no adequate power of
retort. The common man with a pike, being only sufficiently indignant
and abundant, could chase the eighteenth century gentleman as he chose,
but I fail to see what he can do in the way of mischief to an elusive
chevalier with wings. But that opens too wide a discussion for me to
enter upon now.
MY FIRST FLIGHT
(EASTBOURNE, _August 5, 1912--three years later_.)
Hitherto my only flights have been flights of imagination but this
morning I flew. I spent about ten or fifteen minutes in the air; we went
out to sea, soared up, came back over the land, circled higher, planed
steeply down to the water, and I landed with the conviction that I had
had only the foretaste of a great store of hitherto unsuspected
pleasures.
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