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The War in the Air Chapter 6 Parts 1-3 · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Chapter six, Parts one, two, and three of War in
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  Speaker 1: the Air. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings
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  Speaker 1: are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer,
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  Speaker 1: please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by William tom Coe.
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  Speaker 1: War in the Air by H. G. Wells, Chapter six,
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  Speaker 1: Parts one, two and three. Chapter six, How War Came
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  Speaker 1: to New York, Part one. The city of New York was,
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  Speaker 1: in the year of the German attack, the largest, richest
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  Speaker 1: in many respects, the most splendid, and in some the
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  Speaker 1: wickedest city the world had ever seen. She was the
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  Speaker 1: supreme type of the city of the scientific commercial age.
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  Speaker 1: She displayed its greatness, its power, its ruthless anarchic enterprise,
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  Speaker 1: and its social disorganization most strikingly and completely. She had
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  Speaker 1: long ousted London from her pride of place. As the
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  Speaker 1: modern Babylon. She was the center of the world's finance,
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  Speaker 1: the world's trade, and the world's pleasure, and men likened
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  Speaker 1: her to the apocalyptic cities of the ancient prophets. She
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  Speaker 1: sat drinking up the wealth of a continent, as Rome
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  Speaker 1: once drank the wealth of the Mediterranean, and Babylon the
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  Speaker 1: wealth of the East. In her streets, one found the
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  Speaker 1: extremes of magnificence and misery, of civilization and disorder. In
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  Speaker 1: one quarter, palaces of marble laced and crowned with light
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  Speaker 1: and flame, and flowers towered up into her marvelous twilights,
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  Speaker 1: beautiful beyond description. In another, a black and sinister polyglot
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  Speaker 1: population sweltered in indescribable congestion, in warrens and excavations beyond
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  Speaker 1: the power and knowledge of government. Her vice, her crime,
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  Speaker 1: her law alike were inspired by a fierce and terrible
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  Speaker 1: nas energy, and like the great cities of medieval Italy,
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  Speaker 1: her ways were dark and adventurous with private war. It
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  Speaker 1: was the peculiar shape of Manhattan Island, pressed in by
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  Speaker 1: arms of the sea on either side and incapable of
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  Speaker 1: comfortable expansion except along a narrow northward belt that first
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  Speaker 1: gave the New York architects their bias for extreme vertical dimension.
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  Speaker 1: Every need was lavishly supplied them money, material, labor, only
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  Speaker 1: space was restricted to begin. Therefore, they built high per force.
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  Speaker 1: But to do so was to discover a whole new
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  Speaker 1: world of architectural beauty, of exquisite ascendant lines, and long
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  Speaker 1: after the central congestion had been relieved by tunnels under
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  Speaker 1: the sea, four colossal bridges over the East River, and
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  Speaker 1: a dozen mono rail cables east and west. The upward
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  Speaker 1: growth went on. In many ways. New York and her
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  Speaker 1: gorgeous plutocracy, repeated Venice in the magnificence of her architecture, painting,
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  Speaker 1: metal work, and sculpture, for example, in the grim intensity
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  Speaker 1: of her political method in her maritime and commercial ascendancy.
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  Speaker 1: But she repeated no previous state at all in the
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  Speaker 1: lax disorder of her internal administration, a laxity that made
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  Speaker 1: vast sections of her area lawless beyond president, so that
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  Speaker 1: it was possible for whole districts to be impassable while
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  Speaker 1: civil war raged between street and street, and for alsatious
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  Speaker 1: to exist in her midst in which the official police
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  Speaker 1: never set foot. She was an ethnic whirlpool. The flags
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  Speaker 1: of all nations flew in her harbor, and at the
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  Speaker 1: climax the yearly coming and going overseas numbered together upwards
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  Speaker 1: of two million human beings to Europe. She was America
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  Speaker 1: to America. She was the gateway of the world. But
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  Speaker 1: to tell the story of New York would be to
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  Speaker 1: write a social history of the world. Saints and martyrs,
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  Speaker 1: dreamers and scoundrels, the traditions of a thousand races and
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  Speaker 1: a thousand religions went to her making, and throbbed and
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  Speaker 1: jostled in her streets. And over all that torrential confusion
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  Speaker 1: of men and purposes fluttered that strange flag, the stars
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  Speaker 1: and stripes that meant at once the noblest thing in
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  Speaker 1: life and the least noble, that is to say, liberty
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  Speaker 1: on the one hand, and on the other, the base
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  Speaker 1: jealousy the individual self seeker feels towards the common purpose
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  Speaker 1: of the state. For many generations, New York had taken
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  Speaker 1: no heed of war, save as a thing that happened
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  Speaker 1: far away, that affected prices and supply the newspapers with
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  Speaker 1: exciting headlines and pictures. The New Yorkers felt, perhaps even
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  Speaker 1: more certainly than the English had done, that war in
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  Speaker 1: their own land was an impossible thing. In that they
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  Speaker 1: shared the delusion of all North America. They felt as
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  Speaker 1: secure as spectators at a bullfight. They risked their money,
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  Speaker 1: perhaps on the result, but that was all. And such
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  Speaker 1: which ideas of war as the common Americans possessed, were
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  Speaker 1: derived from the limited picturesque, adventurous war of the past.
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  Speaker 1: They saw war as they saw history through an iridescent mist,
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  Speaker 1: deodorized scented, indeed, with all its essential cruelties tactfully hidden away.
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  Speaker 1: They were inclined to regret it as something ennobling, to
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  Speaker 1: sigh that it could no longer come into their own
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  Speaker 1: private experience. They read with interest, if not with avidity,
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  Speaker 1: of their new guns, of their immense and still more
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  Speaker 1: immense ironclads, of their incredible and still more incredible explosives.
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  Speaker 1: But just what these tremendous engines of destruction might mean
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  Speaker 1: for their personal lives never entered their heads. They did not,
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  Speaker 1: so far as one can judge from their contemporary literature,
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  Speaker 1: think that they meant anything to their personal lives at all.
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  Speaker 1: They thought America was safe amidst all this piling up
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  Speaker 1: of explosives. They cheered the flag by habit and tradition.
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  Speaker 1: They despised other nations, and whenever there was an international difficulty,
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  Speaker 1: they were intensely patriotic. That is to say, they were
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  Speaker 1: ardently against any native politician who did not say, threaten
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  Speaker 1: and do harsh and uncompromising things to the antagonist people.
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  Speaker 1: They were spirited to Asia, spirited to Germany, so spirited
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  Speaker 1: to Great Britain, that the international attitude of the mother
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  Speaker 1: country to her great daughter was constantly compared, in contemporary
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  Speaker 1: caricature to that between a hen pecked husband and a
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  Speaker 1: vicious young wife. And for the rest they all went
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  Speaker 1: about their business and pleasure, as if war had died
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  Speaker 1: out with the megatherium, and then suddenly into a world
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  Speaker 1: peacefully busied for the most part upon armaments and the
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  Speaker 1: perfection of explosives. War came came with shock of realizing
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  Speaker 1: that the guns were going off, that the masses of
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  Speaker 1: inflammable material all over the world were at last a blaze.
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  Speaker 1: Part two. The immediate effect upon New York of the
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  Speaker 1: sudden onset of war was merely to intensify her normal vehemence.
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  Speaker 1: The newspapers and magazines that fed the American mind for
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  Speaker 1: books upon this impatient continent had become simply material for
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  Speaker 1: the energy of collectors. Were instantly a coruscation of war
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  Speaker 1: pictures and of headlines that rose like rockets and burst
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  Speaker 1: like shells. To the normal high strung energy of New
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  Speaker 1: York streets was added a touch of war fever. Great
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  Speaker 1: crowds assembled more, especially in the dinner hour in Madison
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  Speaker 1: Square about the Farragut Monument, to listen to and cheer
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  Speaker 1: patriotic speeches, and a veritable epidemic of little flags and
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  Speaker 1: buttons swept through these great torrents of swiftly moving young
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  Speaker 1: people who poured into New York of a morning by
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  Speaker 1: car and mono, rail and subway and train to toil
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  Speaker 1: and Ebb home again between the hours of five and seven.
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  Speaker 1: It was dangerous not to wear a war button. The
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  Speaker 1: splendid music halls of the time sank every topic in
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  Speaker 1: patriotism and evolved scenes of wild enthusiasm. Strong Men wept
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  Speaker 1: at the sight of the National banner, sustained by the
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  Speaker 1: whole strength of the ballet, and special search lights and
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  Speaker 1: illuminations amazed the watching angels. The churches re echoed the
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  Speaker 1: national enthusiasm in graver Key and Slower Measure, and the
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  Speaker 1: aerial and naval preparations on the East River were greatly
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  Speaker 1: incommoded by the multitude of excursion steamers, which thronged helpfully
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  Speaker 1: cheering about them. The trade in small arms was enormously stimulated,
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  Speaker 1: and many overwrought citizens found an immediate relief for their
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  Speaker 1: emotions and letting off fireworks of a more or less heroic, dangerous,
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  Speaker 1: and national character in the public streets. Small children's air
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  Speaker 1: balloons of the latest model attached to string became a
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  Speaker 1: serious check to the pedestrian in Central Park, and amidst
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  Speaker 1: scenes of indescribable emotion, the Albany Legislature, in permanent session
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  Speaker 1: and with a generous suspension of rules and precedents, passed
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  Speaker 1: through both houses the long disputed bill for universal military
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  Speaker 1: service in New York State. Critics of the American character
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  Speaker 1: are disposed to consider that up to the actual impact
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  Speaker 1: of the German attack, the people of New York dealt
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  Speaker 1: altogether too much with the war, as if it was
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  Speaker 1: a political demonstration. Little or no damage, they urge was
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  Speaker 1: done to either the German or Japanese forces by the
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  Speaker 1: wearing of buttons, the waving of small flags, the fireworks
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  Speaker 1: or the songs. They forgot that under the conditions of
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  Speaker 1: warfare a century of science had brought about, the non
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  Speaker 1: military section of the population could do no serious damage
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  Speaker 1: in any form to their enemies, and that there was
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  Speaker 1: no reason therefore why they should not do as they did.
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  Speaker 1: The balance of military efficiency was shifting back from the
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  Speaker 1: many to the few, from the common to the specialized.
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  Speaker 1: The days when the emotional infantrymen decided battles had passed
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  Speaker 1: by forever. War had become a matter of apparatus, of
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  Speaker 1: special training and skill of the most intricate kind. It
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  Speaker 1: had become undemocratic. And whatever the value of the popular excitement,
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  Speaker 1: there can be no denying that the small, regular establishment
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  Speaker 1: of the United States government, confronted by this totally unexpected
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  Speaker 1: emergency of an armed invasion from Europe, acted with vigor,
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  Speaker 1: science and imagination. They were taken by surprise so far
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  Speaker 1: as the diplomatic situation was concerned, and their equipment for
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  Speaker 1: building either navigables or aeroplanes was contemptible in comparison with
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  Speaker 1: the huge German parks. Still, they set to work at
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  Speaker 1: once to prove to the world that the spirit that
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  Speaker 1: had created the Monitor and the Southern Submarines of eighteen
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  Speaker 1: sixty four was not dead. The chief of the aeronautic
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  Speaker 1: establishment near West Point was Cabot Saint Clair, and he
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  Speaker 1: allowed himself but one single moment of the posturing that
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  Speaker 1: was so universal in that democratic time. We have chosen
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  Speaker 1: our epitaphs he said to a reporter, and we are
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  Speaker 1: going to have They did all they could, now run away.
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  Speaker 1: The curious thing is that they did all do all
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  Speaker 1: they could. There is no exception known. Their only defect, indeed,
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  Speaker 1: was a defect of style. One of the most striking
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  Speaker 1: facts historically about this war, and the one that makes
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  Speaker 1: the complete separation that had arisen between the methods of
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  Speaker 1: warfare and the necessity of democratic support, is the effectual
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  Speaker 1: secrecy of the Washington authorities about their airships. They did
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  Speaker 1: not bother to confide a single fact of their preparations
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  Speaker 1: to the public. They did not even condescend to talk
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  Speaker 1: to Congress. They burked and suppressed every inquiry. The war
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  Speaker 1: was fought by the President and the Secretaries of State
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  Speaker 1: in an entirely autocratic manner. Such publicity, as they sought
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  Speaker 1: was merely to anticipate and prevent inconvenient agitation to defend
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  Speaker 1: particular points. They realized that the chief danger in aerial
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  Speaker 1: warfare from an excitable and intelligent public would be a
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  Speaker 1: clamor for local airships and aeroplanes to defend local interests. This,
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  Speaker 1: with such resources as they possessed, might lead to a
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  Speaker 1: fatal division and distribution of the national forces. Particularly, they
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  Speaker 1: feared that they might be forced into a premature action
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  Speaker 1: to defend New York. They released with prophetic insight that
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  Speaker 1: this would be the particular advantage the Germans would seek.
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  Speaker 1: So they took great pains to direct the popular mind
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  Speaker 1: towards defensive artillery, and to divert it from any thought
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  Speaker 1: of aerial battle. Their real preparations they masked beneath ostensible ones.
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  Speaker 1: There was at Washington a large reason of naval guns,
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  Speaker 1: and these were distributed rapidly, conspicuously, and with much press
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  Speaker 1: attention among the Eastern cities. They were mounted, for the
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  Speaker 1: most part, upon hills and prominent crests around the threatened
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  Speaker 1: centers of population. They were mounted upon rough adaptations of
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  Speaker 1: the doned swivel, which at that time gave the maximum
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  Speaker 1: vertical range to a heavy gun. Much of this artillery
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  Speaker 1: was still unmounted, and nearly all of it was unprotected
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  Speaker 1: when the German air fleet reached New York, and down
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  Speaker 1: in the crowded streets. When that occurred, the readers of
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  Speaker 1: the New York papers were regaling themselves with wonderful and
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  Speaker 1: wonderfully illustrated accounts of such matters. As the secret of
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  Speaker 1: the thunderbolt. Aged scientists perfects electric gun to electrocute airship
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  Speaker 1: crews by upward lightning. Washington orders five hundred. War Secretary Lodge, delighted,
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  Speaker 1: says they will suit the Germans down to the ground.
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  Speaker 1: President publicly applauds this merry quip. Part three. The German
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  Speaker 1: fleet reached New York in advance of the news of
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  Speaker 1: the American naval disaster. It reached New York in the
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  Speaker 1: late afternoon and was first seen by watchers at Ocean
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  Speaker 1: Grove and Long Branch, coming swiftly out of the southward
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  Speaker 1: Sea and going away to the northwest. The flagship passed
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  Speaker 1: almost vertically over the Sandy Hook Observation Station, rising rapidly
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  Speaker 1: as it did so, and in a few minutes all
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  Speaker 1: New York was vibrating to the Staten Island guns. Several
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  Speaker 1: of these guns, and especially that at Gifford's and the
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  Speaker 1: one on Beacon Hill above Mattawan, were remarkably well handled.
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  Speaker 1: The former, at a distance of five miles and with
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  Speaker 1: an elevation of six thousand feet, set a shell to
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  Speaker 1: burst so close to the Vaterland that a pane of
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  Speaker 1: the Prince's forward window was smashed by a fragment. This
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  Speaker 1: sudden extre made Bert tuck in his head with the
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  Speaker 1: celerity of a startled tortoise. The whole air fleet immediately
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  Speaker 1: went up steeply to a height of about twelve thousand feet,
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  Speaker 1: and at that level passed unscathed over the ineffectual guns.
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  Speaker 1: The airships lined out as they moved forward into the
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  Speaker 1: form of a flattened V, with its apex towards the city,
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  Speaker 1: and with a flagship going highest at the apex. The
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  Speaker 1: two ends of the V passed over Plumfield and Jamaica Bay, respectively,
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  Speaker 1: and the Prince directed his course a little to the
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  Speaker 1: east of the Narrows, soared over Upper Bay, and came
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  Speaker 1: to rest over Jersey City, in a position that dominated
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  Speaker 1: lower New York. There are monsters hung large and wonderful
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  Speaker 1: in the evening light, serenely, regardless of the occasional rocket
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  Speaker 1: explosions and flashing shell bursts in the lower air. It
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  Speaker 1: was a pause of mutual inspection for a time, naive
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  Speaker 1: humanity swamped the conventions of warfare altogether. The interest of
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  Speaker 1: the millions below and of the thousands above alike, was spectacular.
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  Speaker 1: The evening was unexpectedly fine. Only a few thin level
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  Speaker 1: bands of clouds at seven or eight thousand feet broke
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  Speaker 1: its luminous clarity. The wind had dropped. It was an evening,
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  Speaker 1: infinitely peaceful, and still. The heavy concussions of the distant
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  Speaker 1: guns and those incidental, harmless pyrotechnics at the level of
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  Speaker 1: the clouds seemed to have as little to do with
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  Speaker 1: killing and force, terror and submission as a salute at
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  Speaker 1: a naval review. Below. Every point of vantage bristled with spectators.
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  Speaker 1: The roofs of the towering buildings, the public squares, the
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  Speaker 1: act of ferry boats, and every favorable street intersection had
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  Speaker 1: its crowds. All the river piers were dense with people.
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  Speaker 1: The Battery Park was solid black with east Side population,
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  Speaker 1: and every position of advantage in Central Park and along
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  Speaker 1: Riverside Drive had its peculiar and character uristic assembly from
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  Speaker 1: the adjacent streets. The footways of the great bridges over
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  Speaker 1: the East River were also closely packed and blocked everywhere.
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  Speaker 1: Shopkeepers had left their shops, men their work, and women
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  Speaker 1: and children their homes to come out and see the marvel.
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  Speaker 1: It beat, they declared the newspapers, and from above, many
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  Speaker 1: of the occupants of the airships stared with an equal curiosity.
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  Speaker 1: No city in the world was ever so finely placed
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  Speaker 1: as New York, so magnificently cut up by sea and
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  Speaker 1: bluff and river, so admirably disposed to display the tall
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  Speaker 1: effects of buildings, the complex immensities of bridges and mono railways,
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  Speaker 1: and feats of engineering. London, Paris, Berlin were shapeless, low agglomerations.
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  Speaker 1: Beside it. Its port reached to its heart like Venice,
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  Speaker 1: and like Venice, it was obvious, dramatic, and proud. From above,
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  Speaker 1: it was alive with crawling trains and cars, and at
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  Speaker 1: a thousand points it was already breaking into quivering light.
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  Speaker 1: New York was altogether at its best that evening its
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  Speaker 1: splendid best, gaw what a place, said Bert. It was
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  Speaker 1: so great, and in its collective effect, so pacifically magnificent,
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  Speaker 1: that to make war upon it seemed incongruous, beyond measure,
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  Speaker 1: like laying siege to the National Gallery, or attacking respectable
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  Speaker 1: people in an hotel dining room with battle axe and mail.
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  Speaker 1: It was in its entirety so large, so complex, so
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  Speaker 1: delicately immense, that to bring it to the issue of
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  Speaker 1: warfare was like driving a crowbar into the mechanism of
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  Speaker 1: a clock, and the fish like shoal of great airships,
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  Speaker 1: hovering light and sunlit above, filling the sky seemed equally
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  Speaker 1: remote from the ugly forcefulness of war, to kurt, to
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  Speaker 1: small ways, to I know not how many more of
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  Speaker 1: the people in the air fleet came the distinctest apprehension
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  Speaker 1: of these incompatibilities. But in the head of the Prince
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  Speaker 1: Carl Albert were the vapors of romance. He was a conqueror,
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  Speaker 1: and this was the enemy city. The greater the city,
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  Speaker 1: the greater the triumph. No doubt he had a time
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  Speaker 1: of tremendous exaltation and sensed beyond all precedent the sense
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  Speaker 1: of power. That night there came an end at last
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  Speaker 1: to that pause. Some wireless communications had failed of a
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  Speaker 1: satisfactory ending, and fleet and city remembered they were hostile powers. Look,
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  Speaker 1: cried the multitude, Look what are they doing? What? Down
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  Speaker 1: through the twilight sank five attacking airships, one to the
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  Speaker 1: Navy yard on East River, one to City Hall, two
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  Speaker 1: over the great business buildings of Wall Street and Lower Broadway,
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  Speaker 1: one to the Brooklyn Bridge, dropping from among their fellows
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  Speaker 1: through the danger zone from the distant guns smoothly and
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  Speaker 1: rapidly to a safe proximity to the city's masses. At
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  Speaker 1: that descent, all the cars in the streets stopped with
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  Speaker 1: dramatic suddenness, and all the lights that had been coming
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  Speaker 1: on in the streets and houses went out again. For
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  Speaker 1: the City Hall had awakened and was conferring by telephone
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  Speaker 1: with the federal command and taking measures for defense. The
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  Speaker 1: City Hall was asking for airships, refusing to surrender as
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  Speaker 1: Washington advised, and developing into a center of intense emotion,
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  Speaker 1: of hectic activity everywhere, and hastily, the police began to
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  Speaker 1: clear the assembled crowds. Go to your homes, they said,
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  Speaker 1: and the word was passed from mouth to mouth, there's
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  Speaker 1: going to be trouble. A chill of apprehension ran through
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  Speaker 1: the city, and men hurrying in the unwonted darkness across
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  Speaker 1: City Hall Park and Union Square, came upon the dim
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  Speaker 1: forms of soldiers and guns and were challenged and sent back.
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  Speaker 1: In half an hour, New York had passed from serene
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  Speaker 1: sunset and gaping admiration to a troubled and threatening twilight.
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  Speaker 1: The first loss of life occurred in the panic rush
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  Speaker 1: from Brooklyn Bridge as the airship approached it. With the
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  Speaker 1: cessation of the traffic, and unusual stillness came upon New York,
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  Speaker 1: and the disturbing concussions of the feudal defending guns on
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  Speaker 1: the hills about grew more and more audible. At last
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  Speaker 1: these ceased. Also, a pause of further negotiation followed. People
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  Speaker 1: sat in darkness, sought counsel from telephones that were dumb.
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: Then into the expectant hush came a great crash and uproar,
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: the breaking down of the Brooklyn Bridge, the rifle fire
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: from the Navy Yard, and the bursting of bombs in
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: Wall Street and the City Hall. New York as a
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: whole could do, nothing, could understand nothing. New York, in
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: the darkness, peered and listened to these distant sounds, until
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: presently they died away as suddenly as they had begun.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: What could be happening, they asked it in vain. A long,
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: vague period intervened, and people looking out of the windows
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: of upper rooms discovered the dark halls of German airships
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: gliding slowly and noiselessly, quite close at hand. Then quietly
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: the electric lights came on again, and an uproar of
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: nocturnal news vendors began in the streets. The units of
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: that vast and varied population bought and learnt what had happened.
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: There had been a fight, and New York had hoisted
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: the white flag. End of Chapter six, Parts one, two,
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: and three. Recording by William tom Coe