The War in the Air
by H. G. Wells
|
Platforms
Windows Vista / XP / 2000, Mac OS X, Sony Reader Features
|
Availability:
Download Now Price: $1.99
|
|
Platforms
Windows Vista / XP / 2000, Mac OS X, Sony Reader Features
|
Availability:
Download Now Price: $2.39
|
|
Platforms
Windows Vista / XP / 2000, Mac OS X, Sony Reader Features
|
Availability:
Download Now Price: $3.99
|
|
Platforms
Windows Computers, Mac, Linux, more... Features
|
Availability:
Email Delivery Price: $7.95
|
|
Platforms
Windows 98+, Tablet PC, Pocket PC 2003 Features
|
Availability:
Download Now Price: $1.99
|
|
Platforms
Windows 98+, Tablet PC, Pocket PC 2003 Features
|
Availability:
Download Now Price: $2.99
|
|
Platforms
Windows 98 or higher Desktop and Laptop Computers, Tablet PC, and all Pocket PC's. Features
|
Availability:
Email Delivery Price: $7.95
|
|
Platforms
Windows PC, Palm, Pocket PC, Windows Mobile, SymbianOS, Blackberry, iLiad, eBookMan, and more. Features
|
Availability:
Download Now Price: $2.99
|
|
Platforms
Windows PC, Palm, Pocket PC, Windows Mobile, SymbianOS, Blackberry, iLiad, eBookMan, and more. Features
|
Availability:
Email Delivery Price: $5.95
|
|
Platforms
All Palm & Pocket PC handheld devices plus all Windows and Macintosh computers. Features
|
Availability:
Download Now Price: $2.99
|
|
Platforms
All Palm & Pocket PC handheld devices plus all Windows and Macintosh computers. Features
|
Availability:
Download Now Price: $3.84
|
|
Platforms Windows, Tablet PC, Windows CE, Macintosh, Linux, Unix. Features
|
Availability:
Email Delivery Price: $4.95
|
|
Platforms Windows Computers, Tablet PC Features
|
Availability:
Email Delivery Price: $5.95
|
|
Platforms Windows Computers, Tablet PC, Windows CE, Macintosh, Linux, Unix Features
|
Availability:
Download Now Price: $2.99
|
The War in the Air Summary
| Bert Smallways was a vulgar little creature, the sort of pert, limited soul that the old civilisation of the early twentieth century produced by the million in every country of the world. He had lived all his life in narrow streets, and between mean houses he could not look over, and in a narrow circle of ideas from which there was no escape. |
|
|
| 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 |
|
|
| This here Progress, said Mr. Tom Smallways, "it keeps on." "You'd hardly think it could keep on," said Mr. Tom Smallways. It was along 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. |
|
|
eBooks > Titles > Authors > History > Military > H. G. Wells > The War in the Air