A Case in Camera
capacities; and this is what the Man in the Club understands and what
his brother in the Pub does not. He thumps no tub, enunciates no "first
principles." A name, a glance, a shake of the head, and block-votes are
put back where they belong. "I'm told Glenfield doesn't wish it" is more
to him than twenty parliamentary returns; "I wonder whether So-and-So
has quite the power he thinks he has," and three months later the public
is surprised to see that a newspaper has changed its policy.
But let me hasten to reassure you. I am not going to invite you to
follow our Case into quagmires either legal or political. I know too
little about these things myself. Recent as the judgment on Appeal was,
I have to stop and think for a moment before I can remember whether the
Scepter people won their case or lost it, and I have only the vaguest
idea what the findings of the Accidents Investigation Committees were.
For most of these things I have taken Billy Mackwith's word. But he was
briefed in one case, and has followed up the others with just the same
pertinacity he showed when he tracked down and brought triumphantly home
again those early prodigal pictures of Philip Esdaile's.
And, as I had begun to see it, Charles Valentine Smith, whether on oath
in the Scepter case or at the invitation of one or other of the private
inquiries, was engaged on something enormously more important than the
immediate results of an aeroplane crash. He was contributing his mite to
something that would live when he and all else about him had been
forgotten--to the labor and knowledge and unparalleled discovery of his
time.
II
Whitaker, in its "list of London Clubs," describes my own as "Social":
that is to say, that I and my fellow-members have no common bond of
occupation or interest other than that of pleasant good-fellowship. We
are drawn from all professions, and this gives me an opportunity I value
highly, namely, that of hearing scraps of the "shop" of other men when I
am bored to death with my own. Saturday nights, when there is no
morrow's issue of my paper to "put to bed," usually find me in the
smoking-room behind my _Pall Mall_ or _Evening Standard_, with a few
other non-weekenders sitting rather widely apart also behind their
papers, none of us so engrossed in the news that we are unaware of each
other, but using the journals as protective cover. Occasionally we all
drop them to converse; more frequently two or more will engage in
conversation with the others interjecting sniping-shots across the room;
and it is all rather interesting and quite unexciting and very much
go-as-you-please.
On a Saturday evening early in June I was sitting after this fashion,
half reading, half listening to Ronald Mowbray's remarks on some boxing
match or other. Mowbray's talk about boxing is sometimes rather good. He
was a known man of his hands long before the sport (if you can always
call it that nowadays) became quite so deadly intensive both physically
and financially. Moreover, his training as a sculptor has given him a
good deal of knowledge of the fundamental mechanics of the human
framework, and how a slight prolongation of the heel-bone can make a
Deer-foot or length of humerus a lightning hitter.
"Just at present I don't think Nature's provided the world with a real
heavy-weight," he was saying. "Not the real John Hopley kind, I mean. It
takes more than size. You see, it doesn't matter how hard you _could_
hit the other fellow if he gets his in first."
"But surely Wells is quick enough for you, isn't he?" said Jack
Beresford. His newspaper was on his knee.
"Oh, yes, Wells is fast. I'm not saying that speed's everything. But
it's nearly everything nowadays, even for a heavy. That's why half these
giants would be simply at the mercy of a comparatively light fellow like
Carpentier."
Over against the window bay a _Globe_ was dropped an inch. Cyril
Turner's eye was seen over it. He is in the Home Office, quite high up,
and is an untrammeled sort of spirit when he leaves Whitehall for the
freer air of Piccadilly.
"That's true of other things besides boxing," he interjected.
Mowbray turned. "What is?"
"What you're saying about weight and speed. Labor's discovered it too."
"I don't quite know what you mean, but if I've said something wiser than
I intended----" said Mowbray, claiming it if he had.
"Well, Labor has discovered it. Look at the way they strike nowadays.
The New Strike's as different as chalk and cheese from the Old. Totally
different methods--more scientific altogether. Masters and men used to
stand up foot to foot like Smithfield Butchers and slog till neither of
them could stand. Pure battering-ram principle, and the fellow who won
wasn't much better off than the one who lost. But now it's all
swiftness and surprise. No warning--just what you'd call a lightning
punch where it's going to hurt most and then dance away again. That's
why they go for the transport and postal services and all the
distributing machinery instead of stopping production. It paralyzes just
the same. Solar plexus business. And swiftness is the secret, as you
say, not brute strength any more."
Another paper was lowered. It was Hay's _Evening News_. Hay is a retired
Major of Gunners, and I have bought very good cigars from him and very
passable port.
"And that isn't all either," he said. "It goes far beyond strikes."
"War?" said somebody. Everybody in the Club knows Hay and his talk.
Hay nodded. "You'll see where speed comes in _then_--speed and the
absence of warning. The nation that can get a thousand bombing-planes
into the air first will be able to do what it likes with the others."
"Oh, come, Major!" somebody laughed. "That's rather looking for trouble,
isn't it?"
"No good shutting your eyes to it," Hay returned. "Turner said something
about transport just now. They're talking a lot about relieving London's
traffic congestion. Well, it wants relieving; but do you know how I'd
relieve it? I'd dig new ways ... well underground. Big ones, to hold
plenty of people. Tube Stations won't be much good the next time. And
I'd start digging them now."
"Hay's had a hint from the League of Nations."
"Well, I'm a League of Nations man up to a point. Up to this point--that
the next show's going to be so unutterably ghastly that a generation
that leaves anything undone to prevent it ought to be wiped off the
map--_any_thing undone, you understand, whether you personally believe
in it or whether you don't. We're only at the beginning of the New War,
and it will be far more 'lightning' than any of Turner's New Strikes."
"Democracy'll prevent it."
"As it's doing in Russia, eh? Just as likely to make it. Democracy's got
such damnably high-falutin ideals and so little sense of ordinary
decency. For an inhuman thing that belongs to everybody and pleases
nobody give me the Will of the People. If you read your history you'll
find that hot air's usually followed by bloodshed. And they won't stick
at much. Personally I prefer a King's war with guns to a democratic one
with black typhus germs."
"Sunny soul, our Major, isn't he?" somebody laughed again.
"Well," said Hay, disappearing behind his paper again, "a thousand
bombing-planes will do it the next time. I hope we aren't forgetting how
to make 'em, and use 'em. Waiter, bring me a whisky-and-soda, please."
III
For a time nothing was heard in the smoking-room but the rustle of the
turning papers and the clink of a coffee-cup in a saucer.
Sluggishly--for the idleness that had latterly overmastered me tired me
to my very marrow--I was comparing Hay's words with what Cecil Hubbard
had said on the same subject. "Continuity of manufacture and the
training of men"--you might call this "civil" aviation if you liked,
but according to both men it was indistinguishable from the question of
national defense. And, further, Hubbard, unless I was mistaken, had
allowed young Smith some portion of vision in the matter. "It doesn't
matter whether he's twenty-four or a hundred-and-four"--"The wind blew
whither it list"--"While the old Burleighs had been nodding some
youngster had been getting away with the job."
Well, I myself, no longer very young, could only sigh and agree that it
seemed to be a young man's business. In other fields of action youth,
the cutting-edge, was directed by the experienced hand and the wise head
that too has been young in its day; but in this field none but youth has
or has had the experience. Its time is short, it reaps its harvest in
its Spring. We in the August of our lives may say, "Thus and thus should
be done," but a young head shakes and we are silenced. The judgment of
an infant answers us. A Samuel speaks, and our lips are closed within
our beards. We administer, advise, finance, organize, but his is the
mounting heart.
In the midst of my meditation I became aware that I was being spoken to
by Mowbray. I told you he was a sculptor. He is no great intimate of
Esdaile's, but naturally they are not unacquainted.
"I beg your pardon. What were you saying?" I said.
"This Scepter action. I see it's down on the List. You're a friend of
Esdaile's. I suppose it won't affect him in any way?"
"What's the action about?" I asked.
"Here you are. '_The Aiglon Aviation Company v. The Scepter Assurance
Corporation._' The Scepter people are resisting the claim on the grounds
that the machine had no business to be where it was. They also allege
negligence on the pilot's part, or so at least McIlwaine tells me. He's
briefed. Is it true you were at Esdaile's when it happened?"
"Yes."
"Do you know the pilot?"
"No. I believe he's away with Esdaile in the country at present."
"Well, he can be getting ready to come back to town. It's down for
Trinity term. I should say the whole action turns on him. Worrying sort
of thing to have to go through on the top of a bad crash, but the
Scepter's got to fight it. If flying ever comes to anything the
position's got to be made clear."
"_If_ it comes to anything?" I queried idly....
"Apart from Hay's point of view, I mean. I don't see myself that it's
achieved very much yet outside war. Too risky and uncertain altogether.
There isn't a flyer on the Rhine at present who'll take his leave by
aeroplane; he might lose a day. And if this Atlantic flight does come
off it'll be rather like Channel-swimming--done once and then not again
for another forty years. Just a record. I can't see there's much more in
it yet."
Here Atkinson's voice struck in. I hadn't heard him enter.
"Yes, but what about other places--Australia, for instance? It's
catching on there all right from what I'm told. Say you've a station
ninety miles from your front door to your back. An aeroplane'll do in an
hour or two what it would take you two or three days to do in a buggy.
Any number of these fellows are running their private planes now. And
we're making the machines."
"And there isn't much doubt they'll be having a go at the Cape-to-Cairo
route presently," somebody else remarked. (I am giving this desultory
conversation very much as it happened, since I felt exceedingly
desultory myself and it all contributed to the impression of Chummy
Smith and the nature of his job that was slowly building itself up in my
mind.)
"Well, that's a different thing again. I should say the value of that
would be largely scientific, at any rate at first. Like the Shackleton
and Scott expeditions."
Mowbray laughed. "Are you one of those who think those were primarily
scientific?" he asked.
"What else were they?"
Whereupon we had the matter from the point of view of Ronald Mowbray,
ex-amateur champion and still the soundest of referees.