DR. JOHNSON AND AIR RAIDS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 1968, 24 April 1919, Page 4

DR. JOHNSON AND AIR RAIDS.

A PROPHECY OP 1759

A correspondent of the London Dnily Telegraph wrote recently:— I wonder, how many oven of the most fervent admirers of Dr. Johnson recall the fact that he had not only a very clear appreciation of the factors necessary to successful aviation, hut a truly remarkable pre-vision of the use which might be made of it by a brutal and unscrupulous enemy? Indeed, there is one passage in his writings which, read in the light of happenings of the last four years, may bo regarded as a piece of the most accurate prophecy. It occurs in “Rasselas,” a book written, it may lie recalled, hurriedly in 1759 in order to raise the money to pay for his mother’s burial. As much of the story as is necessary can be told in a few words. Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia, engaged in the search for some means of escape from the peaceful monotony of the Happy Valley into the wide world beyond, makes the acquaintance of an artificer, who confides to him his intention of devising means to fly, believeing that “We are only to proportion our power of resistance to the different density of the matter through which we are to pass. You will be necessarily upborne by the air if you renew- any impulse upon it faster than the air can recede from the pressure.” Finding “the folding continuity of the bat’s wings most easily accommodated to the human form,” he decades to adopt them as his model, and enjoins upon the Prince the strictest secrecy regarding his project. The protest of Rasselas (hat such skill should be exercised for universal good provokes the artificer to the following prophetic utterance: If men were ail virtuous, I should with great alacrity teach them to fly. Bui Avbat would be the security of the good if the bad could at pleasure invade them from the sky? Against an army sailing through the clouds, neither walls, mountains, nor seas could afford security. A flight of northern savages might hover in the wind and light with irresistible violence upon the capital of a fruitful region. Even this valley, the retreat of princes, the abode of happiness, might be violated by the sudden descent ot some of (he naked nations (hat swarm on the coast of the southern

Happily, the violence with which the “llight of northern savages'-’ has on many occasions attacked our capital has not proved altogeHicr irresistible. But Hie foresight with which Dr. Johnson endowed his artificer was uncanuiiv sure.