INVASION BY AEROPLANE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 23, 20 February 1909, Page 4

INVASION BY AEROPLANE.

Tin vision which lias recently been conjured up by certain psciido-scieutilic alarmists of tleets of flennan aeroplanehovering over the Hank of Engla-.id need ,uot lie taken too seriously "(say.9 r.l English paper). Aeroplanes as at pie-cut constructed air merely large power-driven kites, and are about as incapable of transporting aruiii.-. through the air 11 s anything of the kind that can possibly be imagined. Such invasion scares have a tendency to recur whenever a new invention seems to threaten our insularity. The advent 01 (he steamship, for instance, was deemed by our forefathers to be a certain presage of disaster ia this direction.

Still liioiv mi the balloon! France was then to England the bogev that fierliianv is -iippo-ed to be now, and when it became known to us that our neigh-j across the ('liannel--ilie balloon had it- origin, of course, in France—had actually succeeded ill navigating the air. our 'anger and alarm knew 110 bound-,. We were quite certain, in our own nirad*. that it was only a question of time before our traditional enemy _ dropped down upon us in force from the) sky. , 1 Even France, 100, was credited with having become obsessed with the idea.] just, as flenuaiiy is popularly believed 1 to he at present. Only then' it was notf a Zeiwelin airship or a Wriiiht flying-\ machine that was to be employed, but an "aerostatic irlobe" design! bv 110 lessi a liersonage than the venojt- n ed Marshal I \ev. Tll this- French sol'liers were to) lie projected' across the Sh a its 0 f Dover'