A Momentous Experiment
:
The World Peril Of 1910
On the first day of July, 1908, a scene which was destined to become
historic took place in the great Lecture Theatre in the Imperial College
at Potsdam. It was just a year and a few days after the swimming race
between John Castellan and the Englishman in Clifden Bay.
There were four people present. The doors were locked and guarded by two
sentries outside. The German Emperor, Count Herold von Steinitz,
hancellor of the Empire, Field-Marshal Count Friedrich von Moltke,
grandson of the great Organiser of Victory, and John Castellan, were
standing round a great glass tank, twenty-five feet long, and fifteen
broad, supported on a series of trestles. The tank was filled with water
up to within about six inches of the upper edge. The depth was ten feet.
A dozen models of battleships, cruisers and torpedo craft were floating
on the surface of the water. Five feet under the surface, a grey,
fish-shaped craft with tail and fins, almost exactly resembling those of
a flying fish, was darting about, now jumping forward like a cat
pouncing on a bird, now drawing back, and then suddenly coming to a
standstill. Another moment, it sank to the bottom, and lay there as if
it had been a wreck. The next it darted up to the surface, cruised about
in swift curves, turning in and out about the models, but touching none.
Every now and then John Castellan went to a little table in the corner
of the room, on which there was a machine something like a typewriter,
and touched two or three of the keys. There was no visible connection
between them--the machine and the tank--but the little grey shape in
the water responded instantly to the touch of every key.
"That, I hope, will be enough to prove to your Majesty that as submarine
the Flying Fish is quite under control. Of course the real Flying
Fish will be controlled inside, not from outside."
"There is no doubt about the control," said the Kaiser. "It is
marvellous, and I think the Chancellor and the Field Marshal will agree
with me in that."
"Wonderful," said the Chancellor.
"A miracle," said the Field Marshal, "if it can only be realised."
"There is no doubt about that, gentlemen," said Castellan, going back to
the machine. "Which of the models would your Majesty like to see
destroyed first?"
The Kaiser pointed to the model of a battleship which was a very good
imitation of one of the most up-to-date British battleships.
"We will take that one first," he said.
Castellan smiled, and began to play the keys. The grey shape of the
Flying Fish dropped to the bottom of the tank, rose, and seemed all at
once to become endowed with human reason, or a likeness of it, which was
so horrible that even the Kaiser and his two chiefs could hardly repress
a shudder. It rose very slowly, circled among the floating models about
two feet under the surface and then, like an animal smelling out its
prey, it made a dart at the ship which the Kaiser had indicated, and
struck it from underneath. They saw a green flash stream through the
water, and the next moment the model had crumbled to pieces and sank.
"Donner-Wetter!" exclaimed the Chancellor, forgetting in his wonder that
he was in the presence of His Majesty, "that is wonderful, horrible!"
"Can there be anything too horrible for the enemies of the Fatherland,
Herr Kanztler," said the Kaiser, looking across the tank at him, with a
glint in his eyes, which no man in Germany cares to see.
"I must ask pardon, your Majesty," replied the Chancellor. "I was
astonished, indeed, almost frightened--frightened, if your Majesty will
allow me to say so, for the sake of Humanity, if such an awful invention
as that becomes realised."
"And what is your opinion, Field Marshal?" asked the Kaiser with a
laugh.
"A most excellent invention, your Majesty, provided always that it
belongs to the Fatherland."
"Exactly," said the Kaiser. "As that very intelligent American officer,
Admiral Mahan, has told us, the sea-power is world-power, and there you
have sea-power; but that is not the limit of the capabilities of Mr
Castellan's invention, according to the specifications which I have
read, and on the strength of which I have asked him to give us this
demonstration of its powers. He calls it, as you know, the Flying
Fish. So far you have seen it as a fish. Now, Mr Castellan, perhaps you
will be kind enough to let us see it fly."
"With pleasure, your Majesty," replied the Irishman, "but, in case of
accident, I must ask you and the Chancellor and the Field Marshal to
stand against the wall by the door there. With your Majesty's
permission, I am now going to destroy the rest of the fleet."
"The rest of the fleet!" exclaimed the Field Marshal. "It is
impossible."
"We shall see, Feldherr!" laughed the Kaiser. "Meanwhile, suppose we
come out of the danger zone."
The three greatest men in Germany, and perhaps on the Continent of
Europe, lined up with their backs to the wall at the farther end of the
room from the tank, and the Irishman sat down to his machine. The keys
began to click rapidly, and they began to feel a tenseness in the air of
the room. After a few seconds they would not have been surprised if they
had seen a flash of lightning pass over their heads. The Flying Fish
had sunk to the bottom of the tank, and backed into one of the corners.
The keys of the machine clicked louder and faster. Her nose tilted
upwards to an angle of about sixty degrees. The six-bladed propeller at
her stem whirled round in the water like the flurry of a whale's fluke
in its death agony. Her side-fins inclined upwards, and, like a flash,
she leapt from the water, and began to circle round the room.
The Kaiser shut his teeth hard and watched. The Chancellor opened his
mouth as if he was going to say something, and shut it again. The Field
Marshal stroked his moustache slowly, and followed the strange shape
fluttering about the room. It circled twice round the tank, and then
crossed it. A sharp click came from the machine, something fell from the
body of the Flying Fish into the tank. There was a dull sound of a
smothered explosion. For a moment the very water itself seemed aflame,
then it boiled up into a mass of seething foam. Every one of the models
was overwhelmed and engulfed at the same moment. Castellan got up from
the machine, caught the Flying Fish in his hand, as it dropped towards
the water, took it to the Kaiser, and said:
"Is your Majesty convinced? It is quite harmless now."
"God's thunder, yes!" said the War Lord of Germany, taking hold of the
model. "It is almost superhuman."
"Yes," said the Chancellor, "it is damnable!"
"I," said the Field Marshal, drily, "think it's admirable, always
supposing that Mr Castellan is prepared to place this mysterious
invention at the disposal of his Majesty."
"Yes," said the Kaiser, leaning with his back against the door, "that
is, of course, the first proposition to be considered. What are your
terms, Mr Castellan?"
Castellan looked at the three men all armed. The Chancellor and the
Field Marshal wore their swords, and the Kaiser had a revolver in his
hip pocket. The Chancellor and the Field Marshal straightened up as the
Kaiser spoke, and their hands moved instinctively towards their sword
hilts. The Kaiser looked at the model of the Flying Fish in his hand.
His face was, as usual, like a mask. He saw nothing, thought of nothing.
For the moment he was not a man: he was just the incarnation of an
idea.
"Field Marshal, you are a soldier," said Castellan, "and I see that your
hand has gone to your sword-hilt. Swords, of course, are the emblems of
military rank, but there is no use for them now."
"What do you mean, sir?" exclaimed the Count, clapping his right hand on
the hilt. After what he had seen he honestly believed that this Irishman
was a wizard of science who ought not to be trusted in the same room
with the Kaiser. Castellan went back to his machine and said:
"Draw your sword, sir, and see."
And then the keys began to click.
The Field Marshal's sword flashed out of the sheath. A second later the
Chancellor's did the same, and the Kaiser's right hand went back towards
his hip pocket.
Castellan got up and said:
"Your Majesty has a revolver. Be good enough, as you value your own
safety, to unload it, and throw the cartridges out of the window."
"But why?" exclaimed the Kaiser, pulling a Mauser repeating pistol out
of his hip-pocket. "Who are you, that you should give orders to me?"
"Only a man, your Majesty," replied Castellan, with a bow and a smile;
"a man who could explode every cartridge in that pistol of yours at once
before you had time to fire a shot. You have seen what has happened
already."
William the Second had seen enough. He walked to one of the windows
opening on the enclosed gardens, threw it open, dropped the pistol out,
and said:
"Now, let us have the proof of what you say."
"In a moment, your Majesty," replied Castellan, going back to his
machine, and beginning to work the keys rapidly. "I am here, an unarmed
man; let their Excellencies, the Chancellor and the Field Marshal,
attack me with their swords if they can. I am not joking. I am staking
my life on the success or failure of this experiment."
"Does your Majesty consent?" said the Field Marshal, raising his sword.
"There could be no better test," replied the Kaiser. "Mr Castellan makes
an experiment on which he stakes his life; we are making an experiment
on which we stake the welfare of the German Empire, and, perhaps, the
fate of the world. If he is willing, I am."
"And I am ready," replied Castellan, working the keys faster and faster
as he spoke, and looking at the two swords as carelessly as if they had
been a couple of walking sticks.
The sword points advanced towards him; the keys of the machine clicked
faster and faster. The atmosphere of the room became tenser and tenser;
the Kaiser leaned back against the door with his arms folded. When the
points were within three feet of Castellan's head, the steel began to
gleam with a bluish green light. The Chancellor and the Field Marshal
stopped; they saw sparkles of blue flame running along the sword blades.
Then came paralysis! the swords dropped from their hands, and they
staggered back.
"Great God, this is too much," gasped the Chancellor. "The man is
impregnable. It is too much, your Majesty. I fought through the war of
'70 and '71, but I surrender to this; this is not human."
"I beg your pardon, Excellency," said Castellan, getting up from the
machine, and picking the two swords from the floor, "it is quite human,
only a little science that the majority of humanity does not happen to
know. Your swords, gentlemen," and he presented the hilts to them.
"Bravo!" exclaimed the Kaiser, "well done! You have beaten the two best
soldiers in the German Empire, and you have done it like a gentleman.
But you are not altogether an Irishman, are you, Mr Castellan?"
"No, sir, I am a Spaniard as well. The earliest ancestor that I know
commanded the Santiago, wrecked on Achill Island, when the Armada came
south from the Pentland Firth. The rest of me is Irish. I need hardly
say more. That is why I am here now."
The Kaiser looked at the Chancellor and the Field Marshal, and they
looked back at him, and in a moment the situation--the crisis upon which
the fate of the world might depend--was decided. It was not a time when
men who are men talk. A few moments of silence passed; the four men
looking at each other with eyes that had the destinies of nations in the
brains behind them. Then the Kaiser took three swift strides towards
Castellan, held out his hand, and said in a voice which had an unwonted
note of respect in it:
"Sir, you have convinced me. Henceforth you are Director of the Naval
and Military operations of the German Empire, subject, of course, to the
conditions which will be arranged by myself and those who are entrusted
with the tactical and strategical developments of such plan of campaign
as I may decide to carry out on sea and land. And now, to put it
rudely--brutally, if you like, your price?"
Castellan took the Kaiser's hand in a strong, nervous grip, and said:
"I shall not state my price in money, your Majesty. I am not working for
money, but you will understand that I cannot convert what I have shown
you to-day into the fighting reality. Only a nation can do that. It will
cost ten millions of marks, at least, to--well, to so far develop this
experiment that no fleet save your Majesty's shall sail the seas, and
that no armies save yours shall without your consent march over the
battlefields of the world's Armageddon."
"Make it twenty millions, fifty millions," laughed the Kaiser, "and it
will be cheap at the price. What do you think, Herr Kantzler and
Feldherr?"
"Under the present circumstances of the other monarchies of Europe, your
Majesty," replied the Chancellor, "it would be cheap at a hundred
millions, especially with reference to a certain fleet, which appears to
be making the ocean its own country."
"Quite so," said the Field Marshal. "If what we have seen to-day can be
realised it would not be necessary to pump out the North Sea in order to
invade England."
"Or to get back again," laughed the Kaiser. "I think that is what your
grandfather said, didn't he?"
"Yes, your Majesty. He found eight ways of getting into England, but he
hadn't thought of one of getting out again."
Since the days of the Prophets no man had ever uttered more prophetic
words than Friedrich Helmuth von Moltke spoke then, all unconsciously.
But in the days to come they were fulfilled in such fashion that only
one man in all the world had ever dreamed of, and that was the man who
had beaten John Castellan by a yard in the swimming race for the rescue
of that American girl from drowning.