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.



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