It is otherwise when you climb into this creature and fly. It is, let us say, a grey morning, an hour before sunrise. The city is asleep. Upon the long sea-front, where the traffic roars all day, there is nothing moving but a solitary motor-van, which has been out all night upon some business of war. Down by the hangars, where the road turns off, the acacias are in bloom, and the still air is heavy with their perfume. A nigger [sic, like this in the original] from Lake Tchad stands like a column at the gates, his bayonet fixed, his white teeth shining, clad in the uniform of France. He speaks French a good deal better than the average Englishman.
"Lieutenant M will be here in five minutes."
As I look about me, there is the green sward of yesterday ; in those vast sheds the aeroplanes are at rest, save one, which a number of men are bringing forward into the open. In an adjoining canteen some hot coffee is being poured out into cups.
Lieutenant M appears, his blue eyes shining brightly, his manner alert and distinguished, his costume rather like that of an Eskimo or a baby. In a moment we have climbed into the car, the propeller has begun to revolve, the plane is pushed forward, the rubber wheels bump lightly on the grass, and then by some magic we are in the air. I can see that we are ascending, but slowly, as one moves up-stream ; the sound of the propeller fills one's ears ; one's eyes are fixed upon the receding earth. At one's feet there is a celluloid pane through which one can look, and below this is the neat receptacle for bombs, which you can drop with a touch of the pedal. A wind blows hard against one, even on this still somnolent morning. And then everything begins to lose its natural appearance, and
the world stands out in a new perspective. The bell-tents of the soldiery, in each of which there are sixteen men, look like the icing on the edge of a wedding-cake; the long lines of cavalry horses and mules look like the needles in a musical box ; the Serbian army is displayed like a child's toy ; a Turkish village, with its grey fortified tower and tall minaret, looks like a pretty incident in a large picture ; the straight white military roads are like bits of ribbon arranged across the green chequer of the earth.
Leaving the sea, we ascend towards Hortiach, whose summit is 4000 feet high; the mountainsides rise up to meet us ; we pass over them ; the world becomes visible ; every detail of it is spread at our feet. We can see the little smoke of the morning fires, the connecting roads. . . . We are on a level with the summit of Hortiach ; . . . we ascend above it; there is a streak of yellow sunrise; the plane moves with a solid, easy composure. It becomes a little cold.
And now we are over the divide — the perimeter of hills that shelters Salonica, the Torres Vedras of Macedonia. The whole of Lake Langaza is become visible. Below us there is the velvet green of corn-fields, the rougher fringe
of the moors ; and the British trenches look like the workings of white ants. There is the little strip of the Via Ignatia, the old road that linked the city of Constantine with Rome.
We are above the lake now, its olive - green luminous with the reflection of the rising sun. At one end there is a cluster of boats under an old weather-beaten tower; at another, safe from intrusion, a flock of white birds, that are seemingly still asleep.
Beyond the lake rise the outer Balkans — the outposts of the Allied armies. Over there the guns bicker, the cavalry scout; there is the growling that precedes attack. Behind that grey veil there is hidden the glamour of the Coming Event.
We turn a little aside, and, leaving the lake, fly up the long valley, over the peak that is called Gibraltar. The trenches are like a tapestry at our feet, and we can see their purpose and plan. The sides of the water-courses are white with an inner lining of tents. A village deploys, the totality of its ancient life exposed to our gaze. We see it in the aggregate, and forget that in each homestead there are human creatures, whose joys and sorrows are similar to our own. I can understand now the indifference with which men fling bombs upon a crowded city, as impartial as Fate. Everything, it would seem, is a matter of perspective. Most of us would walk (without a pang) over a colony of ants, its ordered life and tense activities.
We recross the axis of the hills and face the marshes of the Vardar. Before us gleams in its wide circuit the Bay of Salonica, with Olympus grey and cold beyond. I can see the brown fans of the Vardar mud, the deeper blue of the sea near the quays, where the battleships anchor. Away there on our right spread the French encampments, line upon line in serried masses.
Here below us, visible through the celluloid pane, is the whole of Salonica, within its old grey walls, like sheep in a pen. But we move swiftly, and a moment later the harbour lies below us : the sailing boats like little butterflies under glass; the battleships like canoes; and as the out-going steamers move upon their way we can see how they skirt the visible limits of the Vardar mud. You don't realise that as a passenger. Beside the cruisers the submarines nestle, like the small fish that travel with the shark.
And then we begin to descend — the revolutions become slower, the sound of the propeller abates; we make giddy circles descending; the world goes round ; we ease down ; and once more the comfortable earth is very near. Familiar objects assume their natural proportions. The aeroplane is very low now, and racing, like a bird about to alight, over the fields; and here for almost the first time one has the impression of speed. The rest of it has been like sitting in a chair.
We touch earth with the lightest of contacts ; the little wheels run along the grass ; the men at the Aerodrome run forward and guide the plane to its place of rest. We have travelled at a moderate speed of some eighty kilometres an hour, and in fifty minutes have seen three armies in position. Eighteen hours on horseback showed me but a fraction of this.
I am back in time to catch the first tram as it leaves its shed. From this superb movement I am reduced once more to commonplace things, — the jolting tram, the foot-passengers on the pavements.
When flying is made safe it will surpass all other motion ; but it will make for the Lucretian view. One will trace the causes of things; the world will become a map rather than a picture ; the little homely incidents will be lost ; the wooded glen with its stream purling through it, the haunted pool, the mountain withdrawn in its dread majesty, — these will become but topographical incidents. The beautiful bay, with its smiles and its sunlit waters flecked with ships, will be no more than a ground-plan ; the city, with its monuments, its human souls, its homes, its griefs, joys, aspirations, and despair, will seem to one in the air but a cluster of houses and streets, and scarcely discernible pinnacles. Many of the things we love and strive after will become insignificant and unsatisfying ; there will be a reason for everything. Will that homestead with its carefully-tended garden be anything to you when you have seen it as scarcely more than a pin-point in a hive ? that cherished acre anything but trivial when you have seen a million such spread, the one indistinguishable from the other, under your momentary gaze ? that battleship, with its great guns, anything but a trivial toy invented by the child— Man ?
But there will be compensations. The world will become clearer, and the spirit will soar, as did the soul of Lucretius, into the outposts' of space, into new spheres of imagination and awe. A new poetry will arise, and the fabric of thought will be changed. And something of this we shall owe, amidst the general wreckage, to the stimulus of the Great War.
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*From: The Scene of War by V. C. SCOTT O'CONNOR , 1917 in Public domain
