The War in the Air

This is the annotated edition including the rare biographical essay by Edwin E. Slosson called "H. G. Wells - A Major Prophet Of His Time".



At the epochal time of the perfection of the practical air-ship, Bert Smallways, a little cockney with the vague, narrow brain and scanty knowledge of his kind, in trying to land the balloon of Butteridge, inventor of the only perfect flying-machine, is carried away in it and into Germany. The balloon is shot down by the Germans at the great works where their air war-ships are being built, and Bert falls with it, wearing Butteridge's outside coats and carrying the secret plans, which he found in them. He is at first mistaken for Butteridge, and is hurried into the flag-ship Prince Karl Albert,—a man compared to Nietzsche's Overman—which, with Bert aboard, starts at once, leading the world's first fleet of air war-ships to the United States, the country to be first attacked in Karl Albert's scheme of world conquest. Bert finds the Germans have been negotiating with Butteridge for the purchase of his plans, and decides to copy them and conceal the originals. On its way to the States, the air-fleet diverges to pursue the American war-ships steaming to the Panama Canal and fighting German ironclads. It destroys them; and turns toward New York …