[eBook #11502] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN ENGLISHMAN LOOKS AT THE WORLD*** E-text prepared by Jonathan Ingram, Gene Smethers, and Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders AN ENGLISHMAN LOOKS AT THE WORLD Being a Series of Unrestrained Remarks upon Contemporary Matters By H.G. WELLS 1914 Blériot arrives and sets him thinking.

The Coming of Blériot 2.

The Human Adventure AN ENGLISHMAN LOOKS AT THE WORLD THE COMING OF BLÉRIOT (July, 1909.)

Then in elfin tones the real message comes through: "Blériot has crossed the Channel....

M. Blériot has done very well, and Mr. Latham, his rival, had jolly bad luck.

Or, rather, M. Blériot is!

That is the first and gravest intimation in M. Blériot's feat.

I do not think that the arrival of M. Blériot means a panic resort to conscription.

It is merely an indication that we are behindhand in our mechanical knowledge and invention M. Blériot's aeroplane points also to the fleet.

The arrival of M. Blériot suggests most horribly to me how far behind we must be in all matters of ingenuity, device, and mechanical contrivance.

But M. Blériot reminds us that we may no longer shelter and degenerate behind these blue backs.

Apart from these patriotic solicitudes, M. Blériot has set quite another train of thought going in my mind.

But, then, if M. Blériot, with his flying machine, ear-flaps and goggles, had soared down in the year 54 B.C., let us say, upon my woad-adorned ancestorsevery family man in Britain was my ancestor in those daysat Dover, they would have had entirely similar emotions.

They seemed to bend back at the tips, unlike a Blériot, with its straight spread of canvas.

"A Blériot monoplane," he said.