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"But sufficient for the day is the swat thereof," as the British public schoolboy says, and no doubt we shall get them when we have sufficiently felt the need for them. The big Caproni machines which the Italians possess are of 300 h.p. and will presently be of 500 h.p.
Everywhere men are dreaming dreams of the future which challenge one's deepest imagination. Already Caproni, the great Italian inventor, has signed a contract to carry mails from Genoa to Rio Janeiro. Now comes news of an airplane with room for ninety-two passengers. Engine power and wing space have gone on increasing in a dazzling way till one is almost afraid to guess what the future may hold.
I could feel the U-33 respond, and yet the arrow still clung straight and sure toward the distant cliffs. "What do you make of it?" I asked him. "Did you ever hear of Caproni?" he asked. "An early Italian navigator?" I returned. "Yes; he followed Cook about 1721. He is scarcely mentioned even by contemporaneous historians probably because he got into political difficulties on his return to Italy.
Some of these are driven by four motors and carry eleven persons, besides guns and ammunition. The Caproni machines of Italy are even bigger capable of carrying nine guns and thirty-five men.
Already a Caproni triplane will carry thirty-five passengers beside guns say, fifty passengers if all other load be excluded, and has flown with a lighter load from Newport News to New York. It is easily imaginable that by 1920 the airplane capable of carrying eighty persons or the normal number now accommodated on an inter-urban trolley car will be an accomplished fact.
We had to fight to get time to see the cathedral, whose windows are boarded up or filled with white glass; but the Milanese were anxious to have us see their great factories; their automobile works, their Caproni airship plant and the up-to-the-minute organization of industrial efficiency everywhere.
"That sounds interesting, Lieutenant," admitted Jack, apparently considerably impressed. "Tell us some more about it, please," urged the practical Tom. "It's possibly by long odds the largest bombing plane that so far has ever been built, even beating those big Caproni machines of Italy that can carry a dozen in the crew.
After landing on European soil one of the lucky airships came to grief in Italy in making a stop for fuel, but the driver had obtained an Italian Caproni plane and was making his way eastward with all haste. The other dirigible, commanded by Americans, had reached Teheran, Persia, where gas-bag troubles had compelled her crew to continue by train.
I lost my breath, as though I had run a long distance up-hill. The place where I stood suddenly seemed strange and altered. Was that the same piece of woods into which shells had so often come crashing, which the huge Caproni planes had circled about with wide-spread wings like vultures, shedding bombs, while our machine guns lashed the leaves with a hailstorm of shot?
Why an army Caproni and the Italian army, until the Fiume question arose, refused nothing to an American. So John went to the Governo della Tripolitania Stato Maggiore and was given a general permit to make his trips from Tripoli to Homs and Zuara in the Caproni mail plane. The mail to Homs is carried on Wednesday and that to Zuara on Saturday.
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