Jules Verne on the Automobile and the Future

Sterling Heilig has been interviewing Jules Verne at his home in Amiens, where he is a Town Councilor, a leading citizen, and an indefatigable writer of wild scientific romances. The way some of Verne's fantastic ideas have been realized is frequently a subject of remark. His cigar-shaped submarine boat, the Nautilus, described thirty years ago in "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea," is now a concrete fact in the Holland boat and in a similar vessel which is being quietly added to the French navy.

The flying machine in "Hector Servadoc" is at the present moment a reality in the Santos-Dumont dirigible balloon, which, according to Mr. Heilig, "may be seen maneuvering over Paris." The automobile was also foretold in "The Steam House" and "The Screw Island."

In view of the venerable Frenchman's qualifications as a prophet, it is encouraging to see that he thinks the automobile is "the most precious of modern inventions, because its destiny will be to combat the great danger of the future—the tendency of populations to desert the country for the town." He thinks the intelligent and the rich will seek the country more and more, while the poor and ignorant, in their misguided desire for the excitements of city life, will crowd more and more into the towns. "The rich will feel more secure in the country, for one thing—more secure to pursue their extravagant self-indulgence, free from the reproachful gaze of the poor."

Evidently the author of "Around the World in Eighty Days" is a student of other matters besides the latest scientific theories and inventions. It is now in order for him to forecast some sort of automobile that will also take the denizens of the slums and sweatshops to the green fields and enable or induce them to make a living there.