This Bondage

Is the title of a hilarious 1929 book by Commander Bernard Acworth, D.S.O, R.N. In fact, the full title is:

This Bondage: A Study of the 'Migration' of Birds, Insects and Aircraft, with some reflections on 'Evolution' and Relativity.

Hark at those scare quotes! Acworth was a fervent creationist, big buddies with C. S. Lewis, and co-founder of the Evolution Protest Movement. He also wrote another bonkers book that attempted to persuade its readership that cuckoos are hybrids between male cuckoos and female birds of other species.

So what does This Bondage argue?

1. Birds don't migrate on purpose; they're passively carried around the globe by prevailing winds. This explains other phenomena too, such as birds deserting their nests (winds blow them away).
2. And the same applies for aircraft, explains Acworth.
   
3. Thus international aviation is physically impossible.

The book is such a feast of wonders that it's hard to excerpt, but here's a flavour from pages 187-188:

Turning again to sucessful flights and projected routes from North Africa to South America, we at once observe the significance of the steady and permanent north-east trade wind. But where can we find the return voyages? In South America, European aircraft will become as indigenous as are European birds reported to become indigenous in the Cape Verde Islands. Flights to and from South Africa follow the route, and to a great extent, the seasons, of the swallows. There is indeed no exception to the rule that aircraft in long flights migrate with the wind and are seldom seen again in the land of their origin if the prevailing wind is from one direction, as in the northern hemisphere it is. Thus all 'migratory' aircraft in the northern hemisphere gradually accumulate in the East until they are destroyed from one cause or another, when they are replaced from the 'breeding grounds' in the West.

A migratory aircraft, fresh from its breeding grounds in the West...