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Press, Volume LV, Issue 16424, 18 January 1919, Page 8

As soon as the armistice was signedj tho Dominion of Canada was commendably prompt in making arrangements for the reconstruction period. It was realised that by cancelling munition orders amounting to nearly £10,000,000 a month and employing 300,000 to 400,000 hands a serious industrial situation might be created. The first step was the creation of a Trade Mission to England, headed by Colonel Lloyd Harris, with tho object of securing a share in all Allied orders for re-building the destroyed portion of Europe. Canada, we learn from "The Times" correspondent, is prepared to finance all such orders, and the Mission took to England details of what the Dominion is prepared to do. Canadian ' railways are short of rails, engines, cars, and equipment, and tho Government was preparing to place immediately large orders. The Canadian shipbuilding programme is to be vigorously pushed ahead, and public works, dropped when war started, will be recommenced if necessary. These orders will keep the basic industries (steel and iron) busy during the reconstruction period, while agriculture and the number of fishing industries will probably be stimulated by peace.

Tlio comments of the Paris journals on the Kaiser's fall make interesting reading. , M. Gustave Herve, in the "Victoire," compares him to "a deflated Zeppelin." "Pertinax," in the "Echo de Paris," observes that the universal execration amid which the Kaiser lias been driven from the Imperial stage is the fitting conclusion to the baneful activity which has ended in the death or mutilation of 20,000 human beings. M. Saint Brice, in the "Journal," says: "It is a sad ending to a reign which had the dreams of Alexander, and has not even found the tragic Napoleonic apothesis. William 11. has not even been able to organise the grand orchestral finale which one would have expected from his task for staging. . . There is no excuse for him. Never did a prince inherit a more handsome legacy." It is worthy of note that a proposal that the Kaiser should be relegated to St. Helena was regarded by the majority of Frenchmen as an insult to Napoleon, and calculated deeply to wound French pride. As for the Crown Prince, we are told, "his personality is so insignificant that he has riot beon deemed worthy an obituary notice." • The capitulation of Medina, ten weeks after Turkey agreed to the terms of the armistice, which required her to surrender all her garrisons in the Hedjaz, Asir, Yemen, Syria, and Mesopotamia, is explained by the difficulty owing to the city's isolation, of communicating with Constantinople, and to the fact that the Turks had ingeniously used the mosque which shelters Mahomet's tomb as an ammunition dump, thereby ensuring the city's freedom from bombardment, as neither the Hedjaz Arabs, nor the British would outrage tho sentiment of the Moslem world by risking the destruction of one of the holy places of Islam. Medina —its full name signifies "the City of the Apostle of God"—is some 820 miles south-east-ward by rail of Damascus, in a wellwatered district, in which the datepalm grows luxuriantly. It is the resort of many pilgrims, for it is regarded by Mahometans as the most sacrod city, after Mecca, though pilgrimages to it aro not obligatory. It is surrounded by a solid stone wall, and its glory is, of course, tho Mosque, a spacious enclosed court between 400 ft and 500 ft in length. Burton, in the book in which he describos his famous and perilous journey to Medina and Mecca, gives a most interesting description of what ho saw there. AVe have heard nothing more lately of the proposal that Major-General Salmond should extend to Australia the successful flight which he mado last month from Cairo to Delhi. But the circumstances of that flight suggest that it was not fear of failure that would prevent a visit being paid to Australia by what an Australian writer has termed the "starlight express." The original purpose of General Salmond's flight from Egypt, we gather from a statement he mado at D«lhi, was to make a tour of inspection in Mesopotamia, but as the weather was favourable, the Air Ministry had or- i dered him to go on to India. He had : covered the 3233 miles in 47 hours 20 minutes, in an ordinary service ma- j chine without a hitch of any sort. In i the course of the journey the party had flown over the waterless desert between Damascus and Bagdad, 495 miles, in a few minutes under seven hours, and in India the stretch of 485 miles between Karochi and Xasirabad was covered in six and a half hours. Tho machine carried a day's water and

tho provisions and baggage of tho party, wlnlo petrol and spares were stored at depots along the route. And less than ten years ago Farman created a world's record by remaining three and a half minutes in the air, and won a prize of £2000 by flying about a thousand yards round a ring!

The statement, made, we assumo, with official authority, regarding the giant airships to bo constructed by tho British Admiralty, lends mors credibility to a cabled announcement appearing in a recent Sydney paper than it appeared to possess. In this message it was said that a commercial airship had been planned in England, to bo 1100 ft long, and carrying 200 tons, inclusive of passengers. It was to have a range of 20,000 miles, aud would l>c ablo to cruise for sixteen days without descending at a maximum speed of 95 miles por hour. This description of an airship with four times the capacity of a Zeppelin, taxed one's credulity rathor severely. But after all, there is much less difference between this projocted colossal airship and those designed by the Admiralty than thero is between the latest Handloy-Page and the Voisin machine, in which, as mentioned above, Farman won fame in 1909. If it is possible, as tho Admiralty experts evidently know that it is, to build an airship capable of carrying 60 tons at a speed of 60 to 70 miles an hour, with a range of 8000 miles, it should bo feasiblo to construct one with two and a half times that rango and ablo to carry 200 tons.