AEROPLANES. AND LIFE.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVII, 10 December 1927, Page 9

AEROPLANES. AND LIFE.

YVTIY is it that every aeroplane ’’ has wheels? Away up there in tho clear air of the bright blue ssy, what need can there be for wheels? But like you or mo or any one of us the aeroplane had to creep before it could run and run before it could fly. If you know a text about walking and then running and then mounting up with wings, then that is the one for to-day. It is a fine thing to admire and wonder at the lark soaring into the blue, but it is good to remember that its nest is upon the ground, in a lowly place. And the aeroplane’s wheels remind us that even the greatest and most wonderful lives of the men and women who rose hign above their neighbours began very often in a quiet and simple way. You never know to what heights yon may arise from even the humblest beginning. In the early days of flying you might have seen a dozen or so of workmen all gathered behind an aeroplane that was about to start, and all holding on to it, while the propeller whizzed and the engine roared. It was their work to hold it back until it was ready to fly. Whenever it had sufficient strengthen it, they let it go and off it weiA. zooming Sometimes you would have imagined, by its tugging eagerness to lie off. that tho machine was most impatient at the delay. At any rate in the earlj- days of the lives of many boys and girls I seem to have noticed the same impatience. "There is so-and-so. able to do this or that, to go here or there, just as he pleases, and here are we, held back, kept in tied up, and it is hard to bear.” Have you heard that kind of talk? Yet we all know that the early holding in is the best thing that could happen to us. Don't try to flv too soon. You need to be kept from doing what you want to do many a time, just because your father or your mother knows when you have enough strength in you to be let go. All the “crashes” in actual living happened to prodigal boys and girls who went off “on their own” too soon. We are told in the Bible of one young lad who slipped out of his father’s loving grasp and "crashed’’ in a swine-trough. Air pilots will tell you that it is safer to fly high. There are two reasons why. For one thing, high flying takes you up out of reach jf treacherous air-currents, the windpuffs that sweep suddcnlv round tha corners of the mountains and the airy

whirlpools near the ground; and for another, if by a bad chance anything goer wrong, you have room, it you are high enough, to right yourself before you come to grief. It is certainly the safest thing to live your life on the highest possible level. It does take you up past the tempta-tion-currents that belong to lowdown things, and it gives you a far better chance to pull up jf you do make a slip.

There is one thing that you can see doing its actual work when you are in an aeroplane. It is a very small plane at the back, and its purpose is to enable the pilot to rise higher or to descend. When it points up, the whole great machine lifts up its head and soars. When it points down, the aeroplane dror.ps its head and dives earthward. In real life amongst schoolboys 1 have heard that called tlie "pecker.” It is the thing in you that settles what direction you r life is going to take, up or down. Sometimes it ia cn'ied your heart. If you keep your heart up, the chances are that you will wish to hold your head up. But if you let it down, down you go until you may wish you had never been born.

Fliers will also tell you that “banking” is a dangerous thing. Banking in the usual sense is not only a safe thing but a very good policy for us all. The fliers mean leaning over to turn a corner. In life, it means leaning over towards something beneath you. Many lives have been wrecked bv a side-slip. There is an evil thing that you sometimes look at, think about. Be very careful lest you fall. Wo have all known for a long time that the higher you go the further yon can see: but we have not always understood how small our troubles seem when we look at them from a height. During the great, war. onr men looking down from the fighting aeroplanes could see at times tiny puffs of smoke, and little ant-like specks moving on the ground. The little puffs wore really terrible explosion of shells from treat runs, and the tiny ants were men—and not only men, but soldiers, enemy soldiers strong men armed. Yet from the sky they were Just of no consequence at all. That is how it happens when w e try to lift up our lives near to a high standard. The powerful things, the great temptations. the strong habits that struggled with us. shrink and weaken, and if we reach a high enough level we may get clean out of sight 51 things that had power to slay us.