The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. THURSDAY, JANUARY 5. 1920. AIR, TRAVEL.

Hokitika Guardian, 6 January 1927, Page 2

The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. THURSDAY, JANUARY 5. 1920. AIR, TRAVEL.

Hitherto regular aeroplane .services have been confined to comparatively short routes, such as that between Loudon and Baris. Living in a. country where an aeroplane lias hardly ceased to he a novelty, New Zealanders probably have not yet realised the extent of this traffic in 'Europe. The fact that a Christchurch business man took an aeroplane to Blenheim and hack recently, was chronicled in the newspapers. In England such a thing is no longer regarded as news. The service from London to Cairo and India, which has figured in our' cable news lately, is something new. The liners that left Croydon carrying passengers for Egypt, are the pioneers of a service that is to begin operating regularly in about a fortnight’s time, and will eventually be extended to Australia and Capetown. Not much imagination is needed to see what this may mean to inter-Empire communications in peaey and war. It shows that the aeroplane’s radius of use is being steadily extended, and that, despite accidents, flying is growing more popular. The aeroplane began by being a toy. Then it developed into an engine of war. Now we are beginning to realise its possibilities in pence. The aeroplane and the airship arc making the world smaller. There is an airship building tliat is designed to travel from England to Australia in nine or ton days, an almost incredible saving of time. The new aeroplane service will greatly reduce the journey to Egypt, Mesopotamia, and India. Not all travellers who save time will fly the whole distance. A committee that was appointed a few years ago to consider how shinning services could ho speeded lip pronhesised that in the first stage of the transport revolution airpower would merely supplement seapower. This body suggested that aeroplanes might tender phips, just as taxicabs and trains do now. “Passengers from London may. for instance,” says Mr Archibald Hurd, ‘travel to Egypt by air and then pick ■up the steamer or motor ship to India or Australia or Now Zealand, thus saving about a week on the journey- By such expedients air power may Ivecoine an extension of sea power, and voyages to distant parts of the earth may he appreciably shortened.” Mr Hurd thinks it inconceivable that the air will supersede the sea ns a earner of goods, hut he also believes that the revolution may go much further than many people think. Mon and women will adjust their minds to the new conditions, “and once the air habit has been acquired, akin in many respects to the sea habit which, has become an instinct with ns, progress will be repid. and the dreams of swift transport, which are regarded by many persons to-dav as impossible of realisation. will he the commonplace experiences of every day life.” In a rerent article. Lord Thompson, who was Secretary for Air in the Labour Ministry, welcomes, the growth of public interest in aviation, hut declares that much more remains to he done. It must he realised, he says, that air power is as necessary to the maintenance

of the British Empire as sea power was to its establishment. The British have hitherto regarded the sea as their special province, "and the national character lias lent itself to the sea habit.” They must now master the pathways of tho air as they mastered those of the sea, and cultivate the air habit. The more immediate effect of this aeroplane enterprise will he to make travel between England arid the East and Australia and New Zealand more rapid. This will not concern the average traveller, who will not wish to be shot through the air between Cairo and London at the rate of one hundred miles an hour, hut it will he welcomed by many persons in a legitimate hurry. It will make inter-Empire consultation easier. It will enable distinguished persons in England, who now cannot spare the time to see the outer Empire. to visit distant parts. At Ihe hack of the enterprise, however, are tho unknown but not unimaginable possibilities of the new transport, which may revolutionise our methods of communications and impose new policies of defence.