Untitled

Hokitika Guardian, 14 November 1933, Page 4

Addressing the International Air Traffic Association, Lord Londonderry, Secretary of State for Air, said the discovery of the means of flight had too oftc n lately been represented as a misfortune rather than as a blessing to mankind. In his considered view there could be no greater mistake. The aeroplane, in his opinion, was (destined to be a more potent instrument for peace in the world and for union

among tile nations than any other which, at present they possessed. If mis twentieth century was to go down to history as a period of progress he would venture to prophesy that it would be mainly ascribable to the improvement in the speed and rapidity of transport and. of the means of intercommunication which it would have witnessed. 'Owing, to the proximity of the earliest flying to the Great War ,which involved tlie whole energies of mankind, the first intensive development- of the aeroplane was as a weapon of war. Its uses for commercial intercourse were thus unduly delayed, and its true chartaccr was obscured. Invaluable and necessary as he believed the aeroplane to be as an integral part of the national forces of defence, that aspect of hying would, lie was convinced, sink into a minor and comparatively insignlicant place beside the far wider influence which, it would increasingly exercise in the everyday life of man as a means of bringing the nations of the world into closer and more immediate contact with each other. Distance was perhaps the greatest enemy of international understanding; and air travel, which was the swiftest means of human transport yet devised, must naturally he an influence for good, if by. means of the efforts of that and similar associations of an international chamcter its uses and possibilities were suitably organised and developed.