THE PUTARURU PRESS. THURSDAY, MARCH 7, 1929. WAY OF AN EAGLE.

Putaruru Press, Volume VII, Issue 278, 7 March 1929, Page 4

THE PUTARURU PRESS.

THURSDAY, MARCH 7, 1929. WAY OF AN EAGLE.

’Phone 28 - ■ - - P.O. Box 44 Office --- - Oxford Place

BORROWED plumes for literary flights are perhaps permissible so long as the object is worthy and not merely the parading of the peacock; at ar.y rate, the title of one of Ethel M. Dell’s stories, “The Way of An Eagle,” suits very well for our present soaring. Although there may be a very general appreciation of the likelihood that travel by airplane may become as common as locomotion upon land within the next quarter of a century, there is yet little-visualisation of the local needs of that coming time.

Within a short period there will be hundreds of machines in the air for every one new flying; friends and families will visit each other from Auckland to the Bluff over a weekend, much as they now go a couple of hundred miles by car. The coming ’plane will require little space in which to land, and the flapper will fly off to do her shopping in a Moth or similar type, which, with wings folded, can be put in an ordinary garage. The roofs of all our large buildings will be landing places, and in the small country centres a roof will be built across several premises. The motor ear will become obsolete, because the ’plane will traverse the load on its wheels just as easily as it does the air/ by gliding on its planes. In Australia to-day there are pilots who have been flying over the waste spaces, from station homestead to the towns, for 10 years without a mishap. The Queensland service has flown over 4,000,000 miles without as much as scratching the finger of a passenger or a mechanic. The multiplication of ’planes is going t{) ( create new traffic problems, including “ the cops of the air.” It is not too early for the ‘people of places like Morrinsville, Matamata and Putaruru to consider air travel and its landing requirements when securing and laying out public grounds, and in the roof designs and structural supports of new buildings. Looking- ahead is far better than being wise after the event: if we had looked ahead we would probably not have permitted the erection of kerbside petrol pumps, but rather insisted upon the modern style of stations upon private property; if we could look ahead sufficiently we would close up all small primary schools right away and go in for consolidation, thus giving our children an advantage over others in the race when they become men and women. All around us we see how we have suffered through dearth of imagination and foresight. A present flight of fancy may well land us on vantage ground for the future in the distance.