Will East Meet West?

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 375, 8 June 1928, Page 9

Will East Meet West?

AIR ROUTE OVER POLE Expert’s Romantic Prediction WILL East and West meet by an air route over Nortli Polar seas? The British Secretary of Air, Sir Samuel Hoare, in congratulating Sir George Wilkins on his last Arctic flight pointed out that the distance between England and Japan was only about 6,500 miles by the North Pole route, as against 11,000 miles by the ordinary airways. He discerned ahead a great possibility.

British Official Wireless

Bleed. 11 a.m. RUGBY, Thursday. A luncheon was given to-day by the British Government in honour of Sir George Wilkins, the Australian aviator, and Lieutenant Eielson, who recently flew together across the North Pole, and the Arctic Ocean, from Alaska to Spitzbergen. Sir Samuel Hoare, Secretary for Air, who presided, congratulated Sir George Wilkins on having been honoured by the King with a knighthood. . He referred to the fact that both Sir George and Lieutenant Eielson had made three Arctic flying expeditions, that would always hold a place in the records of exploration and discovery, and declared that their latest joint flight was the most conscpicuous and successful of all.

They had set themselves the task of crossing the Polar Sea from Alaska to Spitzbergen, by a new route. For three-quarters of their journey they were flying over a part of the world that had never been seen by any man. The weather and the visibility were bad. At one time, the temperature was 50 degrees below zero. At another, the wqrst storm that Spitzbergen has ever endured at this season of the year broke upon them. Yet

they continuously carried out their observations, and in the space of 20 flying hours successfully completed their splendid adventure. They had accomplished, not only a feat of bravery, but also a work of definite usefulness in value. The distance between England and Japan was about 6,500 miles by the route over the North Pole, as compared with over 11,000 by the ordinary living routes of to-day. Who should say that, with the development of the airship and the airplane, the Polar regions might not in the future become a regular and accepted route of swift travel between the West and the East ? What better testimony could be afforded that man was subduing by machinery the brute forces of Nature? We had only to compare the story of former Polar expeditions with that of this expedition. Ice-hound ships, troops of Eskimos, lines of dogs, long trails, months and often years of absence were a great contrast with the dash of these two men in a tiny machine for 20 hours through the air. Sir Samuel Hoare' made a sympathetic reference to the airship Italia, and expressed an earnest hope that her crew might survive what appeared to have been a disaster.