The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND TUESDAY, JUNE 25, 1929. PREENING WINGS

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 698, 25 June 1929, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND TUESDAY, JUNE 25, 1929. PREENING WINGS

A CERTIFICATE of honesty lias been presented by an official f* Committee of Inquiry to the crew of the monoplane Southern Cross which recently was lost and found in the wilds of Northwest Australia. Innocent as doves, the famous flyers of the Pacific and the Tasman Sea may now preen their wings and fly over wide oceans again in quest of greater triumph. The report of the expert committee is fair and in perfect accord with the evidence that was submitted to it in the course of its searching investigation of circumstances which undoubtedly had aroused some suspicion and not a little gossip, touched occasionally with malice. Nothing was found in the. inquiry to impugn the honesty of any member of the crew. Some features of their misadventure may have suggested ingenuousness and even a surprising stupidity, hut it was free of anything like premeditated trickery. The mishap was not a knavish stunt. Distinguished airmen, who already had made the whole world ring with plaudits of their valour and achievement in the air over vast spaces, did not lose themselves in their own backyard and remain lost for thirteen days merely for the sordid purpose of evoking national sympathy and increased financial support. Indeed, it was made clear from the outset of sensational rumours and allegations that the monetary value of the venture was not such as to tempt honest men to become knaves and scoundrels. They would have been more likely to gain a greater sum of money by flying unerringly to their distant goal with such rapid thoroughness as to add fresh laurels to their fame. Everybody will be glad that the moral side of the airmen’s experience has been revealed and established without a blemish, and it is to he hoped that, in fairness for their future enterprise, a quick and complete end will be made to malicious comment and suspicious thoughts. Their only fault was human proneness to errors of judgment, and the glaring publicity that has been given to this proved weakness in their case should have the beneficial effect of compelling air-voyagers to perfect their organisation of great flights, avoid everything that might smack of rich stunts, and fly courageously and competently only for the development of a new element in high progress. And it may he taken for granted that the crew of the Southern Cross, now poised like migratory birds in readiness for quick flight in the first favourable circumstances, will have learnt an impressive, if an embarrassing lesson. It is not to be imagined that they ever will attempt to fly again overseas without a hatchet or a hammer, other essential tools, and enough food and water to stay them in perilous emergency and adversfly. Though the Committee of Inquiry has exonerated the prominent airmen from any and every real or imaginary charge of dishonesty and money-seeking concealment in a wilderness, it has not decorated them altogether in white raiment. To be quite candid on the subject, its exoneration of the monoplane’s crew has a wry quality. On the score of foolishness and certain failings in organisation the experts’ report does not enhance the reputation of the airmen as technicians. While there was no occasion for impugning their honesty in long suffering of an isolated and unenviable plight, the committee found reason for censuring them for lack of initiative and intelligence. For example, theft failure to use eighteen gallons of petrol in starting beacon signals of distress has been described fairly by the committee “as inexplicable.” Then every amateur radio enthusiast in Australia and New Zealand still wonders in amazement why the wireless operator with the marooned crew of the Southern Cross did not convert his receiving set into a transmitter and make an effort at telling an anxious nation where the giant monoplane was lost. Amateurs here, with no pretence at all at possessing resourceful ingenuity, have maintained communication both with England and Australia with transmitters using no more power than that required for a pocket torch. Unfortunately, Mr. McWilliam, a New Zealander, preferred to listen-in for messages from radio stations which did not know the locality and plight of the lost plane, or, when not listening, entertained his companions with the music of a mouth-organ. The committee has been very severe on the remissness of the flying radio expert, and nothing more need he added to its criticism. It may be, of course, that the wireless man was the scapegoat of the party. The committee, too, was not impressed by Flight-Lieutenant Ulm’s evidence and diary, the latter being open to some suspicion. Perhaps Mr. Ulm made the most of a “sob story”; if he did, the report about it provides a stinging rebuke. Meanwhile, the inquiry should lead to the introduction of rigorous regulations and the prevention of hazardous flight stunts.

THE REWARD

SEVENTY-TWO years old and too feeble to express his thanks, Sir Ronald Ross, director-in-chief of the Ross Institute for Tropical Diseases was helped forward to receive the gold medal awarded triennially by the West London Medical and Chirurgieal Society. Sir Ronald is not only heavy with years, hut also with honours. He has been knighted by the King, has been awarded the Nobel Prize, has more medals than he knows what to do with . . . and yet, in his declining years, disabled by partial paralysis, he has been forced to sell the archives relating to his discoveries and recently subscriptions were sought to raise a fund that the scientist and Lady Ross might be free of financial worries in their old age. It is not a new story, hut it is rather a pathetic commentary on our social system that a man who has given the best years of his life to altruistic research work, and spent every penny of his money to save humanity from one of its many scourges, should in his declining years he faced with penury. Sir Ronald Ross made malaria his special study. It was he who discovered the evil tricks of the Anopheles mosquito; he who laid down effective methods for a large-scale reduction of malaria. To obtain adequate testimony to his work one would have to visit all the tropical lands of the world where determined war has been waged against the Anopheles. Dr. Sangninetti, speaking at the presentation to the old scientist, said that Sir Ronald -would have done better to have invented a new boot polish. That is true. A smiling film star of eighteen years, a tenore robusto in grand opera, the manufacturer of a salve guaranteed to remove all facial blemishes overnight may receive fabulously high reward, while the man who makes the world safer for humanity receives, possibly, a vote of thanks and a medal! It is inconceivable that England will allow Sir Ronald Ross to suffer. By this time, in all probability, his future welfare will he assured. But it is a thousand pities that, some of the publie-spirited benefactors of the Old Land do not establish a fund so that those who have given their lives and their fortunes to the furtherance of science may be indemnified against bitter poverty when their days of activity are ended.