MACHINES, NOT MEN

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 794, 15 October 1929, Page 14

MACHINES, NOT MEN

PLEASING THE GERMANS BERLIN AS A CENTRE In Berlin cinemas an isolated and feeble clap greets the figure of President Hindenburg when he appears on the screen; more enthusiastic, but just as isolated, applause is given to the more spectacular type of revolutionary in Russian! films; stony silence greets everybody else, not excepting members of the Government at Conferences or ex-royalties disporting themselves in studied bourgeois simplicity. But at a picture of the steamer Bremen, of the airship Graf Zeppelin, or of the great flying boat DO X, the house rises. When a German car wins an international race it is the car, not the driver, who is cheered on the films. Pictures of these great triumphs of German technique have formed part of news reels from the day the first rivet was driven. Those responsible for national propaganda have not been slow to realise the way the spirit of the nation was tending. Germany loves the Bremen as she loves Frederick the Great; national feeling toward the Graf Zeppelin on her world flight is as the thankfulness of an Englishman at his King’s recovery. It is typical of the nation that plans which a few months ago were very nebulous are already assuming definite shape and outline. The success of the Bremen in her first speed test —which is not taken as her full capacity—appears definitely to have quashed the original hopes of a regular trans-atlantic service of airships. The Bremen’s catapult for getting mails quickly into port, justifies the claim of the liners for greater reliability, independent of weather conditions. Trans-Siberian Service

The present German air plans, worked out by Captain Bruns, chief of a study commission, are concerned with a trans-Siberian service, on the one hand, and a trans-Pacific one on the other. For the former it is calculated that three airships would suffice, of a type larger than the Graf Zeppelin, the two to be in regular service from Berlin to Yokohama, the third to remain in a hangar at Krasnojarsk in readiness for any emergency. These would provide for four flights a month. Junctions on this route would be Leningrad (which would be important for passengers from Russia in Europe, the Secession States and Finland) and Charbin for Asiatic Russia and North China. Used in connection with flying boats from Shanghai. Tientsin, and Hankau, a superlatively good Far-Eastern service could be organised for urgent mails and, parcels and passengers. The meteorological conditions along this route are, according to present reports, as favourable as an airship can ever expect to find.

For the second route, the great flying boats of the type of the DO X, and the new Rohrbach liomar would be used. The trial flights of the latter took place this week, and more than justified hopes. The Luft Hansa has accepted both boats and ordered more of the same type. The route would be presumably from a Baltic port to the Canary Islands, Cape Verde, and Pernambuco, and negotiations are said to have advanced so far that the necessary loan of three hundred thousand pounds from the German Government can be guaranteed. This is considerably less than three and a half millions pounds which the trans-Siberian project would require. Berlin as a Centre Both types of boats are declared to be able to fly longer stretches than the Pacific route requires and to settle down upon the water with ease, no matter what seas are running. The saving of time over the Pacific would, it is calculated, make this service far more necessary than the originally planned trans-Atlantic one, though more sea bases along the route wiil be required, running up the expenses of inauguration. Already with this city’s peculiar love for the superlative, there is much talk of Berlin as the “Metropolis of Europe.” The city, it is claimed, is peculiarly fitted by her geographical position to be the central station for trans-continental and world flights It is only, runs the boast, through superior technical skill that Berlin has become the most important centre for the international news service by telephone and wireless. Advantages she alone can offer to the other air lines of Europe should give her the same importance in the air. Thff German Reich as a whole, the federal State of Prussia, and the citv of Berlin are willing to combine in enlarging the present airship base and mooring-mast at Staaken. There is a strong desire that the English airship lines to Egypt and Australia should be directed along this Staaken route, but no definite information is as yet forthcoming as to what England has decided. In regard to the financing of the Trans-Siberian line hopes are placed on America. Everything depends upon the success of the present round-the-world trip, but a lawyer from Fnednchshafen is en route to New }orK and there are reasons to believe that, once successful, one at least of Dr Eckener’s dreams may be considered well within realisation.