FLIGHTS OF IMAGINATION.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 25, 31 January 1928, Page 6

FLIGHTS OF IMAGINATION.

Every mother in Italy is to have ail aviator son and every girl is to dream that she has been chosen by an aviator. Italian schoolgirls are to enter for a story competition in which their dreams are to be recounted in narrative form. Boys aro also offered prizes for stories dealing with the virtue, audacity, courage and enterprise of modern aviators. Mussolini said that it was his ambition that Italy should have such a huge fleet of aeroplanes that their wings would darken the sky over the whole of Italian soil. One newspaper had the misfortune to put "wijrs" instead of "wings" in printing this message, which caused another paper to remark that if they left their wigs to darken the sky they would'be able to go for the enemy baldheaded. Insurance companies in Pome think that experienced aviators are just as safe from an insurance point of view as an ordinary citizen carrying out liis every dav duties in the Italy of to-dav. Probably they are a great deal safer, seeing that the Mafia alone is credited with 700 murders and 1200 robberies accompanied with violence, while the Fascist gangs have terrorised whole districts and caused the deaths of many citizens. Lovers of freedom may take to the air as being the last home of freedom under the Fascist regime. Mussolini has many rivals for the supremacy of the air According to some authorities, Russia has now 1521 aeroplanes, and in eight months will have 3000. America is contemplating making a bid for the largest air force in the world, and France already has one of the greatest fleets of aeroplanes. The Italians will have to do something more than dream about aviator sons and aviator suitors if they wish seriously to challenge all the other countries of the world for air supremacy. Dreams and story competitions for school children l<ased on the bombastic utterances of Italian Fascists may produce llights of imagination, but tluy are little likely tr> have much practical result. Hot air may float children's toy balloons, i but it takes driving power to lift heavier-than-air i machined] , . « —WJM.