The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun. THURSDAY, JULY 18, 1940. A PEACEFUL VICTORY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 169, 18 July 1940, Page 6

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun.

THURSDAY, JULY 18, 1940. A PEACEFUL VICTORY.

For th* caute that lacks a&s&tanec. For the trrong that reeds resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that tee can do.

In a country where progress and expansion have been continuous and normal, the contracting, narrowing effects of war are accepted because they are necessary, but accepted unwillingly and with regret. For that reason, if for no other, the completion by the American Clipper of the first "regular'' flight from San Francisco is a welcome relief,

a visible sign that scientific inventiveness is not all or everywhere perverted to the purposes of | destruction, a demonstration that there are victories of peace as well as of war. For the successful organisation and execution of a trans-ocean flight, of 8000 miles is a victory, remarkable even in these days when the. fact of human flight has long ceased to be marvellous. Nor is it a victory won without cost. Captain Tilton and his crew will see, in the Musick Memorial, Auckland's acknowledgment of a debt of gratitude and admiration owed to a pioneer and trail-blazer of the service which the American Clipper is opening. Something was learned at the cost of the lives of Captain Musick and his crew, and the increased sum of aviation knowledge, when applied, is felt by passengers as a sense of safety.

This Dominion welcomes each and every additional link with the outer world, for good communications are at least as important to it as to any other country. The Clipper arrives at a time when sea communications are not maintained without difficulty and danger, and when, also because of the war, the normal air-mail service to England is suspended. It offers the prospect of an alternative service, more direct and faster than any we have known, at a time when such a service is more than ever valuable. These are present considerations, but New Zealand also looks to the future, and Auckland especially sees in to-day's events— the arrival of the Tasman flying boat from Sydney and of the Clipper from San Francisco—the promise of a day not far distant when the Waitemata will have increased importance as one of the cross-roads of world aviation. That the war has not postponed the fulfilment of that promise, but rather has accelerated it, is not the least reason for rejoicing upon the arrival of the Clipper. Pan-American Airways are to be congratulated upon an enterprise especially helpful to ourselves at this time.