NOTES OF THE DAY

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 159, 2 April 1937, Page 10

NOTES OF THE DAY

Two thousand one hundred young New Zealanders are candidates for twenty-four vacant commissions in the Royal Air force and the Royal New Zealand Air Force—and applications do not close until Monday next! Candidates are required to have passed the school certificate examination or its equivalent, and were recommended to be medically examined before applying. Ihe two thousand one hundred, therefore, are not a rabble. They are adventurers, certainly, full of the high spirits of youth; but adventurers of the finest type, mentally and physically. The defence of the country will be in good hands if entrusted to them. And not only its defence, one hopes, but its future in industry, commerce and the peaceful professions as well. The pioneering spirit that built New Zealand survives in. its young people to-day. Ways of life are different, and old-time pleasures perhaps seem dull and insipid; but the tradition of. the country’s founders has not been betrayed. The courage which eighty and ninety years ago fired young men with the zeal for colonising flowers again in the ambition of their great-grandsons to ride the skies.

For a few hours to-day, the officers and the crew of the PanAmerican Airways’ Clipper, which reached Auckland on 1 ttesday from San Francisco, will taste Wellington’s hospitality, during which time their craft, moored in the harbour, will no doubt be a centre of interest for townspeople. Between four and five thousand ratepayers, if they are to be consistent, will have to look upon the visitor as a curiosity in Wellington, but a herald of progress appropriate to other cities of the Dominion. Because four thousand six hundred odd ratepayers of Wellington voted against the proposal to borrow £70,000 (which the Government would have subsidised by a further £70,000) to complete intended developmental work at Rongotai and so provide the city with an adequate commercial airport. It may be argued that the Pan-American Clippers are going to come to Auckland without that city having to spend £lOO,OOO upon a ground to receive them. True; and possibly when Imperial Airways’ flyingboats are crossing the Tasman Sea they will come to Wellington, even though Wellington has no adequate land airport. But flyingboats do not operate on our internal air routes. Auckland will not rest content with being the terminus of the trans-Pacific service; she will make sure her land facilities are adequate to ensuie her a place of proper importance in internal aviation. So should