THE-EMPIRE CHAIN

Evening Post, Issue 20, 23 July 1935, Page 10

THE-EMPIRE CHAIN

TASMAN LAST LINK

(From "The Post's" Representative.)

SYDNEY, July 18,

There, remains only the link frqm Sydney to New Zealand to complete the modern Imperial chain. That, too, has been given considerable prominence recently, by Sir Charles Kingsford Smith's proposal for an experimental service, his advocacy that such a service should be controlled by Australians and New Zealanders, and the consequent reaction in .London to this view. Sir Charles Kingsford Smith, who left for New Zealand today, en routt to the United States, said that the statements cabled from London were clouding the issue.. The proposal that his company had made to the Commonwealth Government had been planned as an integral part of Imperial air communication. It was unfair to suggest that the Australian proposal was detrimental to the aims of the ultimate development of Imperial air communications. Its. adoption would prove the sincerity of the purpose of Australians and New Zealanders to co-operate with the British Government in the earliest possible establishment of the one link in the.lmperial air-mail plan which was of utmost importance to the Empire's most distant units. He had recommended the use of American flying-boats because they were the only type that had proved themselves suitable for the purpose, but as soon' as England built flyingboats suitable for the service his company would use them. Sir Charles Kingsford Smith will retrieve in the ■ United States the Lockheed Altair monoplane which he bought to compete in the Melbourne Centenary air race and which he later flew from Australia to California. It will be shipped to England, whence he will fly it back to Sydney. In January he proposes to go in it on a good-will flight to Japan on a schedule that will enable the 8000 miles to be done in four days. . . |