INTERNAL AIR MAILS

Evening Post, Issue 13, 16 January 1936, Page 10

INTERNAL AIR MAILS

MAIN TRUNK SERVICE

GREAT PACIFIC AIRWAYS

LINKING THE CENTRES

(Special to the "Eveninj Post.")

AUCKLAND, This Day.

Interesting views relating to the future carriage of mails by air throughout the Dominion were expressed yesterday by' Mr. Trevor S. Withers, of Auckland, manager of Aviation Development, Limited, and organiser of Great Pacific Airways (N.Z.), Limited.

"The provision of an efficient system for the aerial transportation of mails between all the important centres of the_ Dominion has been one of the major objectives governing the establishment of my company's ■ AucklandDunedin trunk service,!' stated Mr. Withers. "The establishment of this service in a few months' time will enable mails closing each morning at Auckland to be ; delivered to centres as far south as Dunedin by 3.30 p.m. the same day, while the reverse will also apply in the case of our daily northbound service. It is not too much to say that the inauguration of the Great Pacific trunk service should revolutionise the existing postal facilities of the Dominion. Wellington, for example, at which the Union Airways service will not call, will be provided with morning mail and passenger services to both Auckland and Dunedin. Mails posted in Wellington up to 10.30 a.m. or 11 a.m. will be in the post offices of Auckland and Dunedin respectively well before 4 p.m. each day. The proposed co-ordination of our trunk service at Palmerston North with rail, motor, and air services for Hawke's Bay and Poverty Bay will also provide the business communities of Napier and Gisborne with a one-day mail service to Wellington, Christchurch, and Dunedin in the south. Mails leaving Auckland and Dunedin for the West Coast of the South Island will be Similarly expedited. All of the principal centres of the Dominion will, in short, be brought within a few hours of each other by the company's trunk service." FEEDER SERVICES. ' With the establishment'of this major trunk service, said Mr. Withers, "feeder" services would be estate lished connecting Whangarei and the far north with Auckland, and connects ing Invercargill with Dunedin. "It will then be possible for both passengers and mails to be transported in a single day from as far north as Kaitaia to as far south as Invercargill," said Mr. Withers. As soon as his company's trunk service was established it was proposed also to inaugurate a daily Auckland-Rotorua service via Hamilton. This would later in all probability either be extended to Gisborne or would coordinate at Rotorua with an extension of the present Napier-Gisborne service operated by East Coast Airways, BtcL, thus bringing both Napier and Gisborne within less than three hours of Auckland. "Our proposals relating to the carriage of mails by my company have not yet been considered by the Government," said Mr. Withers, "but it is anticipated that these will receive consideration in the comparatively near future. I am personally quite confident that these proposals will receive tlie favourable consideration to which they wiljr. be obviously ■entitled, as the attitude of the new Government towards all matters, pertaining to civil aviation has already been shown to be both progressive and sympathetic." ' : OVERSEAS ARRIVALS. • Referring to the act that both the trans-Tasman and trans-Pacific air services would terminate at Auckland, Mr. Withers said that here again the trunk service of Great Pacific Airways would provide invaluable facilities for the rapid transport of overseas passengers and mails throughout New Zealand. Both of these services were, he stated, designed to arrive at Auckland early in the morning, and passengers and mails for the south would be immediately transported southwards by the Great Pacific Airways service. By the time these? trans-Tasman and trans-Pacific services were in operation said Mr. Withers, , his company would also be operating a direct express air service between Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch,. and Dunedin, and this would enable passengers and mails to be delivered in Dunedin by 1 p.m. of the day upon their arriving in Auckland from overseas. "In view of the fact that the existing lack of navigational and ground organisation facilities must continue for some months to prohibit the estabfshment of the Auckland-Dunedin service," concluded Mr, Withers, the consideration of my company s airmail proposals the Government has up to the present time not been a matter of vital importance We intod however, in the near future to submit these proposals to the Government, and, as I have already said, we have no doubt at all as to their xeceiving most favourable considerationquered him; for it has put into his . hands a-weapon which, he .can turn only against himself. He has acquired physical powers which it is beyond his moral capacity to use aright.1 The article is written to defend what some people call useless knowledge and points out that the whole of human history and literature, as well as philosophy, is the ' record of man s search, practical or theoretical, for the supreme good of humI** life; and the classics are for us tfcj. record of the earliest and still, in sc }M respectithe most clear-sighted, col JSinis effoj ■ to attain that ultimate goc L Scientific method is not, and can i-sv^r be, a>= plicable in this field of study. Incidentally, the writer declares that no amount of elaboration ,of the most delicate, apparatus will ever enable anyone to judge the worth of a picture or poem, to solve an ethical problem, • or to decide a question in theology. Yet these are just the issues which most profoundly and permanently affect mankind. "I agree with those who contend that knowledge is of little value unless it improves our nature and expresses itself in human betterment—moral as well as intellectual. It is not enough to sharpen the mind alone. Education must miserably fail if it is limited to the development of tool or machineskill and of mere intellectual power— . that is to say, to that which is entirely related to the realm of material values. Conduct and character are essential to good living, efficient parentage, wholesome family life, social purity, civic righteousness, individual and-national strength. It is strength of character with high moral standards that can alone use education to good ends. 1 "Civilisation, which is a thing of the spirit, is dependent on the quality of the spirit of the units, the character. the ideals, and actions of the social groups of men and women who compose it. We are bound up in the sheaf of life together, and our interests from the lowest to the highest and from the highest to the lowest are inextricably interwoven. If, for instance, the health, the culture, and moral education of any has been neglected, all society and each of its members must suffer as a result. In a truly cultured and ethically enlightened democracy it is intellect and character that constitute the value of a people."