COLONIAL AVIATION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume L, Issue 15489, 22 December 1913, Page 6

COLONIAL AVIATION.

The Home movement for initiating colonial air fleets is admirably patriotic, but a more necessary movement is one for the colonial training of "airmen." .The Dominion Defence Department is supposed to be in possession of an airship which might be made a training machine for ambitious New Zealanders, but there , is apparently nobody to use it or to train others with it. Auckland amateurs seem to have done more for national aviation than the Defence Department, and it is deeply to be regretted that with such' magnificent material nothing is administratively done to develop it for national purposes. Aviation is .no longer an experiment ; it is a science. Every European nation is building swarms of airships and training hundreds of aviators, while our in-

teresting neighbours, the Japanese, are known to be working hard in the same . direction, which is considered by many to be peculiarly suited to their characteristic qualities. Meanwhile, British colonies are doing little or nothing to acquire skill in an art which may possibly prove to be the dominating factor in international war.