THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS SATURDAY, MARCH 30, 1929. A PASSAGE TO INDIA.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20217, 30 March 1929, Page 10

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS SATURDAY, MARCH 30, 1929. A PASSAGE TO INDIA.

rti.\g from to-day, air mails v. j]J be run from Croydon, England, to Karachi, India, with a brief train journey from Bale through Italy to Genoa, the only interruption to coni tinuous flying. The period of the ! journey will be six days. The detail I of the arrangements is not unknown, ! 7 j for the plans have been long laid, ! and full information has been given 1 about them. The significance of this new, almost all by air, route to India, in its bearing on the progressive development of longdistance flying cannot be missed. Its importance as a great stage in the system j of air communication throughout the | Empire is immense. Yet a little j deeper beneath the surface of its I beginnings lies a story which tran- [ scends all the other sides of it in inter- | est and historic value. Anew route to i India—what part did this dream ! play in promoting voyages of dis- | covery, exploration, the opening up lof a new world for exploitation, I finally colonisation by the nomads of Europe? To what extent did the desire for a new route to India encourage that spirit of adventure and of daring that laid the foundations of the British Empire? Tracing the movements back to first causes, the lure of India and the spice islands of the East was the motive force that set moving first the Portuguese, then the Spaniards, later the Dutch and the English, until every quarter of the globe had been opened up and colonists had been planted in practically every place where the European could Jive. Though the connection is more recondite, the early exploration of Australia and New Zealand is not unconnected with the movement so launched. All begun from the desire for a new, a quicker passage to India. This has now been provided in a fashion then undreamed of, and, by the irony of circumstance, it follows largely the route used through the centuries by the caravans, before the Cape of Storms had been doubled, or the route by the Horn dared by early navigators.

An account of all that was done in the search for the new way to India would fill many volumes. An endeavour to estimate the results that followed would involve writing a history of the world covering centuries. Even a catalogue of voyages and adventurers would be of formidable length. Yet a few of the outstanding achievements resulting from the lure of India can be picked out easily. The beginning goes back virtually to the opening years of the fifteenth century, when Prince Henry the Navigator, patron and inspirer of Portuguese seamen, encouraged them to seek the way round Africa. He did not live to see his dream realised, but the feats of Bartholomew Diaz, in rounding the Cape of Good Hope, and of Vasco da Gama, in actually reaching India by that route, trace back directly to the impulse he set in motion. Then, from another source, followed the voyages of Columbus, of Cabot, of Vespucci, of Magellan, and all the others who opened up whole new worlds. Later iri the field, English seamen sought the North-West Passage and the North-East Passage, the secondnamed adventure beginning the trade with Russia. These voyages and discoveries had little to do with trading to India, excepting only the discovery of the route via the Cape of Good Hope. It was in a different age, and by different means, that the shorter, more direct, passage was achieved, when Ferdinand de Lesseps cut the Suez Isthmus and restored the old Red Sea route to greater importance than ever it had had before. So it happened that when the Panama Canal was cut, making feasible the voyage from Europe to India by sailing west, that possibility was counted little among | its valuable features. Long before then, all the forces set moving by the search for new routes had spent themselves, but the part played in world history by men seeking India stands imperishable. It cannot be obscured even to-day, when a passage, newer and almost incredibly faster, is about to be begun. The air route to India, as stated, involves a reversion to tho region so often traversed by the camel trains following the land bridge, and dating back to the furthest mists of recorded time. Genoa, coming into the story as the leaping-off place for Africa, recalls how Mediterranean ports flourished and waxed powerful under the old system of trading. It cannot be expected that the clock will be put back sufficiently to restore to them their former glories. Tho airman works by different methods, is independent of many stopping places to which the medieval seamen and merchants were bound. The fall in power and prestige these Mediterranean city republics suffered was one great effect of the establishment of alternative routes to India. The result was, as indicated, the laying of vast new lines of communication, eventually of greatly developed means of

communication. Tbe air mail service about to be inaugurated is hoped to be but one stage in fostering cetf lines of communication affecting a great entity not existent | in those 31idd]e Ages—the British I Empire. Firet to India, then to Singapore, later to Australia and New Zealand, with a lateral line linking South Africa, this is the development planned from the great beginning. There cannot follow any era of discovery and colonisation such as succeeded the voyages of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The world is now too well mapped and appropriated. In another way the results may be as epochal, for no limits can be set to what may follow this closer linking of the great comraonweaith. \S ith little else perhaps ;n common, the opening of a new route to India may join past with present by ushering in great world movements of profound significance.