"THE YOUTH OF BRITAIN."

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20257, 17 May 1929, Page 10

"THE YOUTH OF BRITAIN."

To give free flights to children may seem to some older folk a strange and reckless idea, but Sir Alan Cobhara and the new aviation company in Britain, whose idea it is, know what they are about. A little while ago it was announced that mayors were to be specially privileged in this way, with a view to impressing on them the necessity for municipal action in reserving landing grounds. Now, thanks chiefly to an anonymous donor, there are to be 100,000 free flights for school children, these flights being so arranged that from 50 to 300 children in each town visited by Sir Alan Cobham's air liner will experience, probably for the first time, the sensation of flying. Sir Alan Cobham and his associates, in furthering the wishes of the company's supporter, can have no doubt that this way of popularising aviation is fraught with great possibilities. They know that this is a case where "appetite comes with eating." There must be many millions of children in the Empire with longings to go aloft in a "clipper of the clouds," and if Imperial Airways, Ltd., is to achieve its wide purpose, there must be caught the interest and confidence of the coming generation. Incidentally, the carrying out of this idea, embodied in the very name given to the new liner, "The Youth of Britain," will test the interest and confidence of parents, many of 1 whom will, no doubt, view it with some alarm. Yet this trepidation, should all go well in the first town visited, will surely be overborne; and it is to be expected that soon there will be 100,000 youthful Britons with an air sense, and many more itching to get it. Hitherto, children have in most instances served the cause of aviation almost exclusively by their heroworship : henceforth, as this novel idea is extended in its range, they will be in a position to serve it by narration of their own experience as proof of what can be done. As the Homeland becomes full of young folk practically acquainted with the possibilities of flight, there will assuredly be advanced, as Sir Charles Wakefield suggests, the wider-activity of Imperial aviation.