AIR COMMUNICATIONS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24817, 17 January 1942, Page 7

AIR COMMUNICATIONS

EMPIRE'S POST-WAR PLANS WORLD TO BE GIRDLED RUGBY, Jan. 15. The Under-secretary for Air (Captain H. H. Balfour), speaking in London, said that the biggest job of postwar world reconstruction would be the building up of air communications, and he drew an imaginary picture of the routes which will be required. “ There will be a greyhound route of stratosphere lines, with flying stages of probably never less than 1000 miles and carrying urgent passengers, freight and mails. There vyill be main trunk routes connecting the capitals and other important centres. There 'will be feeder services spreading out from these capitals and the centres to outlying district? of each territory.” Captain Balfour added: “The greatest opportunity for adventure and achievement on the part of the young men of the world will lie in these fields. The British Commonwealth of Nations depends for its strength on unity, and unity depends on the ability to meet, talk, and trade with each other. The strength of the British Isles as the centre of the Commonwealth rests only upon the fact that it is the capital. We must link up the centre to outlying nations and outlying nations must link to others. Then alongside and co-operating with each other and the free nations of the world we can girdle the globe wltli a ring of civil air fleets flying for peace, but protected by strength. The war has not killed civil air communications. It has only diverted them from peace-time commercial aims to service in the war effort. Our civil communications link up to America. Africa, Egypt, India, Australia and New Zealand. All are kept going regularly. They also link up to Scandinavia and to Teheran and Russia. With equipment scarce and hard to come by owing to military priorities, this keeping open of our overseas air communications is a record of which those concerned in civil aviation can well be proud, “ One thing is certain in the future. The day of the backyard must give place to the policy of the open sky. For those who have fought with us and think with us the air lines of the future will be threads which will bind us ever closer together.”