FROM LONDON TO EVERYWHERE.

Otago Witness, Issue 3396, 16 April 1919, Page 59

FROM LONDON TO EVERYWHERE.

TRAVEL ROMANCE BEYOND ALL DREAMS.

Tho ideal pilot for commercial work would be one who, having served his apprenticeship in a sailing vessel, passed in navigation, end worked in steamers, had joined tho cavalry at the beginning of the war, transferred to tho Air Service, and has been employed in long-rango reconnaissance and night bombing raids.—General Sir P. H. Sykes.

" The aeroplane of warfare was required to .combine the qualities of the hawk, -Eho skylark, the swift, and the tumbler pigeon," says the Observer. " The peace machine must have the punctual and regular habits of the ' homer.' And this means a constant battle with, natural forces, different in character, and less perilous (we hope) to I life, but not less" real nor demanding less courage and coolness than the daily rough-and-tumble with Eokker and Aviatik in the clouds. "In many respects the quality of daring and courage required by pilots of the air are no greater tha* that possessed by the Elizabethan adventurers who burst into seas unknown in mere cock-boats. The Sign-Manual.— '<

"The way of the air is not yet open for heavy commodities. But already work is being done to exploit its opportunities for bringing about swifter communion between mind and mind. " The telegraph and the telephone, even in their sublimated wireless form, have not superseded the post. The signmanual is still necessary to the dealings of man with man. It is, therefore, to an aerial postal service that the minds of the pioneers have first turned. It has been confidently prophesied that, in the near future, no place in the world will be more than four days distant from London. Major-general Sir F. H. Sykes, more cautious, is content to predict the delivery of the London mail in Delhi within eight days. But that, we may conclude, is an estimate of what is possible at present and not an attempt to foresee the future. " Let us take the journey to India as the starting-point. The route, according to General Sykes, will be by Marseilles, Pisa, Rome, Tarahto, Crete, Cairo, Damascus, Bagdad, Basrah, Bander Abbas, and so to Delhi. Thus it traverses the cradle= of the earliest civilisation of man, where,' from forgotten ages, he has dreamed his dreams of flying. "First by the Icarian Sea, where the legendary pioneer of aviation met his fate; over Palestine, where Isaiah saw his vision of the six-winged Seraphim ; through Assyria, where winged, creatures are the feature of all the' monuments. For these thousands of years man has been -waiting till man should discover that which the sa§e declared to be past finding out—the way of a bird through the air. And now,' to the nations of the North and the West, the aeroplane is a commonplace. The Eastern also, owing to the war, has ceased to regard it with wonder, though he may with dread. Cairo Air Junction.—

"Cairo is destined to be one of the great aerial junctions of the world. It will not only be the extra-European starting point of the Indian mail route, but also that of the line to the Cape. It is just 20 years ago since Kitchener recovered the Soudan from the barbarism of Mahdist rule, and already not only a railway but an aerial < route is planned across it to link up the British South African .possessions with the Mother Country. " We are numb to sensation nowadays. There seems nothing remarkable in landing at El Obeid —though the widow of Hicks Pasha is only recently dead, —and continuing the flight by way of Victoria Nyanza and Tanganyika into- Rhodesia, the Transvaal, and Cape Colony. But look on it from the point of view of — let us say—the Masai warrior, -who will tell the time by the drone of the mail speeding homeward at 100 miles an hour as accurately as by the sun. Imagine Africa seamed with aerodromes, meteorological stations, and wireless stations, and think of Speke, Livingstone, and Stanley plodding on to the great lakes! Yet these first discoveries are within the memory of living men. To India, China, Australia.— " In Delhi, the ancient capital of the Moguls, restored to its pride of place in India as the Coronation gift of the KingEmperor, we may perhaps find another of the world's great aerial junctions. Hence, the air mail may start on its way to China, over the plateau of Tibet, or the Burman jungles. Hence, too, other lines may wing their way through Siam and the Malay Peninsula to Borneo, Celebes, and Timor, whence they will find the handiest jtimping-off place for a landing on the island continent of Australia. This they will traverso from north to south, linking up Port Darwin with Sydney and Melbourne, and so, by Hobart, to New Zealand. This is a vision only. —The Land Stations.— The problem of long-distance flying is less a problem of the air than of the ground. The proper organisation of the aerial ways demands a continuous chain of posts which must, in many cases, be established in places remote from civilisation and yet be equipped with all its most recent appliances. The outlay will be enormous before even the route to India and that from Cairo to the Cape can bt> adequately organised. Each station is estimated to cost £60,000. Each post will confirm and guarantee the White Man's civilisation. It will be a centre from which Its influence will radiate among the "fluttered folk and and wild" of the Dark Continent and Mid-Asia. It is said that the coming of

the aeroplane has already had a most wholesome effect on the turbulent Pathan tribes. It acts like a kite over a covey of partridges. Yet its influence makes wholly for peace. It cannot be used to serve ambition, as an instrument for annexation. Its coercive influence is that of the beneficent policeman, and, in the aerial stations to be established, the League of Nations will find the best and readiest means of enforcing its peace upon the tribes whose restlessness has so often been the source of jealoucie3 and contentions among the nations.