A WILD SCHEME.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIIC, Issue 14275, 16 August 1910, Page 7

A WILD SCHEME.

GIANT AERIAL EXPRESS. ( In about 12 months, London papers report, Baron Roenne, expects to have the London-Berlin aerial express in running order. Recently a press representative, found the baron at his oliice in the Hayniarket, busy over the plans and drawings for the new aerial wonder. He speaks German so well that the pressman took him for a German, and asked why lie had not developed his ideas in that country? "I am not a German," was the reply ; "1 am a Russian ; but I have spent niany years in Germany, studying the science of aerial navigation. It is of no use my trying to develop my inventions in Russia, because that country is altogether too backward. So I come to England—where the money is." This was, at any rate, a. candid statement of the position, with which no one can quarrel. "It's your money I want,'' he says, with engaging simplicity. 'the baron seems to have a. sublime faith in his scheme. The service to Berlin is only a. sort of trial trip, for we are informed that a passenger service to New York in seventv-two hours will be inaugurated, "travelling against a head wind of about fifty-five- miles an hour." Other services are "proposed" to Paris, Vienna, Rome, and St. Petersburg. As an encouragement to investors, he ■says airship shares will soon attain a. higher value than those of anv other industry, if only a tenth part of their possible earnings is realised. In his mind's eye he already sees the LondonNew York express readv to start, tilled with 3,081,210 cubic, feet of gas, with its hfteen propellers driven bv engines of 1,000 horse-power, and with its 400 passengers leaning over the bulwarks—or whatever answers to bulwarks on an air-ship. Nothing is said about luggage but probably that will be left to crawl oyer in antiquated old tubs like tile Lusitania.