possible, at what cost per kilometre it would be possible to operate such services.

The Italian Government has, since the beginning of the war, connected several of her important commercial centers by means of a system of alighting-grounds; and along these "airways" already an experimental mail service is being operated-although, naturally, the needs of the moment are almost entirely military.

It will certainly be unwise, right at the beginning of commercial aviation, for Governments to expect an air service to be completely self-supporting, or to operate at once with such profit as might be shown, say, by transport systems on land or sea-which, of course have had years of organization and experience. What Governments must do, and particularly the British Government, is to ensure to the operators of these first air-mail services a freedom from financial anxiety during the period when their main task will be to gain all the experience they can as to suitable types of machine, and to make any experiments, and incur any reasonable expense, which they may consider necessary for the improvement of their services.

And when the experience gained in these, and other ways, permits the running of passenger air services, the Government must be equally ready with assistance and must make it one of its chief aims-undeterred by cries which may be raised for retrenchment in expenditure-to ensure that commercial flying in all its aspects develops rapidly and successfully, and that no invention of importance is lost to us through a lack of financial aid. The rate-payer, when his money is spent to develop flying, need have no fear that it is being wasted, or that such expenditure is inadvisable. It will be a matter of vital necessity

for us, on imperial as well as purely national grounds, to create and maintain a large fleet of commercial aircraft. We know how, in this present war, with the danger zones created by hostile submarines, we have had to rely on our great mercantile marine. And it may happen in some war of the future, with sea-blockades so efficient as to hold up traffic altogether, that we shall have to depend upon aircraft to bring us the supplies which cannot be obtained in any other way. Another important reason for a Government subsidy of the aircraft industry lies in the fact that the knowledge and experience which are gained in building and piloting commercial-type machines will be of extreme value in time of war; while it should be remembered that commercial craft could, in war-time, be converted quickly and without difficulty into cruiser-type machines, being fitted with bombsighting and releasing gear, and also with guns throwing explosive shells. And such converted machines would be extremely useful in attacking land positions, or in harassing an enemy's air and sea traffic.

III.

It is difficult for us to realize the change in our habits, and in our routine of living, which will follow the coming of the air age. As soon as we have daily services by air operating on an adequate scale, it will be possible for city workers to live much farther afield than they can with any existing form of locomotion. And this will mean, in the course of time, that the outskirts of a city like London will cease to be dormitories for the workers, and will be given over almost exclusively to factories and workshops. The workers of the city, traveling at high speeds by air, will be able to live along the southern and southeastern seacoasts, or in the heart of the coun

try: And this will be so beneficial to their health that their efficiency as workers will be materially increased; while the cost of aerial travel, in their daily journeys will be outweighed by the fact that their rent and living expenses will be reduced, and that they will be able to cultivate produce in their own gardens. It will become feasible, in the air age, to populate evenly the whole of a country, instead of masses of people being congested— as they are now through the slowness of transit within areas of only a few miles.

City men who are private owners of aircraft will be able to live a hundred miles or more away from town, and still attend their offices each day. Flying up in the morning to one of the aerodromes which will be situated on the outskirts of London, they will house their machines there, and then travel on into the heart of the city by one of the high-speed tubes (probably on the mono-rail system), which will act as "feeders" for the aerodromes, and will run to and fro constantly with passengers and goods. In the evening, the last of his letters signed, the business man will take tube to the aerodrome, ascending again in his aircraft, and reaching his home, somewhere in the heart of the country, in time for dinner:

The world has, at various times, been promised an ideal form of travelsuch as the train, the motor-car, and the luxurious modern liner. But the train oscillates; its wheels grind and roar; it clangs through tunnels and over bridges; it lurches when rounding curves. With the motor-car, even on the best of roads, there is always the sensation of earth contact and of vibration-to say nothing of the dust and inconvenience of the traffic on main thoroughfares; while the oceangoing liner, pitching and rolling in a bad sea, causes acute discomfort to

many of its passengers. The air will provide a luxurious form of travel such as the voyager of today has never known, and can scarcely imagine. There will be no vibration or noise from the machinery, and no sensation whatever of an earth contact. The only sound to reach a passenger's ears, as the machine sweeps through the air in a smooth, apparently effortless progress, will be the faint hum of the wind as it rushes past the hull. When they are on long journeys, aircraft will fly high, often above the clouds; and there will be no sign then of the earth below, and nothing to tell the eye that the machine is driving its way through the air at high speed.

Even in a 100-mile-an-hour aircraft, immediately one reaches the normal cross-country altitude of about 5,000 feet, the sensations of movement or of speed, in relation to the earth below, become almost imperceptible. The passengers, seated in luxuriously-appointed saloons, will be in just as much comfort, so far as any sense of movement is concerned, as though they were in their drawingroom at home. People complain often of train-tiredness after a long journey by rail. This is due to the oscillation, noise, and the constant flashing past of objects which are close to the carriage windows. But there will be no such fatigue after an air journey, however long, for the reason that there will be none of the discomforts which are encountered on land.

There are people still who think that, because a flying machine passes through the air, unsupported by any earth contact, there will always be an element of risk in aerial travel. But in the future, when passenger-carrying machines have been perfected, to travel by air will not only be as safe as to travel by land or sea, but will be in certain respects even safer. There will, for instance, be less danger

from collision. Craft traveling in different directions-north, south, east, or west-will be required by the rules of the air to fly at various altitudes. And these lanes of traffic, in which all the machines will be traveling in the same direction, will be so arranged that they are not immediately one above another, but are some little distance apart; and this will mean that should a machine have to glide down from a high altitude, through some temporary breakdown of its machinery, there would be little risk of its penetrating as it descended— with a consequent risk of collisionany of the streams of traffic which might be moving at lower altitudes and in different directions. Foggy weather, which presents such dangers for land or sea traffic, would only provide a risk in aerial travel (one writes, of course in a general sense) when machines are ascending or alighting. At higher altitudes, as a rule, it should be possible for them to escape the fog banks. And at the landing grounds, when there are fogs, science may find it possible to dissipate these, at any rate over limited areas; or by some system of powerful lights, or by signals from captive balloons which ascend above the fog banks, it should be. possible to regulate the flow of traffic in and out of the aerodromes. An aircraft pilot under such conditions, when approaching an aerodrome at a high altitude, well above the fog, would watch for the signals sent up from the ground, which would inform him whether all was clear for his descent, in the same way that a ship is signaled, telling it whether it is safe to enter a harbor.

The attaining of high speeds by air implies a greater safety rather than a greater risk-provided, of course, that a machine is so built that it will withstand the air pressures it encounters. The higher the speed at which a

machine is traveling, the more control> its pilot has over it; while there is not the same risk in the air, as there is on land, of a vehicle oscillating when at a very high speed, and threatening to overturn or leave its track. The faster an aircraft flies the steadier is its motion. The momentum of its flight enables it to drive through. adverse wind-gusts without these having any effect upon it; whereas a slow machine would pitch and roll. And there is not the risk with an aircraft, as with a /land vehicle, of a wheel or axle breaking under the strains of a high speed, and thereby causing an accident.

In flying, of course, as in any other new form of transport, the purely experimental stage has been marred by accidents. Machines have collapsed in flight, or have been driven to earth and wrecked by wind-gusts; motors have failed, and caused disaster; pilots have been guilty of errors of judgment which have cost them their lives. But during all this time, experience and useful data have been accumulating. In learning to fly men have been breaking completely new groundlearning to navigate an entirely new element. But in the future we shall be bred and born to the air. We shall take to it just as naturally as, today, we travel by land or sea. With the aircraft of the future, which will be metal-built, the risk of structural breakage will be reduced practically to a vanishing point. And the inherent stability of these large machines, and the speeds at which they will fly, will enable them to weather safely even the heaviest of gales; while the multi-engine plants with which they will be fitted, enabling any one unit to be cut temporarily from the series, and repaired while the machine continues in flight under the power of its other motors, will eliminate for all practical purposes any need to descend

owing to a mechanical breakdown. Assuming, however, that a machine should descend involuntarily, there will be chains of landing-grounds on all the main flying routes, and these will be so close together that a machine which is flying at a sufficient altitude I will be able to reach one or other of them, in a glide, from any point at which its machinery may fail. Craft which are on ocean journeys, being built so that they can alight on the water, will follow certain given routes, and will be in constant touch with each other by wireless. Should a machine be obliged to descend on the water through a total breakdown of its machinery, it will be able to call to its assistance, if necessary, and in a very short time, any such craft as may be nearest to it on the flying route.

But such a total breakdown will be no more probable with a perfected aircraft than it would be with an oceangoing liner. On the liner, should one of her turbines run hot, this only reduces her speed temporarily, while the turbine is stopped and allowed to cool. The others continue to do their work and to propel the ship. With a liner, in fact, having many engines and boilers, and several propeller shafts, the risk of a total breakdown is practically eliminated. And in aircraft of the future, which will be fitted with multi-engines, driving a number of propellers, this risk will be equally remote.

IV.

In the air age we shall be able to take the map of Europe, and also of the world, and reduce journeys of weeks to days, and those of days to hours; and what this will mean to business men, who will be extending their interests farther and farther afield, one need scarcely emphasize. In the years following the war men who have great organizing ability

and they are certainly not legionwill find their services almost beyond price. Such men will need to have the whole world, and not any one country or continent, as the field for their operations; and, when they travel frequently to all parts of the globe, any saving of time in their journeys will be of extreme importance.

Here lies the future of aerial transit. It will supply a means of communication so rapid that the world will be able, after the war, to go ahead in the full stride of its reconstructive energy; though this period of reconstruction will, of course, occupy a number of years. Instead of being restricted to the old, slow methods of travel, the nations in their expansion will find this new and high-speed medium open to them a medium in which rates of travel will be obtainable without risk which would be impossible by land or Five days are required, at normal times, to traverse the sea route between England and America. A business man who has interests in the two countries, and needs to travel frequently between them, must set aside ten days at least of his valuable time in which to be transported across the ocean and back again. In the future, however, by way of the air, he will be able to travel from New York to London and back again, within a period of forty-eight hours.

sea.

The influence of high-speed air transit, facilitating business between various countries, will be beneficial to an extent which is almost incalculable. After the war we shall be establishing closer relations with Russia. But the traveler by land and sea, coming from Petrograd to London, has to face a long and wearisome journey, crossing a number of frontiers and being subjected to many delays. In the days of the Continental air service, however, a Russian business man, embarking at Petrograd in the morning on one of

the aircraft which will run non-stop

on such routes as these, will find himself in London the same evening, having made a smooth and easy journey, with no need to leave the saloon into which he stepped in his own city. In connection with such long, non-stop flights, in which passenger aircraft, while en route, will pass above frontiers without alighting, it may be necessary for the authorities of the various powers to have representatives at the points of departure, so that the flights of these express craft may be supervised, and the customs, passport, and other formalities complied with before the machines ascend.

owing to the fact that a certain amount of time will have to be lost in gaining altitude before a maximum speed can be attained, and again in slowing down before alighting.

V.

Instead of being a series of widelyscattered communities, knowing little of each other, and prone in consequence to suspicions and mistrust, humanity will find itself drawn closer and closer together through the speed of aerial transit. In the process of time the individual man will cease to regard himself as the citizen of any one nation, and will recognize that he is a unit in a world-wide organization, laboring not for the furtherance of purely selfish aims, or even of local or national ambitions, but for the betterment of conditions throughout the globe. That, at any rate, is the ideal. It will be some time, naturally, before it is realized, if it is ever realized. But this much is certain: it would never be possible to realize it at all were it not for the promise which is offered by the coming of the air age. After the war, therefore, every nation, as well as every individual, should work wholeheartedly for the development of flight. Though the aircraft now figures in our minds principally as an instrument of destruction, its rôle in the future will be that of a great instrument of construction-an instrument by means of which we may establish such a world-wide friendship, such a mutual understanding, that the ruthless ambitions of a few men will never again be able to throw millions of their fellow-citizens at each other's throats. This is the hope, at all events, of those who view the coming of the air age, not as a further menace to the world, but as a change which will tend always to strengthen the peaceful inclinations of mankind.

The stream of traffic which passes at normal times between London and Paris, and will attain after the war an even greater volume, will be influenced to a remarkable extent by the establishment of a Continental air service. One need not dwell upon the discomforts and delay, during the winter months, which business men have had to suffer whose misfortune it has been to make this journey frequently by steamer and train. About seven hours are needed for the journey under favorable conditions. But, when there is a Channel gale or fog, apart from the unpleasantness of the sea crossing, travelers have to reconcile themselves to many hours of delay. The Channel tunnel, if it is built, will obviate the discomforts of the sea passage, and also the delay of changing from train to steamer and from steamer to train. But no journey by land, even with the advantages of the tunnel, will offer such facilities in rapid transit as will be possible by air. A high-speed aircraft, flying in an absolutely straight line between the two cities, should be able to make the journey in slightly more than two hours! Aircraft will, of course, show to the greatest advantage in the matter of time-saving when on long rather than on short journeys,

LIVING AGE, VOL. VII, No. 346.

In the air age we shall need to break