London-Paris Air Race
IT would have been wretched luck for the Daily Mail if its London-Paris air race had been erased from its columns by the printing dispute; here, for once, is a stunt that might bring benefit to the public, and not just to the newspaper promoting it. The absurdity of present restrictions on international travel—the long haul from city centres to airports, immigration formalities, customs—have deprived air travel of much of the value it should have; and though everybody realises this, little has been done to end it. Among the most effective ways of reminding the community of what it is missing is a daily scrutiny of the experiences of these latter-day Bleriots, who are showing just how quickly such journeys could be made if governments turned their attention to encouraging quick transit, instead of putting unnecessary obstacles in its way.
The venture may also help to stimulate flying for pleasure, about which Major Oliver Stewart writes for us this week. There is some pleasure flying (and gliding) in Britain, but very little compared with what goes on in other countries. In the US, for example, airfields exist beside every town, with small planes in herds stacked around the perimeter, ready for use for business or for pleasure: to take the sales manager to a conference at the state capital one day, and his family to the mountains for their weekend the next. Admittedly the British climate makes casual transit by air a good deal less easy, and on occasions positively uneasy. Still, there is room for a great expansion here.
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