The links between this country and America grow more numerous
almost weekly. The television transmissions from Alexandra Park (officially limited to a thirty miles range) which were picked up in New York this week may as yet be only in the nature of a freak, but the event is clearly a portent. In the meantime the Air Ministry has promised a mail service across the Atlantic for the spring which will coincide oppor- tunely with the visit of the King and Queen to America. Anything that links the two principal English-speaking countries more closely is to be cordially welcomed, and the initiation of an air-mail service will certainly help to do that, but it is premature to prophesy, as Mr. H. G. Wells has been doing, that " American papers and journals will be selling in England, and vice versa, almost up to date. London will get the New York Sunday Supplements earlier than San Francisco." An air-mail service between England and South Africa for instance is now well-established, but the cost of carrying papers as modest in weight and bulk as The Spectator is still prohibitive. But when letters can be conveyed across the Atlantic in 24 hours business will be promoted and personal contacts drawn appreciably closer.
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