A GREAT ADVENTURE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXI, Issue 19035, 12 June 1924, Page 4

A GREAT ADVENTURE

The two attempts now being made to circumnavigate the globe by aeroplane have been rightly described as constituting a memorable landmark in the history and development of aviation. Because these separate flights are in progress at the same time, the double event must needs give rise to a certain feeling of friendly sporting rivalry in the minds both of the airmen concerned and of the two nations to which they belong. It is not in human nature—certainly not in AngoSaxon human nature —that it should be otherwise. The Times, which may be accepted as voicing the British point of view, declares that in no sense are the two journeys to be regarded as a race or a contest. The three American machines will travel always in the direction of the setting sun; the solitary British aircraft—and it is British all through—towards the cast. In neither case, it is certain, will there be any disposition to sacrifice the chances of safety and success to the attainment of mere speed. The objects in view—and »tho inevitable risks —arc too serious. In an arduous enterprise the powers of endurance, both of men and machines, if they are to win through, will call for the most careful possible nursing. These airmen, British and American, are setting out to do something that man has never done before. If they are to accomplish the feat, the bare possibility of which but a few years ago would have been reckoned beyond man’s wildest dreams, it can only be by keeping the practical end steadily in view, without any heed to outside con- ' siderations, that they can hope for success. That they may succeed, that they may be preserved from the perils of physical exhaustion and mechanical breakdown, of storm and fog, and all the other difficulties to which they may be exposed as they fly over land and sea, is the prayer of all who in both hemispheres are following from afar the recorded progress of their great udveutux®.