The first is from the “English Review,” evidence that the world is far from any universal air-mindedness:
The Latest Atlantic Flight
The Atlantic has been flown again, and no one will grudge Miss Earhart her triumph. The achievement has, however, produced the usual crop of inspired paragraphs on the future of aviation, and the usual failure to face the fact that air transport is the most unreliable and the most expensive form of transport available. No amount of Atlantic flights will alter these facts, because they happen, as things are, to be inherent in the nature of men and things. Absurd parallels are drawn between people who talk sense about the air today, and people who preferred stage-coaches to railways. The only parallel would be, of course, between such people and any who insist today in flying to Paris by balloon instead of by aeroplane. Everyone wants to see better, safer and cheaper aeroplanes. If the Air League can offer us a service which will take us to Paris in half-an-hour for half-a-crown, I would even guarantee that Neon would be the first season-ticket holder. But all this has nothing to do with the essential fact that not a single aeroplane would be flying commercially today without the Government subsidy, for the simple reason that by comparison with other forms of transport air transport is uneconomic. To talk vaguely of the great developments which will occur in the future is no answer, unless you can show that the defects of air transport are technical defects which can be overcome by mechanical means. A few of them, of course, are, but the overwhelming defects are due to the nature of the air itself. It is very unfortunate, but we fail to see how it can be helped.
After all, the “Review” may be right; but somehow its viewpoint is reminiscent of certain comment when the Wrights were experimenting at Kitty Hawk. Also of the mathematical deductions which proved beyond doubt that flight in a heavier than air machine was impossible.
TWO CHARACTERISTIC PAGES FROM THE TRANS-ATLANTIC LOG BOOK. THE DIFFICULTY OF WRITING IN THE DARK IS EXEMPLIFIED BY THE PENMANSHIP OF THE SECOND PAGE
BOSTON, 1928
To balance the pessimism here is an editorial from this morning’s “New York Times”—current commentary upon characteristic news of the day: