Feb.
Oxe of the main apatite: to the sue i] aviation is good propaganda. The need for the proper kind of advertisement s well brought out at the recent \ir Congress, and a suggestion then' made is likely to r fruit, Existing aerial ser-Home are not well patronized, at all events by the business conununitys—principally for lack of general knowledge of the facilities available. In a casual sort of way people all over the world know that such a service exists, but what they do not realize is the advantage of aerial service to their own particular line of business. At present, a business man who desires to get into communication as rapidly as possible with his client elsewhere, writes a letter and ''expresses' it or sends by the costly and limited way of the cable. When he reflects on the delay, it occurs to him that his letter might ha gone by the aerial route, if noi the whole way, then partly, but he had forgotten that such facili ties were open to him. The air mail has not become so established a part of our daily routine that everybody is conscious of and remembers its advantages as he needs them. Even here in China letters can be accelerated to various parts of America. by at least twenty-four hours by using the American air route available and yet beth British and Ameri-business men failed to support this route as they should, and the first mail that went from Shanghai was a very meagre affair.
All this, however, is only temporary and may be trusted to disappear in the course of time. Ag ay outcome of the discussion which took place at the Congress, it is arranged that experts in civil aviation shall pay a round of educational. visits to business houses to explain personally to their managers the advantages to be secured from a. consistent use of the aerial transport. There will be no attempt to solicit business cither for individual air transport companies or for air transport at all. The expert will simply explain to the head of the firm how the use of the aeroplane and the airship must lead {o increased business by shortening the time of inter-communication.
The only way to make commercial aviation a success is to educate the public in its safety, its certainty as a mode of transport, and its vast possibilities in linking up the four corners of the Earth. Not a single person who has interests in aviation but agrees with this point of view. Yet so little imagination do we, as a race, appear to have that it as been left to America to give actual expression to this truth, and the Shanghai American Post Office for some weeks has been accepting letters for mailing by the aerial route available. Tt learned tro, the recent t of Col. Holt, who is connected with the Vickers' Ca, at Peking, that it is quite possible that by May a service will be running between Shanghai and Peking. Col. Holt, in urging the cultivation of an intelligent interest amongst the foreign and Chinese public, voices the opinion *, of all those who have troubled themselves to study the new means of transport. Demonstra~ tion on this route of what can be done with the latest pattern of commercial machines will enable the public to judge ut first hand of the utility of aerial communication in Chinn, and, above all, of the case und safety of flying,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.