Machines Bought and left to Waste From a Correspondent, Peking, March 18.
Unless something be done to stir up the responsible authorities in China, the aviation speculations on the part of the Government are likely to prove a gigantic failure.
x Handley Page aeroplanes, coating roughly £10,000 each, are in China, and although they have been in the country for months no alitempt has been made to utilize them for the commercial parpozes for which they were said to have been purchased. Whatever plans may have keen in the minds of the sesponsiblo authorities when these mere ordered are not very apparent even at this late date. If there were any idea beyond the taking up of a new toy or the realization of the commission on the. transac-it has not yot been discover:
Three Handley Page machines, each costing £10,000, have been erected in Peking and having passed the required tests have been taken over by the Ministry of Communications. Yet nothing has been done to use them. Instead they are lying in very rudimentary hangars at Nanyuan' where the} are deteriorating through not being used and by reason of the climatic conditions. If there had been any serious intention to utilize them for the advertised commercial purposes they could be earning money now The second three Handley Page aeroplanes are at the terminus of the Peking-Suiyuan Railway. They have nat yot been unpacked, but they have been transported thither in accordance with some vague ill-defined notion that they may be used tovconnect with the railheads at Urga and Harbin. But the railway extension to Urga has not gat beyond the paper stage Yet the aeroplanes are in the vicinity in order to anticipate the completion of an undertaking which may take years to mature!
Crmmixat Waste axp Forty.
It is nothing short of criminal waste and folly that such a capital expenditure should be permitted to lie idle. No attempt is being made to use the very _practical aeroplanes purchased. It the anticipated conditions elsewhere have not matured, there is no reason why the Handley Pages should nat inaugurate an aerial service between Peking and Tientsin. Hundreds of people are eager and anxious to make the trip for the sake of the experience. Obviously between passengers and mails such a service could be made to pay. But nothing is done.
Not even yet has, a beginning been made in the training of Chin-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.