It is amazing how quickly the public has come to regard these crossings as an every-day affair. The first one, when Caledonia and Clipper I set off in opposite directions was the news of the day: every aspect of the flight, arrangements for reporting weather and for picking up news en route from passing vessels was minutely described and the arrival of each flying-boat was flashed to the ends of the earth like the result of the Derby.
The second crossing got fair but modified attention, The Cambria's record has been well splashed, but by this time each flight had been relegated to a two-inch paragraph and the average man could not have said whether it was the fifth flight or the 50th.
Nevertheless these crossings are worth more than a moment's consideration, High as the speed has been—and if you come to think of it what a tremendous speed 189 is, something between 90 and 100 yd. a second all over—it was not attained by the desperate race-against-time-and-eternity methods by which the Atlantic has previously been flown, but under normal commercial coi ditions, with engines running well within their powers.
The regularity of the crossings too is to be noted. No hanging about on the beach for a favourable'moment in which to slip across, but a prearranged schedule carried out according to plan. In other words, man has matched his wits against the terrors of the Atlantic and by careful organization has shown that they can be faced with confidence, The conquest of course is not complete. An Atlantic air service is not much use until it can be continued all the year round. The Air Ministry is now having large landplanes prepared for winter crossings, but a good deal has still to be done, in completing the necessary land beses in Newfoundland and at Foynes, and experiments in winter flying are hardly to be expected until the New Year,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.