In paying a soldier's tribute to sister service Brigadier Thackeray the RAF. Association dinner, on Saturday, "happily emphasized' the important contribution" which air travel can make to the development of international understanding and the international spirit. Thus, para doxlcally enough, at a time when the dangers of death and destruction from the air are being cited to exalt the potentialities of the aeroplane in the war of the future, the vision of the pilot and the comradeship airmen are regarded soberly as the instruments of peace construction, Nor ' this view' too fantastic, The eatherime" om" Scturday ~providedof————wm its own accord a remarkable proof of the ability of aerial combatants forget strife in the common interest of their profession and, moreover, to see the point of view of "the other man" exactly as Brigadier Thackeray propounded. The development civil aviation has already. produced strong evidence of the power of the air route to unite nations in a com: mon bond and to abolish national boundaries. This effect of airmindedness is a welcome corrective to the extreme asperities - of nationalism whicn is now all too apparent in the world to-day. Generous emulation adventure and. equally "generous recognition of achievement, regard-ess of race and country, are. the resent marks of the truly air-minded worl. "May. their influence persist and, even better, be extended to all international endeavour, for the eventual solution of the bitter feuds now obsessing a distraught world!
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.