A single airman will not fly all the way to New South Wales. One man will go to Paris and find another airman waiting there. In five minutes the mail receptacles will be transferred to the second machine, which will resume the journey.
A 300-mile trip is sufficient for any one pilot. It is important to develop an air-cooled engine to replace the present water-cooled engine, which becomes faulty in the tropics and the Antarctic regions, through the water either boiling or freezing.
A trans-Atlantic flight, Mr Holt Thomas says, should be accomplished in 1919, but no seaplane could stand the Atlantic roller.
Battlefield tourism
No sooner have we settled down, says an Australian writer (though lots of us find it still impossible to do so), to the idea of peace, than the pleasure-as-usuals begin to plan about running overseas, and here and there, and with stupefying callousness, talk gaily of ''doing the battlefield'', as though this terrible war was just a rehearsal for a military picture film, and they are off to see the finished performance!
But it will be many a day before the troops of the Allies are all off French soil, and many a day after that before the French authorities will allow their country to be overrun by gazing tourists. A warning has been issued to globe trotters that they may book for the overseas trip, but there is no promise that they can get back within a specified time.
Anyone can take the voyage over (who after the full and plenty of our warfare can put up with the rationing that must still go on in England for some time), but it might be two or even three years before they can get back.
Fruit shortage
The changeable and frequently inclement weather which has been experienced for several weeks past has necessarily had the effect of making the season later for all classes of produce. From the point of view of the householder, this has been particularly noticeable in the case of fruit.
The crop of most classes of fruit this year will unfortunately be smaller than usual, a frost on Christmas morning having, we are informed, extended the damage attributable to previous late frosts.
In the case of strawberries, apparently the one fruit of which the supply in the shops has been at least equal to, if not in excess of, the average, the season is estimated to be fully four weeks behind that of a normal year.
- ODT, 9.1.1919
COPIES OF PICTURE AVAILABLE FROM ODT FRONT OFFICE, LOWER STUART ST, OR WWW.OTAGOIMAGES.CO.NZ
