military airships. To do so, however, would be to sacrifice junction with the Indian and Australian lines in the Eastern Mediterranean. It is on these considerations and facts that we must base our policies of Imperial routes, civil and military. For civil development, the objects we have to aim at were laid down at the Armistice. They are :— (1) To secure a universal recognition of the greatest possible (4) To develop and extend the established chains of aerodromes, routes. This policy has so far made but little progress. Towards the institution of the Imperial military routes progress is even less. On the greater portion of the routes, from the Eastern Mediterranean to Cape Town, and to the Iraq-Persian frontier, across India and Burmah, in British Malaya, and across Australia, there is comparatively little difficulty in the way of the institution, maintenance, improvement and extension of ground organization for the safe passage of aircraft, civil and military. But we also need for civil aircraft the negotiation of international agreements under which the use of an alternative route to the East, through Germany and south-eastern Europe, could be rendered available, under conditions similar to those made possible by the Air Convention elsewhere. A further desirable advance for civil purposes is the development of an economic type of machine with a range (1600 miles) which would make it independent of foreign landings. With an additional 200 miles the Atlantic could be crossed. This development, which is desirable for civil communication, is essential for mobility of military air power. To be independent of flights within foreign sovereignty, we need a practical range for seaplanes or flying boats of 1800 miles and, for land machines, either endurance of a further 800 miles, or ability to land and take off in a very confined area. But the term "practical range "conveys something more than the recent 2900 and 3200 miles exploits of French aircraft, great as is the advance which those performances have shown. The first essentials are safety and reliability. The record of British transport services since the war is no mean one, with only 4 fatal accidents to passengers in upwards of 5,000,000 miles flown; or 13 fatalities among the 70,000 passengers carried. Australian records of 100 per cent. efficiency are even better. But on these overland routes, in the event of emergency, forced landings can be made which rob bad weather and mechanical breakdown of its dangers. During each of the past three years some 8 per cent. of the British flights commenced were so interrupted; one-half owing to weather, one-third to engine or installation failure, and the remainder to other causes. No such emergency action can be contemplated on the long overseas flights which are necessary for strictly Empire communication. Complete mechanical efficiency and mastery of all weather conditions must therefore be achieved. Secondly, the flight of aircraft, civil or military, without their respective loads-paying traffic in the one case and armaments and military stores in the other-is clearly of little value, and the range must not be obtained by sacrifice of essential load capacity in order to carry more fuel. Thirdly, throughout the winter months the hours of darkness at present limit flight to not more than seven hours a day, a period which only rises above twelve hours during a few summer weeks. Safe night-flying is, therefore, an essential for these long-distance routes. And it may be pointed out, in view of the tendency to measure speed achievement in miles per hour, that on the longdistance Empire routes effective speed must be measured in the number of miles flown in 24 hours, and by achieving night-flying we could double present summer speeds and treble those of winter. These technical qualities, an indifference in air navigation to darkness, fog, and other conditions of bad visibility; greatly increased range without sacrifice of load; and, to minimise the extent of this increase, greatly improved ability to land and take VOL. 244. NO. 498. off in a small area, are indeed the performances from which advocates of the airship portend its advantage over the aeroplane. The developed airship, in which safety is the first consideration throughout every detail of design, construction, and operation of both vessel and its ground organization, should indeed offer economic advantages over the aeroplane for distances of not less than the 1800 mile range which we see to be the minimum for Imperial military needs. But this development of the airship is still hypothetical. Nor, of course, at any time would the airship be suitable for the shorter commercial air services. In any case, too, it is unwise merely to wait for the airship to solve the problem. Moreover, the airship, on account of its vulnerability and lack of manœuvre-ability, can at the most be of assistance as a transport only. It can never become a substitute for military long-range, heavier-than-air machines. We have, then, as a prime necessity, technical and operational problems to be solved by research and experimental operation. We have been dropping behind our competitors in design and operation in the last few years. Adequate government support, soundly applied, is essential. Experience can be bought cheaper and quicker, and with more commercial and Imperial advantage, by an expenditure on research and commercial development than by expenditure beyond a minimum on a standardized military service. For in any case, the building-up of "adequate" air defence is financially impossible. We cannot afford in scientific development to take short views: the essential is to know the difficulties and to have a policy to take one steadily through them. The keys to military mobility-complete efficiency, with long range are in the laboratory and the air. They cannot be reached without an expenditure considerably greater in quantity and less diffused in its object than our present air research vote. Nor will they be obtained without an experimental operation in the air which is regardless of daily and seasonal changes in flying conditions. The comparatively numerous Royal Air Force accidents which, year after year, take place in August and September— the months most favourable for flight-give reason to suppose that a large proportion of our service flying takes place during those months. We shall not progress towards a daily flying efficiency, without which there is periodic immobility, so long as, for good reason or bad, our experimental operation is concentrated in the more favourable months. Fortunately, air commerce, in solving its own problems of safety for its users, efficiency for the reduction of its insurance and maintenance bills, commercial regularity for the attraction of traffic and the most economic daily use of material, provides the organization to fulfil this essential need of probing in the air for the improved air vehicle, and incidentally evolves personnel trained to the highest standard in the world. Military aviation has its own risks; but the advantages which it can take from a developing mercantile air service are many. And in laying down commercial air routes it must be recognized that, while strategic conditions should be borne in mind, it is the commercial factor which must receive the first consideration. It is only in limited, if valuable and as yet undefined, directions that air transport will take the place of rail and ship, even when its costs are reduced and night-flying is a normal practice. The final routes will be laid down by reason of the markets and the traffic which require and utilize them; and-while the State may, and should, retain the control and operation of general ground services, such as post, wireless and meteorological servicestraffic and markets must be found, and the cost of operation must be reduced by commercial effort, commercially controlled. By these means, wisely directed and more closely allied than at present to the direction of air research, we can institute within the Empire a greatly increased service of reliable economic intercommunication by air. At the same time, we shall enable the Royal and the Imperial Defence Air Forces to prepare themselves for co-operation in war under the variety of conditions and on the Empire-wide flights which war would make essential. A concerted Empire policy on these lines is needed. It is becoming the more urgent as we are dropping further astern of France and Germany in civil air operation, and of America and Germany in research and experiment. It is not too much to hope, having regard to the known sympathy of the Dominions with these commercial and military air ideals, that the Imperial Conference should find a road upon which, with Empire co-operation, the ideals will become actualities. But if this is to be done, both the Home and Dominion Governments must understand the full extent of the difficulties ahead and act upon a clear-cut policy by which these can be overcome. F. H. SYKES ABYSSINIA: PAST AND PRESENT PERIODICALLY Abyssinia has emerged for short intervals from the deep seclusion in which so much of its story has been passed to appear before the world in connection with events of dramatic importance. And then once again the veil has fallen before the portals of Solomon's Empire, which has pursued its accustomed path, its people "forgetful of the world, by whom they were forgotten." But when, in September, 1923, Ethiopia was, perhaps somewhat prematurely, admitted to membership of the League of Nations, it was felt that once and for all she had abandoned her state of semi-mysterious isolation; and with the appearance of Ethiopian delegates at Geneva, many earnest, albeit uninformed, persons seem to have expected that the latest recruit would perform miracles in the way of reform and improvement in the ancient Empire, merely as a result of its inclusion in the ranks of the world Powers. events. That these hopes should have been disappointed was inevitable. The difficulties which have arisen were inherent in the position, though they have been brought to a head by recent Both hopes and difficulties were due in no small measure to the general ignorance prevailing in Europe of the conditions existent in Abyssinia, of its method of government and social state, of Abyssinian mentality, and even of the history of the country. This is not surprising, for few Europeans have travelled in Abyssinia; fewer still have tried to study or understand the Abyssinian people; and hardly any can speak or read their somewhat difficult language. And yet some understanding of these factors is essential as a preliminary to dealing with the difficulties of Abyssinia's position in the League of Nations, the slavery problem, the thorny question of Lake Tana and the Blue Nile, and the future development of the country in relationship with the European Powers by whose territories it is entirely surrounded. The government of Abyssinia is an absolute monarchy, the social system a feudal one, based on serfdom and domestic slavery. That alone is rather a startling anachronism in the |