n of aircraft to commercial
uses will be begun with undertakings of smaller proportions. Already
the United States maintains an aerial mail route in Alaska, while
Italy has military mail routes served by airplanes in the Alps.
These have been undertaken because of the physical obstacles to
travel on the surface, presented in those rugged neighbourhoods. But
in the more densely populated regions of the United States
considerations of financial profit will almost certainly result in
the early establishment of mail and passenger air service. Air
service will cut down the time between any two given points at least
one half, and ultimately two thirds. Letters could be sent from New
York to Boston, or even to Buffalo, and an answer received the same
day. The carrying plane could take on each trip five tons of mail.
Philadelphia would be brought within forty-five minutes of New York;
Washington within two hours instead of the present five. Is there
any doubt of the creation of an aerial passenger service under such
conditions? Already a Caproni triplane will carry thirty-five
passengers beside guns--say, fifty passengers if all other load be
excluded, and has flown with a lighter load from Newport News to New
York. It is easily imaginable that by 1920 the airplane capable of
carrying eighty persons--or the normal number now accommodated on an
inter-urban trolley car--will be an accomplished fact.

The lines that will thus spring up will need no rails, no right of
way, no expensive power plant. Their physical property will be
confined to the airplanes themselves and to the fields from which
the craft rise and on which they alight, with the necessary hangars.
These indeed will involve heavy expenditure. For a busy line, with
frequent sailings, of high speed machines a field will need to be in
the neighbourhood of a mile square. A plane swooping down for its
landing is not to be held up at the switch like a train while room
is made for it. It is an imperative guest, and cannot be gainsaid.
Accordingly the fields must be large enough to accommodate scores of
planes at once and give each new arrival a long straight course on
which to run off its momentum. It is obvious therefore that the
union stations for aircraft routes cannot be in the hearts of our
cities as are the railroad stations of to-day, but must be fairly
well out in the suburbs.

A form of machine which the professional airmen say has yet to be
developed is the smal