ous stages have made the
intercourse of men and ideas possible. Its history is one of endeavour
to extend the limits imposed upon human living and mobility in each of
the great phases through which it has passed.

There was the phase of the coracle and the roller-wheeled vehicle,
stretching back into the roadless mists of unrecorded time; of roads
which gradually linked the important areas of the Roman Empire; of
inland and coastal waterways; of ocean traffic, and its huge advance
with the discovery of steam-power, which brought England to the fore.

With each phase the world shrinks smaller and the mists of the unknown
recede. The development of human mobility is the greatest marvel of the
present age. We can hardly realize that it was only the other day, as
these things go--in 1819, just a hundred years before the same feat was
accomplished by air-that the first sailing ship fitted with auxiliary
steam (and not until 1828 that a real steamship) crossed the Atlantic.

Strain and competition are increasing. Trains vie with ships; motor
transport with trains. Telephones, wireless, cables, and flying are
speeding up communications to a degree undreamed of a few years ago. If
the air is to be a prime factor in the world-phase to come, how will the
British Empire be affected? Stretching from Great Britain to Australia
and the Pacific Ocean, the Empire depends more than any other political
and commercial organization on the most modern and speedy
communications, and as each of its portions assumes greater
responsibility there is greater need for co-operation, the distribution
of information, and the personal contact of statesmen and business men.
"The old order changeth, yielding place to new"; and in communications
the new order is air transport.

Equally important is the international aspect. To-day we are deeply
concerned with the maintenance of peace, and this can be achieved, not
so much by the action of Governments, or the efforts of the League of
Nations, as by the personal association of individuals of one nation
with those of another, and an increasing recognition of common
interests. I conceive that civil aviation, by reducing the time factor
of intercommunication, will tend to bring peoples into closer touch
with each other and will make for mutual understanding. The Peace Treaty
provided for an Air Convention for the international control of civil
aviation. The Convention has been signed by all the Allied nati