DISCOVERY 



173 



quencj' of service from one to, say, twelve dispatches 

 a day would render the air mail not only in all cases 

 much more rapid than the ordinary postal service, 

 but generally speaking more rapid than telegraphy, 

 even should the normal telegraph ser\-ice be more or 

 less restored. 



The question now arises as to the cost and difficulty 

 of greatly increasing the frequency of air services. 

 It is in this respect that the true fundamental advantage 

 of air transport for the rapid delivery of passengers 

 and correspondence at their destination is most 

 easily demonstrable. 



The load required to make a trip between London 

 and Paris reasonably remunerative, assuming the 

 ser\-ice is frequent and the cost of the machines in 

 use does not exceed on the average £i,ooo, is one 

 passenger, loo letters, and 150 lb. of goods at the prices 

 now charged. If it were found dif&cult to secure even 

 this small load at present prices, the rates could be 

 lowered to some such figure as £5 for passengers, 3^. 

 for letters, is. for aerograms of any length (in addition, 

 of course, to local telegram rates), and is. a lb. for goods. 

 An average load of two passengers, 500 letters, 100 

 telegrams, and 200 lb. of goods would then be sufficient 

 to render the service self-supporting. 



Ha%-ing been closely concerned in fixing the aerial 

 letter-rate between Paris and London at the charge of 

 2s. 6d., I feel it necessarj' here to explain how this tariff, 

 which I consider much too high in the present cir- 

 cumstances, came to be chosen. 



At a formal interview I had w^ith M. Clementel 

 (Minister of Commerce) and M. Pasquct (then head of 

 the permanent staff of the Postal Telegraph Depart- 

 ment) regarding the establishment of an aerial mail 

 service between France and England in 1917 — when the 

 ordinary postal serN-ice was occasionally discontinueJ 

 for days together — I was asked what rate I would 

 propose should be charged. I pointed out that the 

 rate would ha\-e to be one that would limit the use 

 of the service to senders of letters of real importance, 

 for not only had we but little spare carrjnng capacity 

 in the machines which it was proposed to emploj', 

 but in view of the strict censoring that took place at 

 that time, we wished to reduce the mail to such pro- 

 portions as would enable the censors at the aerodrome 

 to deal wdthout excessive delay with the whole mail ; 

 and I suggested three francs as a charge that would 

 restrict the public use of this ser^ce to such an extent 

 as to keep the air mail witliin the required limits. 

 MM. Clementel and Pasquet accepted this figure. When 

 the present service w£is commenced and it was desired 

 that it should be utihsed by as wide a public as possible, 

 I was naturally surprised to see the charge fixed at 

 a figure which I had suggested .would be generally 

 considered prohibitive. 



I am inclined to think that double the registered 

 express postage rate w^ould be about as high a rate 

 as should be charged. 



As regards the load of telegrams that I anticipate 

 will be carried, I will take this opportunity of recording 

 my considered opinion that the first of the great 

 public services to feel the competition of aerial trans- 

 port will be cable companies. 



In order to realise the hmitations of telegraphy, 

 it is necessary to appreciate the folly of a remark 

 attributed to one whose leading characteristic is not 

 generally beUeved to be lack of intelligence. The 

 remark was to the effect that " aerial transport will 

 never compete with wireless telegraphy until the 

 plane travels at the same speed as the wireless wave," 

 viz. 180,000 miles a second. The rate of travel of 

 electricity is about as closely related to the speed of 

 telegraphy as the speed at which sound travels is 

 to the performance of any given stenographer. It may 

 interest the layman to know that, had all the trans- 

 Atlantic cables been interrupted for a week prior to 

 Sir John Alcock's flight, and had he carried one half 

 of the accumulated cable traf&c, while the other half 

 had to be dealt with by wireless. Sir John Alcock's 

 half would have been delivered as expeditiously as 

 it is now ordinarily carried by cable, whereas the 

 wireless half would have been " cleared " at about the 

 time of the death of the great pilot. 



In these days, when labour-saving has become a 

 matter of paramount importance, it seems to me im- 

 possible to doubt that the greater number of inter- 

 national messages which would now be dealt with 

 solely as telegrams will in the not verj' distant future 

 be dealt with in the countries of origin and destina- 

 tion telegraphically or telephonicaily, while they will 

 become aerograms so far as international transport 

 is concerned. 



It must be remembered that any ordinary com- 

 mercial aeroplane can convey as many telegrams as 

 thousands of operators can handle — and there are 

 many international aerial services which might be 

 established even to-day w'hcrc the delay on aerograms 

 would be anything from one-half to one-twentieth of 

 that now occurring on telegrams. 



When, if ever, what we consider normal telegraph 

 services are in operation, they will generally afford 

 a quicker means of communication than will aerial 

 transport, but it has now been amply demonstrated 

 that those who held the view that the majorityof cablers 

 require speed without regard to cost were entirely 

 mistaken. 



It was more than twenty years ago that I established 

 the "deferred" telegram system (at half the "ordinary" 

 rates) in the Federated Malay States. I was not, 

 therefore, misled by the arguments of theorists when. 



