lished in stages along the course of the Siberian Railway, from Central Europe to the Middle Empire. The feasibility of this plan has already been proved by the German Luft Hansa expedition of 1926, undertaken by two large airplanes under the leadership of Dr. Knauss.

In any consideration of this question one must also reckon with national regulations concerning heights at which flying is permitted. Until further airports

A VIEW OF THE HARBOR OF HAMBURG

along almost the whole length of the Brazilian For that

coast. reason, I would not refuse to call this short article 'All Aboard: Berlin-Buenos Aires," rather than 'Berlin-Peking.' We must, however, remember that the particular type of machine that is necessary for a regular service between the islands off Cape Verde and Noronha is not yet at our disposal. The Dornier-Superwal and Rohrbach-Rocco are splendid machines, capable of sea travel. Their flying radius would be sufficient, but their reserves of fuel would not be large enough.

are built, access to which is permitted under certain rules in normal times, aircraft can be sure neither of being able to enter, nor of crossing, the territory of a foreign power. If it happens that the organization of air service and the technique of aircraft in one country are very much better developed than in another, even then the air barriers which loom up invisibly over frontiers cannot be traversed without special provision. The conclusion of reciprocal treaties between states and between particular organizations for air service will bridge the gap. The enormous air spaces over the seas offer no difficulties. These are free to all the peoples of the earth, and only the so-called 'three-mile limit' along the coasts defines national air territory. On this account our air service must coöperate closely with the shipping lines in efforts to map out airways over the sea and thus to build air bridges across vast bodies of water.

commercial airways.

an extended air expedition from the port of Cadiz to Las Palmas in the Canary Islands and back again with a DornierWal seaplane. We shall not have to wait long for the establishment of a regular air service between Spain and the Canary Islands. From the Canary Islands, the route will lead to the Cape lands, the route will lead to the Cape Verde Islands beyond, and from there some 2200 kilometres farther across the South Atlantic to the Brazilian island of Fernando Noronha. From this island to the South American mainland at Perthe South American mainland at Pernambuco is only a short hop. The Condor Syndicate of Rio de Janeiro, which coöperates closely with the Luft Hansa, coöperates closely with the Luft Hansa, already conducts regular air services

We know that it makes a great difference whether one flies from New York across the North Atlantic to Europe or the other way round. Contrary winds, although not by any means as frequent as on the northern route, have to be anticipated on the southern route. An almost constant trade wind blows from North Africa to South America. It will increase the speed of passenger seaplanes flying to South America. This means that the flight in the opposite direction, on account of opposing winds, will take more time. Investigations in the

meteorology of flying will determine whether one could fly at various levels, since experience has shown that the air at higher levels often circulates counter to that at lower levels. At great heights one might also pick up favorable west winds on the way from South America to Europe. They would in turn be useful as following winds.

Just recently the 2400 h.p. giant seaplane 'Romar,' equipped with three B. M. W. motors, left the Berlin factories of the Rohrbach Airplane Works to make trial sea flights. This most modern type of large seaplane will have a flying radius of up to 4000 kilometres. Since the trial flights were successful, we shall not have to wait long for regular South Atlantic crossings with this type of plane.

Just as the largest airplane in the service

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procedure of taking

along in the body of the balloon fuel, which weighs almost nothing, to replenish the motors. Altogether, we can be sure that our mental image of the air service of the years ahead will include the concentration of air traffic along the main routes in flights by day and by night, and specialization in passenger and freight transport. Further development will take the form of increased exploitation of through express lines, the building of free trade airports, and expansion of coast and oversea routes. The activity of science in airplane and dirigible construction has assured us of safety in the means of air communication now at hand. Already gigantic machines have been conceived by means of which the invi

LOADING FREIGHT ON A HEAVY SERVICE MONOPLANE IN GERMANY not only passengers and mail but heavy merchandise as well are transported by air.

of the German Luft Hansa- the Junkers G 31 type-has been fitted out with every convenience for passengers, so will the seaplanes be furnished, for it is essential that the passengers who undertake such extended trips by air be provided with every possible comfort. The primary requisite in air service is safety, which we guarantee the passengers with the greatest certainty in our power. But we give just as careful attention to their comfort. The air passenger must be able to sit and lie comfortably, to move about in a conveniently arranged cabin, and to have all his needs looked after.

The construction of dirigibles in England and at the Zeppelin works of Friedrichshafen has brought nearer the time when these gas-filled mammoths will also be used in passenger service.

speed, its loss of gas, and its ground organization. These offset the following marked advantages: its ability to take off in a fog; its leisureliness of flight; the fact that it holds up well in cold areas; its radius of flight, which at present surpasses that of the airplane; and the new

German Tourist Information Office

A HANGAR AT THE TEMPELHOF AIRDROME IN BERLIN BRILLIANTLY ILLUMINATED in order that service may continue by night

as well as by day.

T

in London Lore

By E. Beresford Chancellor

Written Especially for THE LIVING AGE

known to those who, so to speak, have wooed and won them, but secrets which to the majority are the tantalizing will-o'-the-wisps of fancy or imagination. You may think you know a street indeed, may know it from end to end in its outward manifestations of alignment and building and yet its essence will often enough have eluded you; some unknown fact connected with a house or a church in it, sometimes with the very thoroughfare itself, will create, when revealed, a wholly new conception, and clothe its bricks and mortar with an aura of romance and charm. London, more perhaps than most cities, is instinct with this subtle characteristic; and there is

largely a rebuilt city, and a rebuilt city hides its secrets far better than one whose old gate invites investigation and almost shouts its life history. For, when we see an old house, we at once invest it with interest, sometimes entirely supposititious; whereas a reclothed one will be often enough passed by, although it may often enough passed by, although it may be the casket of unstable happenings or, perchance, the one-time home of romance. In a word, the best that is preserved for us is, save perhaps architecturally, not so attractive as the best we create for ourselves; for imagination is our greatest aid to a recovery of what has disappeared, and in London, more than in most places, imagination is

ting on a new garb in a way that is out of all knowledge. And so it is that I can point out to you one spot where seemingly matured houses now stand, but which I remember (and I am by no means a centenarian) as encircled ground, where I have seen W. G. Grace batting to Spofforth's (the Demon's) bowling; and another, where a church, surrounded by an integral portion of London's houses, stands on the site of a race course which had a fashionable vogue less than a century ago.

The Londoner himself is notoriously indifferent to such things, which may be likened to inanimate prophets in their own country, but the visitor - the

American visitor in particular (and I say this to his face as I say it behind his back, and not because I am writing for an American public) - delights in noting them, perhaps because they form a link between him and his forbears, to whom they were familiar in an earlier state.

Well, it is for him that I would point out those things which I call curiosities but which may have escaped even his eagle eye and active investigation. For instance, I would take him to Fetter Lane, not to see the Record Office, which he no doubt knows, or the old houses in Nevill's Court, which cling perilously to life up an obscure alley, but rather to a little chapel close by. And why? Because that building possesses a peculiar and unique characteristic in being the only church in London which is actually in two parishes, so that the preacher in his pulpit is in one, and the congregation in their pews are in another.

GAIN, all the world that knows

London knows Piccadilly. Its tale has been told, nothing seems to be lacking to our appreciation of its past; yet who that walks along it by Sackville Street, where the tailors live, and where the Lammles once abode in factitious splendor, remembers, if he ever knew, that it is the longest street in London without a lamp-post? Or that, to run down to Pall Mall, John Street is the one thoroughfare (the shortest in London) that possesses but a single house? Again, in Piccadilly, under the trees bordering the green park, near the declivity which marks the spot where a small lake once stood in Georgian days, you will see a kind of shelf supported on iron legs. It seems useless, but it once had its uses. For, when men carried packs, the hill here caused no little fatigue and exertion, and someone who had observed this obtained permission to set up a 'rest' for his toiling fellows. To-day, trams and motor buses fly past at such speed that one fails to see this example of past altruism. And, talking of rests, you may have noticed before the entrances to the Athenæum and United Service Clubhouses, off Pall Mall, two low, oblong stone blocks. They bear inscriptions, but no one has time to read inscriptions in London. Did they do so, they would find that these were placed there for the convenience of the Duke of Wellington (who was a member of both clubs) when mounting his horse. Nearby is the spot (another fact not generally known) where Mr. Gladstone, while returning to the house he then occupied in Carlton House Terrace, once stopped a runaway horse attached to a hansom cab and thus

Here, in this place, we can re-create, with the aid of old prints, that palace which Nash built for George, Prince of Wales, and which stood where the York Column bearing his brother (to be out of the way of his creditors, the wits said) now towers skyward - the palace where Brummell (or so it is said) asked his royal host to ring the bell, and whose Corinthian columns now form the portico to the National Gallery.

I wonder how many people have wondered at the narrow entrance into Marlborough House; or how many know why it is not more adequate? When Wren created this mansion for the great Duke and his imperious Duchess, the latter, who looked after all these matters herself, negotiated for the purchase of certain houses in Pall Mall, in order that she should have a frontage on the street, but her inveterate enemy, Sir Robert Walpole, heard of her intention, and bought the houses himself under her very nose; on which the furious lady exclaimed that it ought to be wrong to wish any man dead, but it was only common justice to wish Sir Robert hanged. One who called her sovereign 'her neighbor George' might well speak thus of his minister.

As you look at Saint James's Palace, you admire, you cannot do else than admire, the beautiful mellowed red brickwork now black with moss (since Henry the Eighth erected it), but do you know the story connected with the clock on it, which gives the time to Saint James's Street? The clock had to be removed for some reason during the reign of William the Fourth, and, as there was a considerable delay in replacing it, the shopkeepers of Saint James's Street petitioned that it should be again set up. Officialdom proving adamant, recourse was had to the easy-going monarch himself. He made inquiries and was told that the clock was too heavy for the tower, and that that was the reason why it had not been again put up. 'Why,' exclaimed the King, 'when I set out on some procession or other, I always observe that the tower is crowded with sight-seers, and if it can bear them, it can certainly bear the weight of the clock'- and the clock was forthwith reinstated, fractionally heavier than before, as a minute hand had been added to it.

there was once another which stood in the centre of what is to-day a ruinous Bank of England (its credit is sound, but its structure is being wholly reconstructed), and still within these official precincts is the graveyard once attached to the sacred edifice. As you pass along busy Threadneedle Street by that classic wall which to-day conceals a new Bank rising gradually within, you little think that once Saint Christopher Le Stocks stood there, and that a bank clerk of remote days still lies buried within these precincts. His was the last interment there and it was permitted because, being a giant of seven feet six inches, the temptation to disinter his body might have proved too strong for the resurrection men, had the body been buried in a more easily approached spot.

Many of London's churches have disappeared, apart from those destroyed in the Great Fire which burnt out the heart of the city and left so many ruined edifices for Wren to reconstruct; many have been turned to alien uses, as, for instance, the chapel on the south side of Blackfriars Bridge, which once echoed to the eloquence of Rowland Hill, and is now a centre of boxing; some have been sadly mutilated, either by man or by natural causes. An example of the last is Saint Bride's, whose beautiful steeple is the delight of the artistic, and has been perpetuated by W. E. Henley in a famous analogy. That steeple towers up in Fleet Street, but not to the height it once did. For it was struck by lightning in 1764, and it was thought wise to reduce it by eight feet. Those additional stones are now to be found in the grounds of Park Place, Henley, of all unlikely places! In like manner, the original statue of Queen Anne, once in front of Saint Paul's, is on the grounds of another country house, the existing one being an exact copy of Bird's production, which was removed in 1886. There is a story that on the occasion of Queen Victoria's Jubilee, the suggestion was made to her that this copy should in itself be removed and a statue of herself be set up in its place. 'No,' replied Her Majesty, 'if that were done, what would prevent my statue being removed at some future time for someone else's?'