Do You Remember ?

From PIM of 20 Years Ago.

rDAY, when sea travel in the South Pacific often involves the

preliminary exasperation of

long-range applications and

waiting-lists before applicants are

promoted to the passenger-lists,

many people travel by plane as a matter of course. Yet only 20 years ago PIM was cautiously discussing the first tentative inter national plans for Pacific airlines.

Here are extracts from the issue for November, 1935: PIM pointed out editorially that Britain was watching American activities in the Pacific “not with hostilty, but wi*h a certain amount of uneasiness”. Imperial Airways (now British Overseas Airways Corporation) was operating throughout the Empire except for the difficult links to Canada and New Zealand, and New Zea land had consulted London about the advisability of permitting Pan American Airways to link Honolulu and Auckland.

“A service embracing hops of 2,000 miles over empty ocean is not an easy thing to visualise or plan”, commented PIM. (In the end things were sorted out by American agreement to a New Zealand stipulation covering reciprocal rights for British and American Pacific services). sf! ❖ * Western Samoa was still simmering with speculation over the expected ap pointment of an Administrator to succeed the recently-retired Sir Herbert Hart. A dozen names had been suggested, including that of the Acting Administrator, Mr. A.

C. Turnbull. An Apia correspondent com menced that Mr. (later Sir Alfred) Turn bull was doing remarkably well in his difficult post. (Sir Alfred continued as Acting Adminstrator for many years before becoming Administrator). * * * Tulagi reported that a converted life boat, the “Chance”, had drifted into the Kai Passage, Ysabel, with the corpse of an elderly American aboard. The man was Captain John Dow, of New York, who died after a bout of malaria while he was making a lone voyage among the Islands.

Solomon Islanders at Ysabel had sighted the boat and reported the tragedy.

The Government of Fiji, determined to check wild share-speculation which had serious iy prejudiced the proper establish ment of the gold industry, had introduced drastic legislation. Any company which proposed to undertake goldmining in Fiji and to sell shares to the public had first to submit its prospectus to the Governor and obtain his formal aPProval * * * Denominational friction in outlying parts of New Guinea had revived suggestions that each mission denomination should be allotted a se p arate sphere of activity to a void overlapping and “competition”.

The system had been operated successfully jn Papua (untn one sect disre g ar ded the restrictions in certain areas), but the “freedom of conscience” clause in the Terms of Mandate provided a hitch in New GUjnea in the wishful-thinking department was a Suva report that a rich silver lode had been discovered four miles from Fiji’s capital.

A Tahiti’s new Aero Club had an ambitious plan to link the scattered archipelagoes of French Oceania. “No doubt it will take a long time to reach fruition”, said a Papeete correspondent. (The note of caution appears to have been justified).