| Le Petit Parisien 30 novembre 1924 |
FOR AND AGAINST This is a small statistic that has just been given to us by the Undersecretary of State for Aeronautics. Our commercial aircraft, during the month of October, made 1,125 stops. They traveled 365,846 kilometers, transported 1,623 passengers, 97,000 kilos of mail and 47,003 kilos of postal items. However, there was not a single breakdown to report, not a single accident. On the other hand, during the same month, there were, on the ground, on the roads of our cities, on the paths of our countryside, a few dozen crushes, overturns, skids and collisions... That's not all... An indecent storm, a stupid storm, which the gentlemen meteorologists had not even predicted, suddenly struck us on Wednesday evening. Trains got into trouble, so to speak, and locomotives refused to move forward. Boats sank into the sea. Houses crumbled... And the planes, also surprised by the unusual hurricane, did not flinch. The Paris-London services operated normally, Nothing, in the raging space, supported the fragile flying machines... The flying machines, however, held better than the locomotives on their rails, than the houses on their foundations. The fact, it seems to me, is still worth noting... We are still only in the early days, in the heroic and precarious times of aerial locomotion, and already all the wonders are being accomplished, and already the sky seems definitively conquered... One could believe that aviation would never be anything but an acrobatic and perilous exercise, subject to a thousand mortal risks... We are already forced to admit that aviation is a means of transport like any other... We will soon be forced, perhaps, to recognize that aviation is the safest and most peaceful means of transport... Man's motorized wings will be worth the wings of the bird... Perhaps before ten years, the fearful wife, the good vigilant mother will say to her husband when he leaves on a trip: Maurice PRAX. |
| Retour - Back 30 novembre 1924 |