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THE HONGKONG WEEKLY PRESS AND
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[August 2, 1909.
show a contempt for death which renders | competition, but in view of the recent per- Sir JOHN JORDAN, in transmitting the Re- them the most formidable of foes. More-formances of the Zeppelin and the Parseval port, informed the Secretary of State that the over, they are not without training, and as nirahips, a flight of twenty or thirty miles periodical reports which reach the Legation they have acquired a sort of taste for blood canuot now be regarded as a very astonish- on the subject, and on which this series of by reason of the civil war which last year |ing feat. It probably is a most notable general reports is largely based, are often devastated their land and gave them a new performance for an "aeroplane," for we read of a conflicting rature, and the oral testi Sultan, the inference is justified that they of the New York Aero Club offering for mony of travellers and missionaries, many will not be easily quelled. When it is competition recently a trophy for a flight of of them men of wide experience and honestly remembered, too, that the Sultan can muster five-eighths of a mile. It was won on the anxious to arrive at the truth, differs 80 somewhere about 80,000 troops, that he has 5th inst. by Mr. GLEN H. CURTIS, who is widely as to make one diffident about some artillery and a disciplined cavalry, it described as "the WRIGHT Brothers' most expressing any decided opinion. But the will be evident that Spain has entered on formidable rival." He flew a mile and general impression which HIS EXCELLENCY something more than border skirmishing, three-quarters ou his aeroplane at an eleva- says he derives from a study of all the and her resources will be taxed before she tion of 30 feet, and maintained a speed of available evidence is that, considering the comes out of it well.
It may be the general 3.3 miles an hour. M. BLERIOT, who crossed magnitude of the task, the success which has opinion that the places indicated being the Channel, claims to have covered attended the movement is as great as could merely used as penal settlements are not distance of thirty miles in thirty-five reasonably be expected. Sir ALEXANDER worth the trouble of holding against the minutes. Passing from aeroplaues to air- Hoste himself says that there can be no Moors, or it may be that there is no con- ships we may note that at the beginning doubt that, in spite of the absence of any fidence in the present administration, but, of the present month the airship Parseval well-organised uniform scheme for accom- whatever the cause, there can be little doubt II, started from Tegel, near Berlin, rose plishing the task, much is being done, and that with the country and the Government first to a height of 4,500 feet, and then in some cases perhaps too much is being at loggerheads and fighting at Melilla dropped to 450 feet, at which height it attempted in too short a time with the developing into a serious warfare the remained until it had passed over Saxony, machinery available for the purpose. prospect for Spain is anything but rosy. when it rose to a height of 9,000 feet in The Report covers twenty-one foolscap- Her troubles are by no means over, but good order to pass over Eger and Franzenshad. folio pages of closely printed information may come out of evil, and if they result When the airship eventually landed th dealing with the measures adopted in the in arresting the decline into which the occupants had used up only half their various parts of the empire for the suppres country has fallen, and rouse her to emulate hallast, and had enough fuel left to enable sion of the habit of opium smoking and for her brilliant past, Spain will have cause to them to cross the Alps. As, however, they diminishing the cultivation of the rejoice as she once more takes her place had set out only with the idea of giving the poppy, and there are some observa- among the leading nations of the world.
Crew a trial run, they decided to terminate ions on what is being done to replace the But will it be so? The temperament which the trip at the end of the eighteen hours. revenue which the suppression of opium characterised the Bourbons still persists. Such demonstratious as these leave no room (antive and foreign) will necessarily Does Spain ver learn?
for doubt that there is a great future for cut off. Although China considers the airships, but speculation at present is con- abandonment of that revenue of no fined largely to their military uses. We a count in comparison with the eradication notice that Colonel MASSEY, who is pro of the opium evil, the sacrifice, as minently identifie! with aeronautical | Sir ÅLEXANDER HOSIE says, is experiments in England, spoke recently of heavy one. Certain steps have, however, flights of 300 miles an hour being a
dready been taken to make good the loss. possibility of the near future. Every modern | Increased taxation of land under poppy is army is probably concentrating its attention uly a temporary relief, and will cease with Special high-augle, long-range ordinance Szechuan the Provincial Government, under of meeting the new danger. the suppression of cultivation; but in
is being constructed to act as airship instructions from the Board of Finance, destroyers and the use of powerful rockets has imposed a tax of three cash a catty on in the hands of detachments moving in light the salt production of that province, and au motor-cars has been suggested, as once a
additional tax of five cash per catty on salt`
Sir cket penetrates a gas bag spoutaneous exported from Szechuah to Hupeb. combustion would ensue; while flying ALEXANDER HOSIE says the annual revenue machines, though much harder to hit, on derivable from this new tax should fall account of their smaller size and superior
Similar turn of speed, are, it is suggested, un- doubtedly more vulnerable to shrapnel or musketry fire. But the use of either would be out of the question if flight at the rate of three hundred miles, or even half that speed, has to be reckoned upon. When experienced officers tell us that it would not even now he difficult to drop explosives from any giren object from an aeroplane, and that in the near future probably it will be possible
AERONAUTICS,
(Daily Press, 28th July.) Great Britain has ceased to lie an island, so our French neighbours are telling us now that M. BLERIOT has made a success.
ful flight in his aeroplane across the Straits of Dover. Our geography primers and our
lexicons which tell us that "an island is a piece of land entirely surrounded by water“ will have to be altered. We shall have to forget what the poets have told us about Britain being
a suug little Island!
IS
on means
to trace the movements of submarines from a cirigible balloon, we can see no limits to "the science of war.'
13
A right little, tight little island. Not yet, however, are the educational authorities of Great Britain likely to with. draw the present text books on geography from the school. One sparrow does not make a summer, and one aeroplane crossing the English Channel does not form such a bridge as warrants the announcement that Great Britain has ceased to be an island. Nevertheless the fact than an aeroplane has successfully crossed the Channel for the first time marks an epoch in the history of aeronautics which naturally evokes jubila ation among the growing number of men who are now devoting their serious atten- tion to the problem of aerial flight, and the fact that the first man to accomplish the feat of crossing the channel 8 French inventor is sufficient to account for the extraordinary popular outburst of enthusiasm which REUTER tells us of in France. Though the telegram does not mention it, we assume that M, BLERIOT
(Daily Press, 29th July) in making the attempt was competing for a About ten days ago we reproduced from a prize of £1,000 offered by the proprietors of London contemporary a brief summary of the London " Daily Mail."
Mr. LATHAM Sir ALEXANDER HOSIE's third general had recently made an unsuccessful attempt report on the Opium Question in China. in his monoplane, but cane to grief by an We are now in receipt of the full report, inexplicable stopi age of the motor before which we observe was forwarded to the he had left the French coast more than six Foreign Office as long ago as the 14ti. miles behind. When the motor stopped he November last year, two months and a was at a height of a thou-and feet and half before the International Commissio travelling at the rate of forty-five miles commenced its sittings at Shanghai, but the an hour, but the impact when he fell was leisurely methods of the Foreign Offie | gentle and the machine floated like a cork, | apparently did not admit of this Report bes the occupant not even getting wet. We doing presented to Parliament until the month not know the conditions attaching to this of June-six months after it was received.1
CHINA AND THE OPIUM
QUESTION.
a
little short of two million dollars. steps have been taken in other provinces; so it is not alone the farmer but the people as a whole who bear the burden of the sacrifice of revenue which the suppression of opiura involves. Wheat, beans and other winter crops are taking the place of the poppy. The change cannot be a profitable one forthe farmer. As the Reportpoints out, the advantage of opium production, in addition to the higher value of the harvest per acre, is the portability of the drug in a country where lack of means of com- munication birs access to a market.
"One
man may carry a load of opium for hundreds of miles over atrocious roads to a market without unduly raising its cost, whereas grain or other produce of the same value Could not be moved many miles and yield a profit; and it is to the development of rail. ays that the cultivator must look to nable him to grow and dispose of the crops hest-uited to climate and soil.
Where com.
I
musication is easy and cheap the farmer will lose httle by abandoning the poppy." Where it is not—and that covers practically all the principal opium growing districts- we take it that the outlook for the farmer is not pleasant for him to contemplate. The Central Government continues to be sincere
and alous in its crusle, but now that the International Commission is over we do not seem to hear so much of the activity of the Provincial Authorities as we did before the Commission met. The best test of China's
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