Communication and Understanding.

From science and invention, courage and cooperation has come a great thing for New Zealand and Australia—the commencement of regular air mail services with Great Britain. The last hundred thousand letters, sent by sea mail the 25th July from New Zealand to the Old Country, marked the end of an era in letter-communication with the Homeland that has seen little material change in the last fifty years. Two or three months for letter and reply has, during almost the whole of that period, been the accepted time-lag in business arrangements between New Zealand and England. The Empire air mail brings New Zealand, for correspondence purposes, as close to England as to the United States and Canada. We are, in fact, many days' marches nearer Home.

The importance of this major improvement in communications could hardly be overestimated. It calls for lyrical interpretation from the poets:

“The world's great age begins anew,
The golden years return.”

* * *

“For winter's rains and ruins are over
And all the season of snows and sins—
And in green underwood and cover
Blossom by blossom the spring begins.”

These are hopeful signs, for, with better communication, general understanding should be improved greatly.

Cables and radio messages are useful and convenient emergency substitutes, but the real business of the world is done either by letter or by personal contacts; and letters, to be appropriate to the occasion, should not loiter on the way. Both will be aided by the new regular air services.

The better understanding induced by better communication should encourage the development of confidence and tolerance upon which the whole future of the world depends.

Gone are the days when the gods could be advanced as an excuse for the failure of an enterprise, or as an occasion for self-glorification, if successful, as who should say—“ See how great and important I am—the gods smile on me!” The hampering influence of innumerable superstitions is gone as a major force in the more civilised portions of the world. Gone are the ghosts, the banshees, the evil spirits which added terrors to the Dark Ages, when conditions were made bad enough by the requirements of the more established gods of the day and country.

But remnants of their influence are still to be found in most people, even among the highly enlightened, who keep fear of something or other in the foreground of their thoughts—reasoning, with Swinburne:

“… For who knows

What wind upon what wave of altering time

Shall speak a storm and blow calamity?”

They do not realise that the wind, on the average, blows more prosperity than calamity; that it is just as likely to blow neither as either; and that the wind isn't everything anyhow!

If we could all dine together daily, tell each other a story or two, and discuss the day's work and the week-end's play, wars would be impossible and misunderstandings no more than amiable bickerings amongst small groups. Better communication is bringing nearer the day when we can all dine out in spirit, and gain the tolerance which the breaking of bread together usually brings.

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