The Cordova daily times., 1922-08-29
ARCTIC FLIGHT NOT A DREAM
 SAYS WRITER

After returning from his success ful polar expedition, says the New York Times in a discussion of Arctic flights, Admiral Peary interested him self in aviation and drew up plans fol Arctic exploration by airplane. He showed by diagrams how base coulc be made at his old winter quarters fol flights to Wrangell Island and North Cape as well as to the Pole. Peary consulted with Roald Amundsen, and it was the admirars encouragement that decided the Norwegian explorer to take an airplane with him on the Maud to make sure of attaining the North Pole on his drift east through the Arctic Ocean. In the National Geographic Magazine for August Vilh ialmar Stefansson makes long stride forward in speculation when he dis cusses the Arctic as an air route Of the future for travellers as distin- guished from explorers. He predicts:
 The Arctic will become favor-
 ite air route between the contin-
 ents, at least at certain seasons
 safer, more comfortable and
 consisting of much shorter "hops"
 than any other air route that lies
 across the oceans that separate
 the present-day centers of popu-
 1ation.
 Stefansson does not expects to make many converts at first. He says: "As to how far in the future that period lies. our estimates differ according to our temperaments" He has lived for years at a time in the Arctic Circle with the Eskimos, eating their food and living their life. There is an un- tenable prejudice, he insists, against the Far North The Arctic region. he says, has a summer climate suited to flying. One is impressed when re- minded that high temperatures have been recorded in that part of the world-1OO degrees in the shade by the United States Weather Bureau at Fort Yukon, north of the Arctic Cir cle:
 No thoughtful person will,
 therefore, suppose that transpolar
 air Journeys will in summer be in-
 11r tor
 Neither will it be uncomfortable
 because of extreme heat, for that
 can always be regulated by the air
 ships rising high enough into a
 cooler air.
 A skeptic might suspect the writer of having a roguish twinkle in his eye, but he is quite serious. He does admit that the polar regions "are given to summer fogs," but they lie over the ocean, and the \ aeronaut would navigate Gin the clear sunlight above them"
 'In the summer season, at least" he says, Git will be thought an absud- ity for those in hurry to go from England to Japan by way of either New York or Montreal. They will fly by way of the North Cope of Nor way and Novaya Zemlya." The dis tance through Montreal and Vancou- yer and "by the northerlv steamer route along the Aleutian Islands to Japan" is 11,000 miles. "but the dis tance from a railway terminus at the north of Great Britain to the north end of Japan proper, where railway travel could be again resumed. is by air route only 4.960 miles, And there would be so much daylight on the Arctic air route!
 "A map illustrates the article to prove how many short cuts could be made by air across the Arctic spaces. From Point Barrow by way of Wran- gell Island to Northeastern Siberia is only 1,541 miles, with no very long 'hops." Spitzbergen, where there is now, or will soon be, a summer ho- tel, could be reached from the mouth of the Mackenzie in Northern Canada by flights to Prince Patrick Island, Grant Land and Greenland; and so on to North Cape and Petrograd. "As the centers of population continue to move north in Canada and Siberia, the importance of the transpolar air routes will correspondingly increase"