The Nome nugget., 1923-12-15
Fly FITZHUGH GREEN. U. s. \

snould pc an accompliSneu IacI. All aska will then automatically be- come the greatest service station in the world.
 The successful automobile service station has two requisites. It is properly equipped for the sac of gas and oil and 1t Is situated on some corner where traffic is tho heaviest. Alaska is equipped for the sale of everything from oil to elothespins. and her position, aerial ly, Is soon 10 be at the hottest cor ner of the globe. Thus is our North ern Territory a child of luck and it's citizens inescapably foredoomei to, affluence.
 There is little room for argument Tn the matter. Only the fact necis to be known. Speaking ih approai- mate figures. Tokio and London. by the conventional routes are 10000 miles apart. Across the top of the world thesr two great capitals are separated by but 5000 miles. And these 5000 level miles. from tho aviator's point of view-considerins the weather. fuel and landing spac" are more than three times as easy to cover by plane than miles around the mountain-studded cen- ter of our sphere.
 II is not exaggeration, then, to say that in July, 1880, the conservative date by which polar freight rates will have been established, Great Britain and Japan will be thrae times closer together than today
 What then? What hanpened. in deed, when the East and West of our United States were joined by the miracle of the railroads web? First, commercial intercourse grew beyond mans imagination. and. sec- ond, communities situated on the new trads routes became great lives of humak toll. Chicago. Titan of rhs West, became the great service sta- ton.
 So will 1t be with Alaska. No other civilized community is so stratesica1ly situated to become the pole routes great and only service station. Ice-buried Greenland. Can ada blanketed by a vast and barren archipeligo; Russia and Siberia with the natural cruelty of their desert steppes-what chance have they to compete with a land of plenty or q people with will, as marks our own Alaska, Let the arctic traffic be- gin to flow and, like Chicago. AL aska must spring to wealth.
 Prophecy Is perilous feat. In this anticipation of events two basic assumptions may be impeached, the assumption that polar aviation is bound to arrive In the near future, and the assumption that our sub Arctic Territory will profit by 1t.
 Antlree the Pioneer
 Arctic aviation to date has beer an exceedingly anaemic activity. Its history can be recounted in para graph. Andree began it in 1897. He established headquarters in spitzbergen, roughly north of Scan. dinavia. He built balloon shed. He inflated a gas bag of cheap and pathetically flimsy as that used by parachute jumper at county falr, Think of the physical courage of the man, And If the thought does not impress you read something of the four hundred years of suffering and death that went into the discovery of the North Pole. Andree, with an equipment that scarcely would have strained a steamer trunk faced the terrors of clambering into his little basket, gave the fatal signal to his workmen and faced the polar desert without a qualm. He cast off. Ex- cept for few photographs of the balloon as it drifted swiftly out over the icy wastes. no trace of An dree has ever been found.
 Wellman took his dirigible to the same spot In 1907. To call his con traption dirigible Is a compliment. That the whole of the expedition was fiasco was the popular belief at the time. As a matter of fact all though the dirigible was annihilated by collision with glacier, real suc- cess attended Wellman's efforts in that he brought back definite infor- nation as to flying conditions in the North.
 The next step invilved no actual attempt to fly. Peary and his skip- ner. Cartain Bartlett, mapped accu-