The Daily Alaska empire., 1938-08-08
The End of Isolation
(NeW York Times)

(New York Times)
 Within the space of two weeks we have witnessed spectacular achievements of that new species of humanity-the flying Howard Hughes and his companions have circled the globe in less than four days. Douglas Corrigan has proved that dare devil temperament and "crate" carry man not only across ocean but into the hearts of an admiring public. The flight oI the pickaback sea- plane Mercury the Atlantic in less than four teen hours is another demonstration of what good engines, good instruments and competent fliers can do. Finally Friday morning almost unannounced, the German seapane Nordmeer touched water at Port Washington, little less than eighteen hours out from the Azores.
 For hundred years the world has been growing smaller. Now this shrinking has been enormously speeded up. Measured in travel time the globe is coming down to the dimensions of parish. Theoret- cally don't have to let this happen. Practically can't help it. Mans drive to conquer space is as much a force of nature the earth's tendency to revolve around the sun. We say with perfect confidence that the airpane of the future will be safer will go faster and will have longer flying radius than the have today.
 The time was say twenty-five years ago, when such a prediction would have received unquestion- ing welcome Most of then thought all inventions good and the invention of the flying machine par ticulary good Generations of men had dreamed about it. We had it. We were happy to live in an age that could produce such marves. But now another thought
 
 around the world, Corrigan to Ireland Donald Ben- nett westward the Atlantic other airplanes, employing similar principles of flight were engaged quite different errands. The marvellous controls invented by the Wrghts, the engines for which small army of inventors claim credit the delicate instruments for guidance in flight being used in China and Spain to kill civilians. At any time they may be used for the purpose in other tries The military value of such killings is doubtful Nevertheless, we have to expect them in any future war.
 Moreover we must assume that no country will henceforth be wholly safe from them. If England's frontier is on the Rhine our frontier is steadily approaching the European mainland For deter mined enemy it may already have reached that line One does not want to argue that should take an interest in world peace only because we are becoming vulnerable to attack Nevertheless that fact drives the lesson home. And there is larger fact. Even though could not be conquered from the air the speed of air travel is tying closer knots in all lations with other countries. Their peace and their security are our peace and our security their danger is our danger. We no longer withdraw from the world We in it and of it.
 We have stake in the parochal quarrels of Europe. We do have stake in free institutions and free peoples everywhere. We unavoidably linked by perils and common hopes not to the changing governments but to the permanent peoples of the European democracies It would be alien to traditions to enter into military alliances with them. But their geographical neighbors as we have never been before Inevitably We must make common with them, not for conquest, for war, but for the common safety.
 Like the soul of man, the airpane has dual personality It be either the genial Dr. Jekyll or the malignant MT Hyde. In this it is symbolic of much of the apparatus of present-day cviliza- tions These mighty mechanisms be controlled and directed good only by the action of democratic peoples. That is what we are coming to The time for isolation had already passed thirty years ago when Orve Wright got his rag-and- kndling-wood flying machine off the sands at Kill Devil Hill.