Orleans High School - Sword Yearbook (Orleans, VT)

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crowded along the sea coasts, leaving the interiors of the countries undeveloped. The vast resources of the continental interiors of Africa, South America and Asia remain to be developed by air transportation. Many seaports will diminish in importance as air- planes replace ships. Towns at the junctions of air routes will boom. Already new air centers are emerging, such as Wichita, Edmonton, Minneapolis, Fairbanks. From earliest times down to the present, physical boundaries or barriers have separated people. As civilization has progressed, these barriers have caused such difference in people that they result- ed in regionalism and nationalism. There are now such extreme variations in languages that it is impossible for us to talk in other tongues without difficulty. No longer will we have to witness sep- arations of people, for universality has come with the airplane. Th is world we live in today has been developed by surface transportation and communication. Seventy-five per cent of the people in the world live in cities served by sea commerce such as New York, London, Bombay, and San Francisco. These famous ports and centers are beginning to lose their traditional importance for people are now beginning to realize the importance of decentraliza- tion. Decentralization is said to be a necessity in the Air Age. It is required by military security that we have no highly centered industry, and population must be spread out so that we can defend ourselves. Another fact to remember is the airplane’s ability to travel at high speed. Yesterday ships sailed thirty miles an hour. Our relationships with other peoples were based on days. Today air- planes fly at 250 miles per hour. Our relationships with other peo- ples are based on hours. There is no spot on the globe that is more than sixty hours’ flying time from your local airport. They tell us that the vacationist with little money and not many days to spare may visit far-off places like the battlefields of the present war, or the glaciers of Alaska, or tropical islands. Places as far away as China and Japan may be visited in a two weeks’ vacation. To show how the transportation routes are shortened by the airplane, here are a few statistics: the sea route from Seattle to Calcutta is 12,000 miles; the air distance is only 7,225 miles; from San Francisco to Liverpool, it is 8,000 miles by ship, 5,200 miles by air. A cargo plane can make twenty-five trips while a freighter is making one. This proves that the world is shrinking because of the plane. Speed can be sold, just like a commodity. A letter may be of more value when sent by air rather than rail; a business man can be helped by speed of the airplane. Speed is also of great value when it gives us something which we would not otherwise have. For example, fresh-picked vegetables and tree-ripened fruit may reach us by air transportation. PAGE THIRTY

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promotes the work of Chinese students in America, the Phelps-Stokes Foundation, which has brought many African students here and the East-West Association, which emphasizes the importance of racial understanding, especially between Asiatic and Western peoples. The Rosenwald Foundation has sponsored in the South Negro schools in order to make up for the deficiencies of Southern Negro education. They have also helped to get better Negro housing and health projects in the North. The churches have helped to make people realize that ideas of race superiority or inferiority are un- Christian. There have been unions organized to promote inter- racial understandings. In our own country there have been riots in different cities caus- ed by race prejudice. There were the riots in Detroit and Chicago between the Negroes and the whites about two years ago. In the South the Negroes are put in a class by themselves. They have separate street cars and separate divisions in theatres. America is a democracy. Are we going to let race prejudice exist in this coun- try? Of course we are not. Because the United States is so power- ful and because there are racial difficulties to overcome in this coun- try, we should work to promote tolerance as much as possible. We should clean house and prepare for a better last half of the twentieth century. Then, we could put our hands to the building of the Unit- ed Nations and be sure of support from all races. Elaine Dean, ’45, Salutatorian. Valedictory THE AIR-AGE WORLD When the war has been brought to a successful close, both in Europe and the Pacific, we Americans will be entering a new world in which the development of wings for mankind will prove to be of greater importance than the inventions of the ship or the steam engine. Our country, our freedom, and our lives will be changed by the airplane. Everything we do, every plan which we make for the future will be affected by the airplane. Here are a few facts which may serve as a background for an understanding of Air Age progress. These facts are of such tre- mendous importance to civilization that the world which we are now making has been acclaimed the Air Age.” First, air is universal. Unlike the oceans of water, the air ocean reaches every home on earth. It is a universal highway which knows no boundaries or barriers like mountains, bridges or deserts. The airplane is free to go to any point on the earth regardless of any earthbound obstructions. Because of these barriers, the people have PAGE TWENTY-NINE

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The airplane has also changed the maps. The old maps are now useless and misleading for the Air Age. There is a map which shows airline routes that can easily be measured. This is called an Azimuthal Equidistant projection. In simple language, that merely means a map which is centered on a definite spot on the globe, and on which the distance to any other point can be measured. On this map, the straight line connecting the center of the map with any other point is called a great circle route,” which is the shortest distance between two points. The most common form of this map, upon which this war’s strategy is based, is the polar map, which is centered on the North Pole. As you know, the world land areas are not distributed equally. Most of the earth’s land masses lie north of the equator. So a polar map enables us to see with some accuracy three-fourths of the earth’s land area, on which ninety per cent of the earth’s people live. Millions of dollars have been spent to develop these northern routes, and the Arctic routes are being flown every day. A good example of the uses of these routes is the trip of the late Wendall Willkie. He returned home from China by way of Nome, Alaska and Edmonton, Alberta. A plane going to Tokyo from Chicago would fly directly over Alaska. A plane leav- ing New York for Chungking, China would fly directly over the North Pole. The routes followed by planes will not always be the shortest ones. A plane flying a considerable distance must land at cities which will provide passengers and freight in order to help pay the expenses of the line. As you know, long non-stop flights require much fuel, thus increasing the expenses. On the other hand, the airplane flying over the shortest routes will help to settle the un- developed areas over which it flies. The architect will have a new job in the coming Air-Age world. Cities will undergo changes. Public buildings, homes and factories will be constructed so that the roofs may be used as landing space for airplanes. Bigger and better airports will also be designed. The new global peace plane, which experts are now planning may possi- bly be developed from the present B-29’s. Probably the most inter- esting plan is that of building floating airfields, called seadromes which will be placed at intervals of about nine hundred miles along a trans-oceanic route. They will stand seventy feet above the water and will extend one hundred sixty feet below the surface. Such seadromes would make for greater safety. There will be hotels on the floats so that passengers may wait over till the next plane. These are just a few of the plans which will be developed by the architect. As you know, when anything new is developed, many problems arise which must be taken into consideration. So it is with the Air- Age progress. Issues of international law, individual rights, and sovereignty of peoples confront us. The varying degrees of freedom of the air offered by each nation create further complications. Nev- PAGE THIRTY-ONE