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THE SUMMER OF 1923 AND THE TRAGIC NEWS 149

the job is done. But for Bower’s sake and the credit of
the British Navy Great Britain. I hope they give him a chance to be the
first to cross the Arctic by water and thus to make good
the dream of the Elizabethan navigators of a short sea
route to Cathay.

With the general ideas back of the Wrangel Island en-
terprise, it was natural that I should be thrown into a
contact with the Air Ministry that was even closer than
that with the Admiralty. Here I dealt chiefly with the
Secretary of State for Air, Sir Samuel Hoare, and with
Major-General Sir Sefton Brancker, the Director of Civil
Aviation. Especially with General Brancker it turned
out that our definite plans and vaguer dreams alike had
much in common. I had long been advocating the prac-
ticability of carrying by dirigible over the Arctic the im-
portant mails that constantly must pass between London
and Tokyo, and I got so far as to publish this proposal in
the National Geographic Magazine for August, 1922³²
About the same time General Brancker had actually been
planning with General Maitland a dirigible trip from
London to Tokyo; but at that time they had been so mis-
informed about the temperatures and other meteor-
ological conditions in the Arctic that they had not con-
sidered the feasibility of taking this most direct route,
and had instead contemplated a flight only a little north
of the Trans-Siberian Railway. With that route they
found there would be considerable difficulty because high
mountain ranges would have to be crossed. They had got
so far in their arctic thinking as to say to each other what
a pity it was that the Arctic was so prohibitively cold,
since the route across it had no mountains and was also

³²See also Chapter VII, “Transpolar Commerce by Air,” in The Northward
Course of Empire.

good wishes are extended to him instead.
Barring accident, whoever first tries it,
with a dirigible as good as the American
Las Angeles, or better, will succeed.