F 0 R T Y T U 0 II S AND A (! A 1 11 S T T II K A R G T I G

He unbuckled his leather belt and measured the comparative
distances on the globe.

'Londoners will fly to Tokyo via Novaya Zemlya, Cape
Chelyuskin, Khalanga, Yakutsk and Khabarovsk. New
Yorkers to Shanghai over Canada across the Pole and again
via Arctic Siberia. We ourselves will have alternative routes
to America along the north coast of Asia or across the Pole,
with a base at Franz Josef Land, and near the Atabaska
River. English people and Scandinavians who want to get
to America quickly will perhaps fly across Greenland and
the Western Arctic.5

Ivan Alexandrovilch was day-dreaming. But his fancies

were not quite unfounded. The Soviet Government are

convinced that their part of the Arctic will be one of the

main highways for future air traffic. They have declared

all territory from their northern coast to the Pole—whether

explored or not—to be under their sovereignty. Wrangell

Island, for instance, which was unclaimed by the United

States or Canada and refused by Ramsay MacDonald's

Labour Government when offered to them by the Arctic

explorer Steffansson—was settled with Eskimos and Russian

Polar workers by the Soviet Government. For the last six

years the Red Flag has been kept flying over it continuously,

and a colony of about sixty people live there at present.

This island is to be one of the most important air bases

and, lying above the Bering Straits, will also have some

strategical importance with the growth of traffic along the

Northern Sea Route. As Ivan Alexandrovitch put it in his

richly imaginative language: 'Tokyo-New York passengers

will breakfast there, together with people flying from

Moscow to San Francisco.'

All this is, of course, music for the future. But one
important development is to be made soon; the line to
America along the northern coast of Asia, across Bering
Straits, down Alaska and the eastern shores of Canada and
the United States is to be opened this year.

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