I feel it a great honour to whave been asked by this Society to speak to you this evening on this subject. The question of the utilisation of airships for commercial purposes has attracted an immense amount of public attention during the past year. Unfortunately, owing to the high costs of running airships experimentally, the Air Ministry have been faced during this period with the necessity of having to abandon airships for military purposes, and also of having to cease their experiments on the use of these ships for commercial purposes. Fortunately it is inherent in the British temperament to give its greatest sympathy to a man when he is down, and for this reason, concurrently with the complete cessation of all airship activities, such stupendous ideas as the use of airships for linking up the Colonies have been put forward. The scheme for using aircraft on such an unprecedented scale for commercial purposes is so gigantic as to call for very grave and careful consideration.