No disaster of post-War years has so deeply touched the minds and hearts of English-speaking peoples as that which overtook the airship R101 near Beauvais early last Sunday morning. The airship, considered by those responsible for its design, construction, and navigation, as well as by those men of science who have laboured for years to make lighter-than-air vessels proof against the vagaries of the elements which they have to encounter, as the embodiment of safety, within a few hours of its release from its mooring mast at Cardington was reduced to a blackened framework of metal, and most of its crew and all its passengers, including Lord Thomson, Secretary of State for Air; Sir Sefton Brancker, Director of Civil Aviation; the brilliant and intrepid Major G. H. Scott, and Col. V. C. Richmond, responsible for the design of the airship; Mr. M. A. Giblett, of the Meteorological Office, and a familiar figure at British Association meetings, each of whom in his respective sphere was an inspiration to his fellows, have perished with the vessel which was to carry them to Egypt and India in triumph. The vessel itself could have been replaced. The loss of these splendid lives is more than a national calamity: it makes the world poorer. The loss of the airship by itself would, while they lived, have merely spurred them to greater efforts to justify their faith in the future of this type of craft. But it will occasion no surprise if the country as a whole, with this culminating disaster in mind and deprived of the enthusiasm and driving force of these pioneers, will find adequate reasons for refusing to go forward with schemes for further airship construction while the risk to valuable lives is manifestly so great.