People used to be afraid of the airplane and it seemed a long road to travel to the time when it would play any important rôle in everyday commerce or travel. The war has resulted in making the airplane _safe_,--so safe that it is apt to win the confidence of the most timid.
Yet the airplanes that we saw and read of so frequently in war time are not likely to be those which will prove the most popular and useful in the days to come. In war one of the great aims was for _speed_. Now we can afford to sacrifice some speed to greater carrying capacity. The swift tractor biplane may possibly give way to the slower biplane of the pusher type, which has greater stability. The big triplanes, such as the Russian Sikorsky and the Italian Caproni will come into their own, and yet bigger triplanes will be built, able to carry passengers and freight on long journeys over land and sea. The three surfaces of the triplane give it great lifting powers, and on this account it will be a favorite where long trips and heavy cargoes are to be reckoned with. We may expect in the near future to see huge air-going liners of this type, fitted out with promenade decks and staterooms, and with all the conveniences of modern travel.
There is a strong probability that the airship, rather than the airplane, may prove to be the great aerial liner of to-morrow. The large airship of the Zeppelin type, traveling at greater speed than the fastest express train, and carrying a large number of passengers and a heavy cargo, is apt before long to become the deadly rival of the steamship. A voyage across the Atlantic in such an airship would be far shorter, safer and pleasanter than in the finest of the ocean vessels. Gliding along smoothly far above the water, the passengers would suffer no uncomfortable seasickness, nor would they be rocked and tumbled about when a storm arose and the waves piled up and up into mountains of water on the surface of the deep. Their craft would move forward undisturbed by the turbulent seas beneath. We can imagine these fortunate individuals of a few years hence, leaning over the railing of their promenade deck as we ourselves might on a calm day at sea, and recalling the great discomforts that used to attend a trans-Atlantic voyage. It is amusing to think that our steamships of to-day will perhaps be recalled by these people of the future about as we ourselves recall the old sailing vessels that used to ply the deep a generation or so ago.