Pan American World Airways teacher, Vol. IV, No. 5, June 1948

              GREAT BRITAIN IN THE AIR AGE
By Lou Phillips with Pamela Kitchener *
Few are more aware of the profound economic and political changes occurring in the world today than the forty-six million English, Scotch and Welsh people living on the small island twenty-one miles northwest of Europe known as Great Britain.
The Empire, in British eyes however, is merely being transformed, not lost, and those abroad who feel either satisfaction or sympathy are wasting their emotions as far as the Briton is concerned. With their heritage to draw upon, the present to work in, and the future to plan for, they are adjusting themselves to present conditions and asking no quarter from anyone.
Few countries have a history that reads so like an adventure story. In the sixteenth century, the age of Spanish and Portuguese power, the empires of these two nations grew with incredible speed in Africa, along the Persian Gulf, on the coast of India and in the Indian Archipelago. There was trading with Bengal, Burma, Sumatra, the Spice Islands and even China and Japan. In the west, Spanish Conquistadores crushed the Indian populai-tions in the vast lands which were then Mexico and Peru. Year after year Iberian galleons sailed unhindered across the oceans loaded with wealth.
Queen Of The Seas
But along England’s deeply indented coastline a seafaring people had begun to lay the foundations of a Royal Navy which was to break the power of Spain. John Cabot’s exploration of the shores of Newfoundland during the reign of Henry YII may be said to mark the beginning of English naval enterprise.
Strengthening of the Navy under the turbulent Henry VIII set the stage for tremendous seafaring activity during the rule of Queen Elizabeth. Although Spain still retained her American possessions and the Portuguese were still strongly established on the coasts of Africa and India, their monopoly of the newly discovered world was destroyed and English ships sailed the seas on voyages of discovery, trade and settlement. Hardly an ocean port was not visited by a British boat and the Royal Navy ruled the Seven Seas.
There was never any blueprint of expansion nor any preconceived plan in determining where British people should settle. Their emigration was one of strength to
* Miss Kitchener, a British newspaperwoman, was in the United States recently to report on the activities of a group of teen-age boys and girls from the British Isles who came here by Flying Clipper to attend the New York Herald Tribune High School Forum.
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administer other lands in British ways, to develop and exploit their wealth, to direct the employment of British investments, to seek adventure or escape religious or social persecution. The Empire consisted at first almost entirely of colonies in America apart from a few scattered trading posts in Africa and India. By the middle of the seventeenth century English men and women had settled in the West Indies and along the greater part of the North Atlantic seaboard.
Evolution of an Empire
The evolution of an American nation ready to work out its own destiny had an important effect on Britain’s emergence as a world power. Experience with the Thirteen Colonies, including the loss of them, brought knowledge which helped greatly
in a period of new expansion which began almost at once. Within twenty-five years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the beginnings of a more extensive empire had been established on the four continents of North America, Africa, Asia and Australia.
All prior great empires had grown up with the simple idea that the conquered countries must provide the conquerors with wealth in the form of tribute. But to a large extent the British Empire at this time was composed of countries which had been settled and were being developed by British people who were violently opposed to unfair taxation and burdensome legislation. Although bound to the Mother Country by strong ties of loyalty and sentiment ( Continued on Page 6)
(Photo from British Information Services}
BIG BEN. The huge clock in the Tower of Parliament building has long been famous throughout the world. In recent years millions of persons^ have heard the deep-throated notes of Big Ben’s bells chiming the hours, over radio programs sent out short wave by the British Broadcasting Company.