The Rise Of Australasia

Chapter 630 - 480: Land Exchange and Royal Petroleum Company_2

The Americans could only bear such a huge loss alone, after all, public opinion throughout the world was currently tilted towards Europe, and no one believed the American’s explanation.

However, the Americans’ response measures are not limited to using media for explanation. According to data investigated by the British intelligence agency, the Americans were frantically building warships of various sizes to expand their naval strength.

After all, with America’s unique geographical advantage, they could defend both the Pacific and Atlantic, and American territory would hardly be threatened.

Countries like Canada and Mexico are located to the north and south of America, but whether it’s Mexico or Canada, neither poses a significant threat to America at this time, and naturally wouldn’t be taken seriously by the American government.

Because of the Americans’ secretive expansion of their warship fleet, the British have become more cautious of them.

Among all the world’s Powers, the only ones that can truly influence the British Empire’s ruling position are France in Europe and the United States in the Americas.

The French are relatively easy to constrain, after all, Germany’s strength hasn’t been substantially weakened, and a confrontation with France is manageable.

But the Americans are different. The geographical environment of the United States means that its native land will hardly be threatened.

Especially after the rise of the American navy, America no longer needs to worry about threats from Canada, making it the biggest competitor to the British Empire’s maintenance of world hegemony.

The French need time to recuperate after the war, but the Americans barely need that.

The Americans weren’t affected by the war, they took advantage of the arms trade during their late participation in the war and made a small fortune.

This is why the British are wary of America and even decided to join France in blaming America for the influenza epidemic in Australasia.

Unlike European nations like Germany and France, the United States has almost no natural enemies on its native land, so they can only be constrained through cooperation with Australasia.

In order to limit America’s rampant expansion of its navy, the British proposed a limitation on each country’s naval size at a World Alliance meeting, but the response actually wasn’t that strong.

First of all, the French didn’t quite agree with limiting the navy size of each country, because after the French received compensation from Germany, they indeed had thoughts of competing against the British.

At least currently, France has reclaimed its position as Europe’s hegemon, and on the European Continent, France is the most powerful country.

Other countries, even if they don’t have direct competition with Britain, are also unwilling to place an unnecessary constraint on their naval development.

The expansion of the three major shipyards is expected to take two to three years to complete and will generally not affect the current warship construction.

These expansion timing is enough for Arthur, and it won’t affect the future naval expansion plan of Australasia.

Apart from the expansion of the shipyards, railway construction, and highway construction in Australasia’s native land and colonies also hold priority in the new annual plan of the Transportation Department.

Not to mention, new territories require a complete deployment of railways and highways, to effectively enhance Australasia’s control over these regions.

Priority for railway construction includes territories such as the Persian Gulf, New Guinea Island, Sulawesi Island, among others, and further improvement of railway deployment is also required in the Australia and New Zealand regions.

Aside from this, highway construction is also crucial. Railway construction inevitably can’t be popularized to every village, especially in the colonies.

Thence, highway construction has become even more important, considering the high prevalence of various agricultural machinery and cars in Australasia.

The construction of round-island railways and highways in New Guinea, and highways in the Persian Gulf territory for oil exploration and transport, will be the Transportation Department’s most important tasks in the coming year.

Along with countries’ research on airplanes, the popularization of passenger airplanes is on the verge of realization.

Australasia already possesses passenger planes, but whether to put them into commercial use or not is yet to be determined.

Aircraft can currently accommodate up to about 12 people, or 10 passengers if not counting the two pilots.

Although planes are faster than airships, they also cost more to operate.

Australasia’s passenger planes are mainly used privately at the moment. Arthur has ridden in them twice when inspecting, and other times they’re occasionally used by important government officials.

However, it must be said that the stability of aircraft is indeed higher than that of airships. According to tests run by the Australasian Royal Aviation Company, airships have about a three in ten thousand chance of having an accident while airplanes have approximately a one in thirty thousand chance, a stark ninefold difference.

Though three in ten thousand and one in thirty thousand seem like low odds, compared to later generations where the likelihood of an aviation accident is less than one in a million, it can be seen that the aircraft and airships of this era are quite dangerous.

This is why Arthur tries to avoid choosing airplanes and airships as means of travel. If there’s an emergency, he will arrange for a domestic plane, rather than taking an airship.

After all, the likelihood of one in thirty thousand is still very low- low enough that no accidents have occurred on any of Australasia’s commercial flights to date.