Now distance is no longer a problem for travellers around the world. For those who make journeys across the world, the speed of travel today has turned the countries into villages. It seems that the distances between them appear no greater than from village to village in the past. Planes fly people from one end of the Earth to the other, providing a freedom of movement not dreamt of a hundred years ago.
However, not everyone is pleased with the high speed. Though we have conquered (征服) time and distance, there is a great loss. Travel is something to be enjoyed, not endured (忍受). The ship offers leisure and time enough to appreciate the ever-changing sights and sounds of a journey. During a journey by train, lakes, forests and wild, open plains sweeping past your carriage window create a grand view in which time and distance mean nothing. But if you board a plane, you can just see the blank blue of the sky filling the narrow window of the aeroplane, and the hours progress slowly.
What's more, there is the time spent being "processed" at a modern airport. People are transported like robots along walkways; luggage is weighed: tickets are produced, examined and produced yet again before the passengers move to another waiting area. Of course, journeys by rail and sea take longer, but the hours devoted to being" processed" at departure and arrival are luckily shorter. No wonder, then, that the modern high-speed trains are winning back passengers from the airlines.
Yet it is impossible for us to tum our back on the aeroplane. The working lives of too many people depend upon it; too many industries have been built around its design and operation. And too many holiday takers, with limited time to spend, patiently endure the busy airports and limited space of the flight to gain those extra hours. Speed controls people's life today, saving time, in work or play, is the important thing—or so we are told. Perhaps those first horsemen, riding freely across the wild, open plains, were enjoying a better world than the ones we know today. They could travel at will, and the clock was not their master.
