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gathered all the feathers they could find, gave them the shapely curvature of birds' wings, and with their artificial. pinions soared away to liberty far above the heads of the uplooking and amazed beholders. The flight, however, was not altogether successful, because the son, being more daring than the father and being a "high flyer," ventured with a youth's recklessness too near the blazing sun which melted the wax of his wings, and he fell to his death in what was called after him the Icarian Sea.

The dream of the pioneers in aviation has been a long time in coming to realization, but the fulfillment of agedeferred hopes has at last come with a rush. Only as long ago as 1905 the Wright Brothers were experimenting with the first crude flying machines, and Professor Langley, to whose deep studies and practical efforts with minor successes we owe much, was as yet unappreciated by most persons. Seven years ago the science of aeronautics was in its initial stages, but it has been advancing by leaps and bounds. Since the opening of the war in 1914 the different nations have spent for aerial promotion ten billion dollars, and there has been a progress almost supernatural. Half a decade has witnessed an advance that peace times could not have brought in half a century.

By the radio telephone system, so wonderfully developed under the stress of war, airplanes keep in touch with one another, while persons on the ground similarly communicate with the flyers high in the atmosphere, actually talking with aviators scores of miles away, as they disappear from sight in the sky. A hydroplance 2,000 feet in the air has had vocal connection with a submarine several fathoms under water.

The Lafayette wireless station, built by Americans at Bordeaux during 1918 to keep them in touch with their

government at Washington and since acquired by the French, in September, 1920, sent a radio message around the globe in one-seventh of a second. In view of what has already been accomplished, not wholly incredible is the suggestion of Marconi that certain very definite but mysterious dots and dashes connected with the operation of the wireless may be signals from some other planet trying to get in touch with our earth. Perhaps the Martians, who according to some astronomers have built huge canals on Mars, are making frantic efforts to arrest our attention. Or the inhabitants of Venus may be attempting to wake us dull mortals up to the possibility of interplanetary intercourse. We can properly hold ourselves open to conviction along such lines. But we need not go a skyrocketing in view of the very substantial facts in the realm of actual attainment, as we proceed to a prosaic recital of these.

One of our army aviators on April 19, 1919 made a nonstop flight from Chicago to New York in about seven hours, covering a distance of 727 miles, and averaging above 106 miles an hour. For a succession of months there has been an aerial mail service maintained between New York and Washington, and between the metropolis and Chicago, and there followed an extension to the Pacific coast, the Congressional appropriation and the Executive approval for this having come in April of 1920. German dirigibles have operated a regular schedule of travel from city to city, as commendable as were reprehensible the repeated flights of the Zeppelins across the North Sea to bombard the defenseless towns and unfortified cities of England. King Albert has called up his airplane for a quick trip from Brussells to Paris, and to London. A piano by the witchery of inventive genius has been transported overhead from London to Paris,

and that is more remarkable than the traditional witch flying through the air with a broomstick. Daily flights have been conducted between the capitals of England and France, nicely cushioned seats being occupied by the score of travellers for the two and a half hours required to complete the trip of 250 miles. The world's metropolis is contemplating an aerial line to America with huge airships in commission. Cabins are under advisement to be enclosed in glass, affording the protection of the limousine in automobiles, and suites are to be electrically heated, making the occupants immune to the trying changes of temperature in the rapidly varying altitudes. Even the aviator's clothing is being wired and equipped with tiny power stations so that he can be kept warm by electricity. Airplanes are to be put to a better use than to "grapple in the central blue." They are to serve industrial and even personal purposes over continental areas between great and flourishing cities.

"Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails, Pilots of the purple twilight dropping down with costly bales."

The climax came with the dash to Europe by representatives of the two rival nations of the United States and the British Empire. An American dirigible had hopes of succeeding, as May 15-16 it made a run without stopping of 1300 miles from Montauk Point, New York, to St. John's, Newfoundland, having been in the air continuously for twenty-five and three-quarter hours. Fastened to its moorings, it broke loose from these under high gales, and was lost at sea, over which it had hoped to pass in triumph. Where it had failed through a sheer accident, three heavierthan-the-air machines ventured to see what they could do,

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By courtesy of the Current History Magazine, New York.

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