miles an hour. In all this distance, we had found it necessary to inquire as to our geographical position only once.

Although we had traveled this great distance there remained plenty of provisions, gas, and ballast for another day's journey in the air. Out of the forty-one original bags of ballast we had twelve remaining, — a larger number, as it developed afterward, than any other con

testant.

Our first question to the people who immediately surrounded us was in regard to the latest news from the others in the

race.

We were informed that the balloon United States had landed near Lake Ontario, but that the others were still in the air. We had no definite news of the others until late in the evening.

We were most hospitably received by the citizens of Asbury Park. The mayor made a speech extending to us a cordial welcome and giving us the freedom of the city. The leading citizens also provided us with an ample inner. The newsgatherers came early, and after getting the information they wanted they left us to finish our journey in a more commonplace manner, and seek a much-needed rest.

During the forty hours that we were in the air we lived in a basket two and a half by three feet. In these narrow quarters there was not much room for freedom of motion, yet neither of us felt greatly cramped for room, on account of the excitement and novelty of the voyage, and the fact that we were much engaged with the details of the management of the balloon and with the problem of keeping track of its course. This latter was accomplished by means of our instrument for determining latitude and longitude, and by means of maps which we carried, one for each state, plotted on a large scale. From these maps the names of the towns and rivers over which the balloon passed were determined by their appearance on the maps. We were also busied in trying to keep inVOL. 101 - NO. 3

formed of the direction and speed of the air currents above and below us.

One of the methods which I devised for doing this was to suspend a small plumb-bob by a slender cord far below the basket of the balloon, and by another cord to suspend a very light silk banner. This banner swung nearly the same length below the basket as did the plumbbob, and the slightest difference in the speed or direction of any current below the balloon, as far down as we could let this device, was determined by the swinging of the banner away from the bob. For finding the motion of currents farther below us we threw out light objects, such as pieces of paper, from the car, and watched their motion while descending. In this way we kept fairly well informed of the movements of the currents below us without having to waste our gas and ballast in ascending or descending. The determination of the motions of the currents above us was more difficult. But we were aided to some extent in doing this by the few clouds which we saw. On account of our own motion it was difficult to tell exactly in which directions the clouds were going; we could tell only whether they were moving to the right or left of the balloon. Plenty of exercise was obtained in drawing up the fifty-pound bags of ballast over the sides of the basket, where they were suspended from small rings, and afterward in throwing out the sand as it was needed in order to maintain our position in the air. There was no provision for sleep, but we ate our three regular meals in the air just as if we had been on the ground. There was no dressing for breakfast, or dinner, except to exchange our shoes for slippers, and to add or remove wraps, as the temperature demanded. For food we carried such provisions as rolls, mutton chops, mutton stew, fried chicken, eggs, crackers, and sausage. The last we did not taste. It was a concentrated food reserved in case the balloon might drop in some out-of-the way place, as in the fastnesses of the mountains or in the wilds of

Canada, where we would be several days in finding our way out to civilization. For drinks we carried some dozen or so bottles of Apollinaris water, a bottle of coffee, a bottle of tea, and two or three bottles of wine.

In order to supply the blood with the necessary oxygen, the heart beats automatically much more rapidly at great altitudes, where the air is rare, than it does at the earth's surface, and for this reason it is not best to use stimulants. Already the brain is surcharged with blood and there is a feeling of exhilaration.

For bathing one of us would pour slowly on the hands of the other a bottle of Apollinaris water. This was an expensive bath, perhaps, but it answered the purpose admirably, serving for both water and soap, because the free carbon dioxide in the water acted as a cleansing agent.

After having been in the air so many hours, with the earth apparently swimming along beneath the balloon, that condition had come to seem the normal one, and, when we had landed, I felt for an hour as if something wrong had happened to the earth which lay so quiet and still beneath the feet.

In making the air a domain for human travel, the conquest of which seems almost in sight, a competitive race like this is a trial of methods, materials, and men to the utmost possibilities; and although the results of one race cannot settle the matter, the results of many races determine the best of these appliances and also open the door to new inventions and new methods. Another advantage of such a contest is that it adds much to our knowledge of the movements of the atmosphere. The various tracks followed by the balloons map out the motions of the air and enable the meteorologist to follow its spiral motion toward the storm centre and to note the daily waves of oscillation from side to side of the general course followed by the air.

In the distances traveled this balloon

race from St. Louis proved to be one of the greatest ever undertaken. Seven of the nine contestants crossed the Alleghany Mountains and landed near the Atlantic coast, while one landed in the region of the Great Lakes about six hundred miles from the starting point.

This result is so impressive that it has aroused the imagination of the American people and set them wondering as to the possibilities of this novel method of navigation. Aero clubs have sprung into existence in almost every large city; the Signal Corps of our army is considering the building of several airships, and Congress will be asked for a large appropriation for further experiments; the officers of our navy are discussing the possibilities of launching flying machines from naval vessels, or of sending up men in captive balloons from the ships for the purpose of reconnoitring, and a horde of inventors are at work on improvements of present appliances and on new machines for navigating the air. It seems safe to predict that the next year or two will witness an enormous activity in this matter in America.

In Europe the question of navigating the air has been longer a matter of public interest, and there the balloon has been brought to its present state of development. There exist well-organized clubs for using the balloon in sport and in recreation, and ascents for this purpose are very frequent in summer. Elongated or cigar-shaped balloons have been devised and driven through the air with a speed increasing as light motors of greater power have been invented, until now these elongated balloons navigate the air by their own power at velocities of twentyfive to thirty miles an hour, making long excursions and returning to their starting points. Monster airships of this kind some three hundred feet in length are already in commission in the war departments of every great nation in Europe, and hundreds of thousands of dollars are being expended in their further improve

ment.

THE tone and spirit of American writing about America is much better than it used to be. As our foreign critics have ceased to be supercilious, we ourselves, it would seem, have ceased to be vainglorious. Here beside me are some half-dozen volumes of essays, lectures, and studies, all by Americans, all about the Republic, all fresh from the press.1 In not one of them does the Eagle scream. Not one of the writers even claims that our great experiment of democracy is yet proved successful. None of them, it is true, are really pessimistic. A note of discouragement here and there is the worst one finds. But all acknowledge frankly the disappointments in our past, all face

1 Yale Lectures on the "Responsibilities of Citizenship:

(1.) The Citizen's Part in Government. By ELIHU ROOT, Secretary of State. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1907.

(2.) Four Aspects of Civic Duty. By WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT, Secretary of War; First Civil Governor of the Philippine Islands. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1907.

(3.) True and False Democracy. By NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER, President of Columbia University. New York: The Macmillan Company. 1907.

(4.) Standards of Public Morality. By ARTHUR TWINING HADLEY, President of Yale University. New York: The Macmillan Company. 1907.

(5.) American Legislatures and Legislative Methods. By PAUL S. REINSCH, Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin. New York: The Century Company. 1907.

(6.) The Spirit of the American Government. A Study of the Constitution; its Origin, Influence, and Relation to Democracy. By J. ALLEN SMITH, Professor of Political Science, University of Washington. New York: The Macmillan Company. 1907.

(7.) The Industrial Republic: a Study of the America of Ten Years Hence. By UPTON SINCLAIR. New York: Doubleday, Page & Company. 1907.

candidly the perplexities of our present; only one claims with confidence to have penetrated the clouds that shut out the future.

The writers are for the most part men entitled to a respectful attention. One is of the small group from which, in all human probability, we shall choose the next President. Another, his colleague in the cabinet, many of us would pronounce the best mind in the government, if not in our entire public life. Of the two, Secretary Root shows, I think, much the better literary instinct. Considered merely as serious prose about great topics, his addresses invite comparison with the writings of English rather than American public men, of whom so very few make a good appearance in print. Now and then, there is a kind of quiet depth of meaning in his sentences that actually reminds one a little of Lincoln. Secretary Taft has not such a gift; but he achieves a detachment, an air of thoughtful, disinterested concern about public affairs, as of an honest, well-bred gentleman, which one too often misses in the utterances of even our highest public officials.

Two presidents and two professors of universities maintain the usual large proportion of academic contribution to this as to all other topics about which books can be written. As it happens, both Secretary Taft and Secretary Root have taken occasion to point out the limitations of the academic point of view concerning affairs. According to the former, it has too great "certainty and severity;" and Secretary Root, while setting the highest value on the public schools as opening the door to opportunity and service, admits a doubt "whether the higher academic education contributes much to capacity for political usefulness." But the presi

dents of our greater universities become perforce men of affairs, however academic their ideals and training may be. President Butler seems in far greater danger of error from oratorical fervor and rhetorical facility than from any timid preciseness of scholarship. President Hadley has more of the academic quality in his style, and what may be a bit of New England acerbity as well; but his point of view is almost irreverently practical, common-sense, contemporaneous. And even to the mere professor, the mere scholar, however we may bow and smile him out of court when he begins to philosophize, we must concede a certain competency for investigations of facts, such as Professor Reinsch has made in his study of American legislatures, and such as constitutes the main part of Professor Smith's study of the Constitution.

The last writer of our group, Mr. Upton Sinclair, is a socialist; he is also, it must be confessed, a decidedly sensational novelist. But in the company of two statesmen and four academic dignitaries we may venture, perhaps, to let him also say his say.

It is but just, indeed, that he or some other socialist should have a word; for hardly one of the others is content to leave socialism entirely alone. So much, at least, the socialist propaganda has accomplished; conservative publicists, however they may reprobate it, do not treat it as negligible. Nor is their reprobation so strongly tinctured as it once was with contempt. Secretary Taft is, it is true, contemptuous of the mere "parlor socialist," for whom, in fact, he reserves his most scornful word; but he will not deny sympathy to the socialistic impulse of men who have really suffered under our present economic arrangements. President Butler concedes to the propaganda both sincerity and ability, and is content with the refutation, effective perhaps, but rather worn, that socialism is an illogical attempt "to overcome man's individual imperfections by adding them together." Secretary Root ends a remark

able sentence, descriptive of the dangers which beset on either side the true course of popular government, by contrasting "the dreams of Utopia, to be realized by changing everything," with "the reverence for the past that is horrified by changing anything; " and later on, summing up the grounds of hopefulness, he takes comfort in the diminishing proportion of avowed socialists in the American labor unions.

On the whole, what is most striking in nearly all these animadversions on the Republic is the entirely serious way in which the writers address themselves, not perhaps to socialism itself, but to that aspect of American life which is most provocative of socialistic remonstrance. Were a socialist to read them all together, as I have done, he might well be tempted to quote them Kipling:

"Nor call too loud on Freedom, To cloak your weariness." For all have much to say of liberty. But it is a far cry from the kind of defense of liberty which they offer to the old defiances of kings and aristocracies with which we Americans began. Here is not a word, in fact, concerning tyranny of the old-fashioned sort. On the contrary, here is more than one vigorous assertion of the utter distinction, the contrast and incompatibility, indeed, between liberty and equality. Secretary Root's declaration has been celebrated journalistically as extraordinary and as courageous. "After many years of struggle for the right of equality," he remarks, "there is some reason to think that mankind is now entering upon a struggle for the right of inequality." The phrasing is uncommonly good, but the contention is far from extraordinary, the commitment would hardly seem bold if the speaker were not a public man and an office-holder. On the contrary, this is the main thesis of President Butler in more than one of his papers, and he keeps iterating it as if he were discontent because he cannot find words violent enough to arouse us all to its axiomatic