and freight are carefully weighed in order to ensure there shall be no overloading.' When strong adverse winds are encountered the restricted amount of petrol carried may not last out and a forced landing becomes inevitable. For the air journey of some 200 miles on the cross-Channel service, when weather conditions are not too adverse, twelve to fourteen persons are carried by the new large passenger planes with engines developing 1200 horsepower. It is worth contrasting the useful achievement of a similar horsepower when relying on gravity instead of resisting it. A great train rushing smoothly and swiftly along rails, irrespective of weather, at a rate comparable to the speed of a heavy aeroplane, presents the most startling contrast in effort and achievement. The famous railway engine King George V can run, it is said, at nearly 100 miles per hour and draw almost any load.'

It is not difficult, therefore, to understand why the 'air' cannot compete with older and cheaper forms of transport- why aviation fails to pay its way. Colonel Lindbergh, speaking on the commercial aspect of the air mails in the United States said:

Our mail service is in a few cases on a paying basis. By a paying basis I do not mean that there is any margin, any large margin of profit. Most of these air lines are just about holding their own or losing a little each year.

Air mails are thus not very profitable to the contractors. The expense of the United States air-mail service ending June 30, 1926, was $2,944,648. The total receipts for the same period were $980,271-a loss of $1,964,377 chargeable to public funds. For each ounce of letter mail carried by air mail from Boston to New York the contractor is paid over eighteen cents; twenty cents is paid by the sender,

and government subsidy supplies the balance.

All existing air routes, indeed, are dependent upon subsidies. If they were cut off, civil aviation would practically come to an end. The cost to the British taxpayer of every mile flown by Imperial Airways on home routes is 38. 4 d., or £70 for the return journey Croydon-Paris: on the route CairoBasra every mile costs the taxpayer £1, or £1200 for each completed flight; and in addition further aid is given in the provision of landing grounds, petrol stations, and sheds. Germany has a network of air routes, but 70 per cent of the cost of German aerial transport has to be obtained from taxation or subsidy, this assistance amounting to the enormous sum of £2,137,000 yearly; and though each passenger receives free insurance with his ticket, and other encouragements to air travel are given, the machines, it is said, usually leave half full. The subsidies paid by France to aviation companies have aggregated 60,000,000 francs, yearly payments being based on mileage, and additional help has been given through the purchase by the Government of new types of machines destined for civil purposes. In October 1927, the French Government resolved to ask the Chamber to sanction further expenditure which will commit it to spending 140,000,000 francs, or $5,650,000, a year on civil flying for a period of ten years.

Leaving profit out of the question, how is the gulf between subsidy and solvency to be bridged? How is commercial success to be achieved for aviation? It is not by further development of the aero-engine, for that has practically, if not quite, reached its limit; not by increasing the size of the planes, for no real saving is thus effected, except in pilots. Engines are as reliable and aeroplanes nearly as perfect as they can well be; external aids

are now supplied in plenty, and aerial pilots are expert, ready, and resourceful. Though small improvements will undoubtedly take place, there can be no specific increase in performance. For any spectacular improvement we must await some quite new discovery

some new phenomenon, upon the nature of which it is idle to speculate. It involves a new source of motive energy, an energy which implies little or no weight; but gravity will still exercise its unfailing force, and the wind will continue to be beyond the control of man.

As things are, flying is too expensive a mode of transport to be considered by the ordinary man or woman. To the great majority with means, the deafening roar of the engines, the sense of danger, the great uncertainty, added to the not inconsiderable fare, more than balance the possible gain in time. There remain the few with the desire and the means to travel by air, which they do at considerable cost to the State.

Under special circumstances for emergency transport, aeroplanes may be of great service. Banks find aeroplanes useful for the carrying of bullion across the Channel and between cities not too far apart, but the real advantage or desirability of these and other services can only be tested when state subsidy ceases and civil aviation flies by itself. In undeveloped countries, where other means of rapid transport are not available and where flying conditions are good, aeroplanes may prove

of distinct value, and their use justified in providing medical aid and communications to 'back blocks'; they do it, however, at a cost which must entail considerable assistance from public funds.

The poverty of the demand on the part of the public for aeroplanes as vehicles of transport is a perpetual disappointment to those interested parties and leagues who are concerned in creating what is termed 'air-mindedness' among the people. Even the sport of flying is not carried on without government encouragement, and the race for the Schneider Cup has now become a contest between Air Ministries and a further addition to the heavy burden of taxation.

Though subsidies now support aerial transport in every direction, and propaganda seeks to popularize it, eventually civil aviation must be left to fly by itself; and, while economic factors will then determine its scope, the aeroplane will remain a vehicle of emergency and quick transport under conditions favorable to its use, reasonably safe for comparatively short distances, perilous on long flights, with a freedom of route denied to other vehicles of transport, yet governed in its incomings and outgoings by the inconstant wind. But the force of gravity, ever pulling the plane and its load to earth, will ever set a limit to the achievements of aircraft and be the insurmountable barrier to commercial success in the air.

An architect called Geoffrey Skene and a bank clerk called Stephen Dormer, both of them coming from the town of Easthampton in England, met at a crossroads in French Flanders. It was not a coincidence. Each of them had a limited yearly holiday. Each was bound, sooner or later, to go back to look at the place where he had been involved in that incredible, unescapable, and most fortunately finished and done-with war. Although slightly acquainted, they had been too English to mention their identical destination to each other as they met, occasionally, in the street of their town; therefore, English-like, they met at an otherwise insignificant spot in what their ancestors, who had frequently fought there, had been used to call the Low Countries.

But Skene and Dormer had not come there from any profound interest in the past or the place. They had come, English leisure giving rein to English curiosity, to gaze at a spot on earth where they had so nearly died, so accidentally it now seemed, those years ago.

They had not found it.

When Skene came up to Dormer the latter, formed by years of routine and probity, was surveying a tourist map with some annoyance. Not to be able to find a place, if not in a directory at least on a map, was outside his experience, even in war time.

Skene, member of a liberal profession,

"The row of trees beside the pavé just left off, and the buildings began. Then, after a bit, you came to the square.' 'Well, come on,' said Skene; 'let's pace it out.'

Around them lay the wet richness of Flanders. The road was clear, but about it the fields had a half-kempt, hummocky appearance.

'A hundred!' counted Dormer. 'We ought to be in the square. Look here, on the map, where the word er "Kick-and-push" — 'Kieckenpuits!'

'Is that how you pronounce it? We used to call it "Kick-and-push.”

Well, against that there's a cross. That means the church - but where is it?'

'Wait a bit!' cried Skene, his voice rising. 'What are all those bricks? Why, Dormer, you old ass, we're there!'

'Nonsense!'

'Did n't the cobbles go diagonally across the Grand Place? Well, look here!'

'Um!'

"There's your church.'

his desk, his stove, his cat, and all those pompous declarations and meticulous printed lists that go to govern rural France. The atmosphere, there in the midst of those fields slowly being reclaimed by agriculture, was the atmosphere of theory and ink of those tall buildings that line the Seine.

The little old man went on writing one of the interminable lists peculiar to his kind, in the official purple ink, for some time after the two Englishmen entered. It seemed as though he were

"There!' said Dormer. "The Common Secretary, as the boys used to call him. I'd quite forgotten him.'

'He has n't forgotten us. Come on!' They pushed open the door and entered.

The interior showed the creditable struggle which minor officialism was making against something so much. bigger and more violent than itself. Here, in an army hut, on that abandoned battlefield that had so ruthlessly obliterated the village which was its sole reason for existence, had found shelter a little old man, his office chair,

before noticing them. When he did look up, he said nothing waiting, no doubt, for them to state their business. 'Good morning, M. Robinet,' began Skene, in French.

'Good morning!'

'And how are you getting on, and all my good friends in the Commune of Kieckenpuits?'

'Monsieur, I do not know which persons are designated your friends!' 'Oh, come, you must remember me!' 'No, monsieur, I have not the pleasure.'

'I was here in the war!'

'Ah! That!' The little old man sighed and wagged his head, weighted with memories. But apparently not one was of Skene, for he only remarked: 'Yes, we had a heap of English here and then the Americans.' 'Well, I was Lieutenant Skene. used to come and see you about billets and horse lines and all that.'

'Ah! I saw so many. But what is there that I can do for your service?'

'Why, nothing!' Skene sounded a bit crestfallen. 'I'll go and see some of the farmers. They'll remember me.'

'It is always possible. Only I would point out that many of my administrés have left!'

'All right, I'll go and see,' repeated Skene, nettled.

'Yes, you can always do that.'

So saying, the little old man gave the stove a poke with an English bayonet that hung on a nail, and resumed writing.

II

Outside, Skene said to Dormer: 'Just fancy that! I must have seen him hundreds of times!'

'I never had much opinion of the French,' replied his friend. 'I found them very insular!'

They walked on, side by side, for some distance, until they were clear of the huts. On either side of them stretched the fields, queerly distorted as if by earthquake. Hardly a tree was to be seen, but everywhere stumps splintered at the top into a queer fan shape. They sat on one of these.

'Do you suppose that chap would remember?' Dormer was pointing to a figure ploughing the field just beyond them.

Skene made no attempt to find out. The neglect of M. Robinet still burned within him.

"That old man I used to see sometimes as often as once a week. I must say he was a model of his particular sort. He kept wonderful books, containing all sorts of unnecessary details about his administrés, as he called them. He knew all their private his tories, all their family feuds, and would give sly hints as to which were to be trusted and what might be conveniently hidden from me. Well, the war rolled on and on

'Worse and worse!' agreed Dormer. 'I know.'

'And finally, in getting out of the Lys Valley, we had to come back this way. You may remember what a game it was, clearing the civilians of half the countryside out, and then making a stand while the army was reconstituted behind us. We were a crew. Details

'I'd believe anything about those days!' Dormer conceded.

'I hope we set a proper guard. I don't remember much except going into all these houses and eating and drinking everything we could find. Some sort of scheme of defense was formulated, the road barricaded; we dug in and covered up. And then —

'I know,' Dormer supplied. 'Old Fritz never came.'

"That's just it. Had we only known, he had taken some nasty knocks, and the edge of his offensive was already blunted. He was tired of outmarching his guns and getting it in the neck. We had a peaceful night of it, with the whole Lys Valley below us one great Crystal Palace Fireworks display. Loveliest sight you ever saw!'

'Bit too noisy for me!'

'It was noisy, but wonderful to watch. Then, when it got light, old Fritz found out that we were waiting for him, and he took a dislike to poor old Kieckenpuits- a long-range dislike!'

'He was quite right.'

'Of course he was! What was the use of his walking up the road and being potted. He sat back and started on us with those five-point-nines of his!'

'Nasty quick brutes!'

'Quick! After the first salvo I got our chaps away from the church, because I realized we were a dot on the map, just the sort of shoot Fritz liked and did so well. I was too soon.' 'Much?"

'No, about one minute. The next