profitable publishing confined to guess-work as to whether next year's fashion in fiction is to run to the swashbuckling school, or the introspective school, or the novel of "way down East." Tastes more varied have to be weighed and considered. Here is the result of a test of preference of books for Christmas buying made by the mail order department of a leading American publishing house. "What class of books interest you most?" was the gist of the question. From 300 cards returned the following table has been arranged showing the number of inquiries under each division. It will be noted that fiction stands, not first, but fifth in the list. 1. History and Biography 2. Nature Books 135 3. Travel Books 132 118 4. Children's Books 5. Fiction 97 96 6. Books on Foreign Countries and Affairs. 93 89 83 83 78 71 67 "So and So, who is just back from Europe, says there is a book by an Englishman named John Maynard Keynes who was with the British representatives at the Peace Conference." "I'll take it" said the publisher. That was the casual start of the American edition of a work that was for a time the most vehemently discussed in the land. The first edition of 4,000 copies was a generous estimate for a book of this nature by an absolutely unknown author. It was more than generous; it was rash. But it happened to come at a time of political issue. The financiers took it up. The book shops that had scoffed at it when it had been offered to them in advance of publication clamored for copies and their messengers dared the various blizzards that marked the winter of 1919-20 in order to obtain them. Individual houses of the Wall Street district sent orders for ten, twenty-five, or fifty copies for distribution to friends or customers. It is an unusual achievement when a novel retailing at $2 makes its way into the select class that sells 50,000 copies or more. Consider how much more difficult the task must be when it is the question of a work in two 78 volumes and retailing at $10.50. Yet that is substantially the story of H. G. Wells's "Outlines of History." Perhaps something of this success is due to the hold that Wells has had for years upon the American reading public. 'Mr. Britling Sees It Through," with its sale of 245,000 copies already mentioned, heads the list of Wells's successes, but the sale of almost all his novels goes on steadily. 64 47 JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES'S "Economic Consequences of the Peace," H. G. Wells's "Outlines of History," and Edward Bok's "The Americanization of Edward Bok" may be selected for the moment as examples of recent successes that illustrate the catholicism of the new reading taste. Could three outstanding books well be picked indicating a greater variety? "What's the use of trying to go to the Capitol?" was a remark frequently heard in Washington a year ago last winter. "Every time you start up the hill you fall over a Senator reading "Economic Consequences of the Peace." Judgment in selection plays its part in the success of some books; at other times it is a matter of sheer luck. Luck certainly had a share in the American launching of "Economic Consequences of the Peace. One day the publisher of the book was called up on the telephone by a friend who said: Some one has summed up "The Americanization of Edward Bok" as a book that has sold against prejudice. Here was a man who as the editor of a widely distributed woman's magazine had wielded an enormous influence for a generation. It was an influence at which reactionary men laughed and a shadowy personality which they derided. Yet men and not women have made the sale of "The Americanization of Edward Bok." Preaching the joy and gospel of labor, it has had an immense influence upon work throughout the country. Many men in control of great industries have considered it a book expedient to give to their managers and department heads. Clergymen have found in it the inspiration for sermons. The first edition was exhausted the day of publication, and the book has already run through six editions. FLYING THE MAIL Experiences of the Men Who Fly the Air Mail Planes, as REPORTED BY DONALD WILHELM This article is written upon the thought, background and experience of mail pilots, among them Randolph Gilham Page, one of the oldest pilots in the service, who is now, after some eight years of war-time and commercial flying in America and France, in charge of trying out mail pilots chosen from a long waiting list, before they are given pouches to carry. The article in the main is derived, however, from official records, notably of crashes-for every crash in the Mail Service means an official investigation! In addition the conclusions regarding the science of aviation, the use of wireless and other instruments, and much of the substance of the article is the product of much reporting and interviewing of authorities in the Air Mail Service, the Army Air Service, and mail and pilots themselves. It has been checked and approved by some of these authorities.-THE EDITORS. Then I hit it across the Hudson, over the flat plains of New Jersey, and headed for the jumbled peaks of the Alleghanies. I was out about an hour-about a hundred miles-when I ran into fog, which has a habit sometimes of hanging on like the old man of the sea. I found I couldn't swing direct over Mauch Chunk and Sunbury, and on into Bellefonte. It happens that way when you are traveling so fast-here the weather is fine, but the next minute you strike fog or rain or snow. I had to turn southward, over Easton, Bethlehem, and Allentown, intending to bowl the jack up the Susquehanna between the mountains. But when you get in there, things get interesting! You can go through Woodward Pass, quitting the Pennsylvania tracks, where you must have quite a bit of altitude. You can run up the river, with your wheels just above the water, if the fog is very low, to Lock Haven, then down the valley and into Bellefonte. Or you can pick up a railroad near Sunbury, whose landmark is a lot of little islands, and wind through. But that's an awful courseif you're flying a D-H4, you haven't more than fifty feet to spare on each wing and have to bank at seventy degrees to make some of the bends. Well, to make it short, I got in there among the mountains and the fog got so thick I couldn't see my wing tips. That worries you, if you think about it-it's worse than being high, lost in cloud, where you're relatively I cut my switches, ducked my head, and struck. First in order were tree tops, next a thump and a woven wire fence. She went at it and went right through it, gathering four posts in the bargain, then flopped with a jerk that yanked the wind out of me over a ditch and straight at a tool house by the railroad. There was another crash, but I was on my way, leaving my wings behind me. Then I rolled, still tangled up with that fence. That was all. I gathered up the mail, had a smoke, and the wire from Bellefonte a bit later, to the chief of operations in Washington, said, “Page crashed at 8:40. Account no visibility, fog being right on the ground. Ship a washout. Pilot unhurt." On that same run, which, thanks to the way the Susquehanna breeds. fogs, is the most troublesome in the Service, another pilot crashed. He dodged storms all the way from 7,000 feet to fifty, all the way from the Delaware to the Lehigh, and "came out at 5,000 feet. At this time the clouds had dropped to 4,000 feet or so. I dived down, found no ceiling and climbed back up again. . . I struck the trees, with my last six cylinders quitting, and the nose quite high. The plane immediately dropped down to a thirty-degree angle, * flew through branches a short distance, then turned over almost upside down and fell to the ground." A RECORD OF SAFETY safe. Soon I had lost all idea of direction; BUity that all mail pilots do is crash! my horizon was gone and my compass was spinning. It was then that I spotted a hole in the wall and went down, to get my bearings. I got down to about 1,500 feet, where I could make out the trees below. Then, in a flash, the fog closed under. It was useless to try to straighten out-I knew I was a thousand feet below the tops of those mountains. If I tried to climb, I figured, or took a chance and flew straight on, the probabilities were ten to one I'd strike full on. There was nothing to do-I was in for a crash! I held her nose up and let her settle, and things began to happen. First I hit a tree a wallop and the tips of my right wings were gone. She side-slipped then, down the mountain side till the earth reared up. UT you might judge from these authentic bits There you'd be wrong. You can nearly always get down at the cost of a crash-not one mail pilot has ever fallen out of the skybut every crash means an official investigation from the records of which these narratives are derived. There are, to be sure, forced landings, after which the pilots often rise again. But our crashes are few-we have none at all for weeks at a time. The figures are in-we have lost altogether, in three years of flying, and we are flying now more than 6,000 miles a day, only twelve pilots, not half so many persons as were killed in one train wreck only the other day, yet, when this is read, we shall have flown the mail more than two millions of miles. My thought is that crashes are particularly interesting because men are always interesting made anywhere in the world in commercial in emergencies. flying, may be suggested by the following. Inevitably things happen when you are, at the rate sometimes of two miles a minute and even more, eliminating distance up and down as well as horizontally! The air, in other words, has its surprises. Thus, two Army fliers recently were forced down by the weight of sleet and snow, high in the Alleghanies. They struck a bed of trees, broke through into the clearing and a prominent local moonshiner, with a bottle in each hand, was waiting there for them! One foggy day Allison was hitting along, flying very low, and, he reported, "a big tree loomed up 100 feet ahead of me. I zoomed the ship as much as possible but the landing gear caught in the top of that tree. The ship was slowed down considerably but broke through without falling. I next saw what I took to be a field"-a field, he thought, from which, after looking over the damage, he might rise again-" but just when I was about to attempt a landing on it, I spotted a rail fence squarely across the middle of it. I gave the ship the gun and cleared it." Next came a tree, and he cleared that! Then a row of trees! He couldn't clear them. He adds: "I cut the switches, braced myself against the cowling and”—landed up abruptly but not disastrously! "After the crash I walked back less than 100 yards and the row of trees I struck was completely invisible through that fog." AIRPLANE REPAIRS UCH crashes do not mean that the ships are done for. In nine times out of ten they are, at fairly small cost, repaired-the upkeep of each ship is estimated at $1,000 a year. The six with which we started the Air Mail are still flying; there are a dozen that have gone 50,000 miles and are still going. And we know that when the wireless is used continuously for range-finding and the locating of fields, crashes will be fewer because our engines run smoothly for hours at a time, perform best high up, at even speed, and, even now, a very small proportion of forced landings are due to engine trouble in 1920 six of the pilots flew in eight months an aggregate of 516 trips with a total of 112,469 miles with only nine forced landings due to engine trouble. Just why the wireless will improve our records, which now with no more than legitimate pride one may safely say excel any other records In June, a year ago, a large Martin twinmotor plane left Cleveland at three o'clock in the afternoon with the mail for Chicago. In the course of the flight our Cleveland station picked up the plane by wireless and transmitted a warning to it, indicating that a storm from the lower Lakes was on the way. The radio operator on board-it is not even necessary to carry such an operator-at once got into touch with Naval stations for further details as to velocity and direction of the wind, with the result that the plane landed at Bryan, Ohio, took on additional gas and oil, and an hour later ran into the storm. The lightning discharges were so near that the amplifier of the radio set was paralyzed, the operator had to remove his radio helmet, and the antennae absorbed so great a current that he reeled it in until the storm had passed. By that time darkness had set in. Accordingly the operator sent out an S. O. S. call to the stations about Chicago asking that the field manager be called at the phone number given, and told to set out landing flares. In a few minutes seven amateur and regular radio operators called the field, and the plane set down safely on the field accordingly. This method of using wireless is by no means so simple or effective as other methods now developed, but the incident suffices to illustrate what can be accomplished in improving Air Mail speed and regularity, when one considers my experience one day, on the Washington-New York run. I DODGING BALTIMORE SKYSCRAPERS But LEFT Washington in clear weather. at Laurel, only a few miles away, the fog closed in. I flew low along the Baltimore & Ohio tracks and then southwest to pick up the Pennsylvania tracks, but I couldn't stay on them because I couldn't see them. A little more south, then, and back again toward Baltimore. I tried three times before I got past Baltimore that day. The first time, I thought I was still below the city when I found myself dodging buildings coming so fast it made you feel they were being thrown at you. There was one especially that seemed to have a special grievance. The second time I met it coming, as if from around a corner, I was so near I could almost touch it with my hand. I could see the windows plainly. I reached to cut my switches, but cut only one and settled over the top all right. The next time, I took to the sky-you feel safer up there-personally I always feel safer than I do in dodging buildings, street corners, traffic cops, and pedestrians in a taxi. I climbed up a thousand feet, dropped down above Aberdeen planning to run up the Delaware. I missed a three-masted schooner at anchor, dodged a tramp steamer, and was bowling along when three cylinders cut out. I wanted to land but couldn't see to make a landing. A bit later the engine picked up and I went up through a hole in the fog, into a rain storm, and on until I was dodging skyscrapers again, over Philadelphia. But that didn't last long. My motor cut out. It looked like a roof or a street for a landing. But it picked up again. It played that joke twice. And the second time I went down, to land safely, as luck would have it, on a corner lot, in the heart of the city. There wasn't enough power left in that ship to taxi it off the sidewalk. And although it may seem hard to believe, while it was only twenty minutes past noon the fog and rain were so thick that automobiles had their headlights burning. O HOW PILOTS ARE PICKED BVIOUSLY, the Air Mail doesn't want the stunter. In fact, a quite new aspect has been given commercial flying in America by the studied and scheduled regularity of the mail. It doesn't want the cadet. We pick our men from a long waiting list. T We prefer men who have flown different kinds of machines and have been flying more or less continuously-a year's absence from the air, we find, robs a man of skill. Always the pilots must have had at least 600 hours in the air. Then it falls to one of us-it now falls to me to take him up in a machine with dual control, get him into close quarters, and see how well he wriggles out. Then, after as much practice as he wants in taking off and landing in the close quarters of our fields, he is sent out to trail a regular flier on a regular mail run before he carries the mail. Sometimes men with remarkable paper records fall down badly-hardly half of the men tried out ever fly the mail. On the basis of hours in the air the Army in peace-time has lost twice as many pilots in cross-country flying as the Air Mail has lost. The Navy has lost fewer than the Army, thanks to flying over water. It may be that our passion for regularity and schedule-mail pilots take off no matter what the weather is and make their daily run if they can see a mile away-is a factor in our record, which excels in point of loss of life to hours flown both the mail records of England and Canada. The aim of the Mail Service and the training are different, of course, from those of the Army, in which a crash may be a consideration and test of nerve whereas the same crash in the Mail Service might cause the discharge of a pilot. L' THROUGH AN ELECTRICAL STORM IEUTENANT JAMES C. EDGERTON, an Army flier by training, who carried the mail on the first trip from New York to Washington and, next day, on the first from Washington to New York, was the first mail pilot to demonstrate, six days after the service was started, that the Air Mail can plug through an electrical storm. "I left Philadelphia," he says, "at 12:30, and was soon hitting into a storm coming up from the Susquehanna. My training up to that time had indicated that it would be disastrous to fly into a storm of that character. It would tear a plane to pieces, we had been told. The lightning would get you, and all that. But before I knew it I was riding a pretty fractious steed and telling myself, 'Well, anyway, if the Air Mail is going to last, it's up to some of us to take the chance.' "Up about a mile, with clouds below and no sight of land, I hit into the centre of the black clouds ahead, up above Havre de Grace. A storm like that comes at you like a big black monster, with four feet. It was bumpy for a minute, then steady, and then that plane did more stunts than I could describe in a week. It shook all over, trembling and quivering as if some big brute had got hold of it by the tail and was mixing it up to get a pure solution. It stood on its nose, then on beams' ends, and when I hit the vortex, not only was the lightning crashing so that it boomed and blinded one and you forgot you had an engine, but the rain and hail hammered so hard I had to duck my head under the cowl. "Well, I wiggled out of that and climbed to 10,000 feet-the ship's ceiling was 15,000. But the storm clouds were then way up higher. "I hit it again. It was black. Everything was black-I couldn't see my wing tips, or |