service in preparing the food, the exhaust from the engines being made to supply heat.

After luncheon several passengers dozed comfortably in their armchairs enjoying the sun that shone through the starboard windows. A better place for an afternoon nap than the cabin of a Zeppelin airship cannot well be imagined. The drone of the motors becomes a lullaby. There is the sense of motion-swift motion and yet not even the slightest jar. An almost imperceptible vibration is felt only when a hand is placed on a side wall of the cabin.

but German reticence made it impossible for the passengers to learn results.

After Nauen, Spandau and Charlottenburg came quickly into view. We were over the Imperial palace fifteen minutes before four o'clock, having made the flight from Hamburg in less than four hours.

Following the Spree River we came in five minutes to the Air Traffic Company's dock. The Viktoria Luise pointed her bow toward the landing place and the three motors drove the big ship downward as though we intended to crush the group of workmen waiting to receive the landing ropes as they were cast off.

For the purposes of a laboratory the airship is ideal. It has been proposed, and seriously, by German surgeons, to turn the cabin of the Viktoria Luise into a temporary operating room when certain delicate surgery has to be performed. The upper air is so pure that it really acts as an antiseptic and removes all danger of poison.

Shortly before three o'clock we passed the lofty wireless tower at Nauen, from which messages have frequently been sent to and received from stations 3,000 miles distant. Our own wireless was busy,

Here we experienced the only difficulty of the voyage. During our 400-mile trip we had lost nearly a ton of weight as the result of the burning of fuel. The ship, in consequence, was so buoyant that when the motors were slowed down it shot into the air before the dockmen could make the landing ropes secure.

At a height of about 1,000 feet a small amount of gas was discharged. Again the bow of the ship was pointed earthward and our motors sent us to the landing place. This time the hawsers were caught and in another moment the

Viktoria Luise was clamped to the heavy motor trucks which drew us into the great barn-like shed where we disembarked.

From the time we took our places in the cabin of the Viktoria Luise until we again stepped out upon solid ground, just twelve hours had elapsed. During that time we had come from Düsseldorf against a wind that at times had a velocity of twenty miles an

hour

by way of

the seashore to Berlin. There had been no untoward incident. Every moment of the voyage was filled with pleasure. We came to earth rested and refreshed, with none of that dusty, worn feeling that fastens upon a person during a railroad trip. That we were fortunate in the weather encountered is true, but it is also true that no Zeppelin airship has has ever had a serious accident while in the air, though several have been destroyed while riding at anchor.

That the sún does not always shine for the airship, however, is testified to by Captain Stelling, of the Parseval Airship Company,

"Though we had been making good headway against a 25-mile wind," said Captain Stelling, "I knew we were in for trouble. A thunderstorm came up against the wind, which, increasing in violence, brought us to a dead standstill. The first squalls struck us while the ship was 300 feet in the air. They pushed us back, and then a cloudburst deluged us, adding greatly to our weight and making it impossible for us to gain headway.

who is known in Germany as the Father of Aerial Navigation. The Parseval airships, unlike the Zeppelins, are non-rigid, but none the less have been operated with much success between the larger German cities. Captain Stelling recently told of his encounter with a storm during a voyage of the Parseval III, of which he had command.

"I dropped closer to the ground, where the drag of the earth always makes the wind a trifle weaker. But our position was decidedly perilous. On one side was a village, on the other, a forest, and before us a high hill. Almost hugging the ground, we tossed about in that narrow steerage-way. As a squall would pass, we would make a great leap forward. In one of these jumps we came near destroying a herd of cattle

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bunched together to escape the full force of the wind, which at times touched forty-five miles an hour.

"The passengers were severely shaken. Both drag ropes had been given out, that I might land if the storm lasted until night. After wrestling two hours, the airship, still scraping along, began to advance slowly against the storm. The drag ropes then hindered us so that I cut one loose and hauled in the other which come up covered with mire.

"Then we made better headway against

the still heavy wind, but with the earth only sixty feet below we were in constant danger of colliding with trees and houses. Yet I dared not go higher in the air.

"At last the wind slackened somewhat, and rising to 220 feet we reached Augsburg at nightfall. There I anchored and the ship lay exposed all night to rain and a wind of twenty-three miles an hour. After all, the damage was slight and the Parseval III made its regular trips the next day." Few Americans realize the progress that is being made by the builders of German airships. It is unfortunate that this is so, for it is seldom that America permits itself to be left so far behind as it has been by Germany in the race for supremacy in the air. Count Zeppelin has demon

with the aircraft of the future, is as true a ship as any that rides on the water. The air is its element, and in the air it presents a picture of safety. It was launched early this year (1912) and from its first trial has been a success.

Built, as are all Zeppelins, with a rigid framework of reinforced aluminum, it has eighteen "napkin-ring" sections each containing a gas-tight bag- a total gas capacity of 681,600 cubic feet. Over the framework is stretched a heavy cloth covering that is impervious to rain or snow. Upper and lower decks furnish surfaces that serve the same purpose as do the wings of an aeroplane when it is desired to drive to a higher or lower air level. The individual gas bags are not fully

strated thoroughly and practically that the airship has come to stay. It is a commercial success a luxury, perhaps, of to-day; a convenience and necessity of to-morrow.

T WAS Carlyle, I believe, who, tiring of political sham and all other kinds of sham, demanded a "Conditionof-the-People Party" in England; and Liberalism there, with its mighty programme of social reform, seems to furnish at last a realization of his dream.

What strikes an American observer first of all is the shocking and impious lack of respect for time-worn political catchwords, formulas, and theories of government, such as our politicians at home are wont to make fetiches of; and the general agreement with Mr. Lloyd-George that the supreme task of Parliament members is to "ameliorate the conditions of their less fortunate fellows," "organizing the best of all to avert the worst from each." A government once concerned only with the conditions of foreign trade, the quieting

of the irrepressible Irish, and the extension of its far-flung battle-line, has suddenly discovered, in the language of its most conspicuous representative, that "the Empire depends for its strength, its glory, nay, for its very existence, upon the efficiency of its people." And, although the speeches in Parliament I have heard and read leave me no room to doubt that England will spend her last farthing rather than sacrifice her mastery of the seas, it I was Mr. Winston Churchill, now First Lord of the Admiralty, who said in a speech not long ago, "The supremacy and predominance of our country depend upon the vigor and health of its population, its true glory is in the happiness of its cottage homes."

England, moreover, has not only talked these things, she has acted on them. And