they have not been
forced to live together before. The artificial barriers that have
stood so firm between nations in the past are now swept away and a
great common medium of intercommunication opened.

Let it not be understood that all this will take place overnight. Far
from it, for the experience of the war has taught only too well that
the organization of an air force takes time and patience. Up to date
the essential fact is that the science, the value, and the
possibilities of flight have been proved in a thousand different ways.
Vistas of travel and experience have been opened up which but a few
months ago would have seemed fanciful. Everywhere men are dreaming
dreams of the future which challenge one's deepest imagination.
Already Caproni, the great Italian inventor, has signed a contract to
carry mails from Genoa to Rio Janeiro.

Now comes news of an airplane with room for ninety-two passengers.
Engine power and wing space have gone on increasing in a dazzling way
till one is almost afraid to guess what the future may hold. But,
omitting all prophecy, the actual accomplishments to date are so
stupendous that there is no need to speculate as to the future. If all
technical development were to stop just where it stands, the factories
and workshops of the world could well be occupied for years in turning
out the machines necessary for the work awaiting them. Scientific
development has gone so infinitely far ahead of actual production that
as yet aviation is not being put to a fraction of its use.

Even more serious, however, is the general public failure to realize
the gift which is within their reach. Flying was first a circus stunt
and later a war wonder. The solid practical accomplishments have been
lost sight of in the weird or the spectacular. People who marveled
when a British plane climbed up nearly six miles into the air, or
30,000 feet, where its engine refused to run and its observer fainted,
failed generally to analyze what the invasion of this new element
would mean in the future of mankind.

What is now needed is a big, broad imagination to seize hold of this
new thing and galvanize it into actual every-day use. There are many
skeptics, of course, many who point out, for instance, that the
element of cost is prohibitive. This is both fallacious in reasoning
and untrue in fact. A modern two-seated airplane, even to-day, costs
not over $5,000, or about the price of a good automobile. Very soon,
with