happened since Watt
developed the steam-engine only a few generations ago, when Columbus
set the first ship westward, or when America's first train ran over
its rough tracks near the Quincy quarries.

The development of aviation will be world-wide and will include all
sorts and races of men. The nations all start pretty much abreast.
Those which developed war air services have an advantage in material
and experience, but this is a matter only for the moment. The main
lines of progress are now pretty widely known and the field is wide
open to those who have the imagination to enter it. There is
practically no handicap at this early stage which cannot be overcome
with ease.

There is, of course, an element of individual gamble to those who
enter this competition. Undoubtedly there will be many failures, as in
all new fields; failures come to those who put in capital as well as
those who contribute their scientific knowledge. But by the same token
there will be great successes both financially and scientifically. The
prize that is being striven for is one of the richest that have ever
been offered and the rewards will be in accordance. This has been the
case at the birth of every great development in human progress and
will undoubtedly be the case with the science of flight. Until a field
becomes standardized it offers extremes on both sides rather than a
dull, dreary, but safe average.

As aviation runs into every phase of activity it will require every
kind of man--manufacturer, scientist, mechanic, and flier. It offers
problems more interesting and more complex than almost any others in
the world. The field is new and virgin, the demand world-wide, and the
rewards great. For the flier there is all the joy of life in the air,
above the chains of the earth, reaching out to new, unvisited regions,
free to come and go for almost any distance at any level desired, a
freedom unparalleled. For the manufacturer there is all the lure of a
new product destined in a short time to be used as freely as the
automobile of to-day; for the scientist there are problems of balance,
meteorology, air pressure, engine power, wing spread, altitude
effects, and the like in a bewildering variety; for the explorer, the
geographer, the map-maker a wholly new field is laid open.

The best men of every type are needed to give aviation its full
fruition. In Europe this is realized to a supreme degree. England
especially, and also France and Ita