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U.S. AIR SERVICES

Of aircraft Rudyard Kipling wrote: "We are at the opening verse of the opening page of the chapter of endless possibilities." The purpose of this publication is to provide inspiring and truthful pages for that "chapter of endless possibilities." This magazine is devoted to aerial development in the United States, birthplace of the flying machine, home of Wilbur and Orville Wright, who wrote the first flawless line of that opening verse, and through whose genius the world was taught to fly

Sport for Sport's Sake

OVER-OCEAN flights, after languishing for a season, have again become de rigueur. Doubtless before this article is in type Magyars and Endres will have been succeeded by other claimants for transatlantic honors, and it may not be beyond the range of conservative prophecy to predict that someone will have bagged the Tokyo prize by crossing the North Pacific, nonstop.

Apparently, too, public enthusiasm for such stunts, after languishing like the stunts for a season, is again revived. Any man who can cross an ocean by the air route can make the front page and sell out the edition.

All of which is a very healthy state of affairs. It confirms a return to normalcy in one department at least, and may thereby presage a return to normalcy all along the line --a consummation devoutly to be wished. When a person stops fooling himself he is in a fair way of recovering his balance. We have stopped fooling ourselves in respect of over-ocean flying. We hail it today for what it is--the pinnacle of sport. We are preeminently a sporting people, even more so than the British from whom presumably we inherit the strain. We have been accused of being preeminently a business people; but so were the English. Napoleon dubbed them a nation of shop keepers, but just the same England has always been the home of sport for sport's sake. And we are the same, only more so. If a thing hasn't got some sort of game connected with it, it's dead. The Anglo-Saxon motto seems to be "let's play." Aviation is the latest form of play--the latest and greatest sport.

That is not to imply that is is not a great and serious business. Aviation as a business, as a proper mode of transportation, as a mail carrier par excellence, is here and has been here for some time. But as such it doesn't make the front page, and seldom ever has. But let someone execute an aerial stunt that exploits aviation as a sport and the whole country follows him with eager mind, and applauds his accomplishment.

And the moral of all this is that 1931 besides marking the upturn in the wave of depression is marking something else almost as wholesome. It is marking a tendency to debunk our thinking along all lines and to see things frankly as they are. It is marking a revival of over-ocean flying minus the spirit of cajolery that was invoked on behalf of similar exploits in previous years. Heretofore if a man, barring of course Lindbergh and a few like him, started out for Europe or anywhere else by air, he thought he had to bolster up his project with a lot of specious explanation and defense. If he didn't, then Tabloidia did it for him. The shibboleth of those days was science and commerce--a sort of pathfinding venture--or it was an experiment destined vaguely to advance the aeronautical millenium by its contribution to scientific lore.

FLIGHTS this year have been minus all such bunk. Flights such as Post and Gatty's have been heralded for what they were--magnificent sporting adventures, marvelously executed. To be sure, they involved just about everything that science, skill and wits could ask for or contribute. So does all high adventure in its degree. That goes without argument. But there has been no blab about contributions to science, no pathfinding tootle, no trails for daily flying blazed, no adumbrations regarding meteorological mysteries solved. Pages could probably be written, and more than probably will be, about the ability of the participants as navigators, about their masterly handling of their ships, about their skill and fortitude and courage. Pages, too, could be written about their equipment, and about their forethought in providing it. But all this will be incidental--in out more normal national temper of 1931--to the recognition of their achievement, ipso facto.

We will not be bluffed, and nobody will be lunatic enough to bluff us as in bygone days by hoisting the panache of science over the tents of our national aerial heroes. No "pathfinding" tripe will be dispensed. Nor will the "news value" of their exploits be given the decrepit reinforcement of pseudo-scientific trappings. In 1931 we seem readier to see things as they are, and we hail our flying adventurers in their proper role--great sportsmen, wonderful winners, needing no specious apologia to merit our acclaim.