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RUTH LAW'S LAW IS TO PLEASE SPECTATORS

Premier Aviatrix Puts Plenty of Thrills Into Her Work at Comstock Park.

TELLS OF LONGEST FLIGHT

Exhibitions at Fair Grounds Monday Afternoon Make Watchers Gasp.

(By Henry H. Tinkham.)

Perhaps 3,000 persons, a mere handful of spectators as West Michigan State fair crowds go, Monday afternoon were given a rare but of evidence of the treat that is in store for the exposition throngs during the week when Ruth Law makes her two daily flights.
Miss Law is a refreshing exception among performers in that her one idea is to give the people their money's worth and Monday afternoon, with but a few persons on the ground and in the face of the suggestion from the management that a single flight would do, she took the erratic little Curtiss plane twice into the air and executed no fewer than seventeen loops.
Mickey McGurrin, who has seen and ridden with them all and made parachute jumps with most of the big time flyers, eloquently and tersely described it when he remarked, with a great sigh: "That's flying with a big 'F.'"
Perfect Mastery of Air.
Grand Rapids never has and probably never will see a more perfect exhibition of the mastery of the air. Miss Law does everything the best of the flyers do and does it just a bit better. Her fame at "banking" the machine, the act of tilting it on end in making sharp turns, is worldwide. Experienced flyers admit she banks a plane steeper than any other aviator in exhibition work at least and her loops are as true and straight as though the plane was being driven around a track. She goes into the loop on a horizontal and comes out on an even keel. Even DeLloyd Thompson's biplane showed a tendency to end slip in completing the loops at last year's fair. Miss Law modestly declined credit for superiority, pointing out that Thompson's plane is driven by a Gnome or rotary motor and the centrifugal effect of the whirling motor has a tendency to throw the plane off even keel either in entering or leaving the loop.
Bests Thompson's Record.
In the first flight she made good her promise to beat Thompson's record of five loops by flipping over seven times and when she went up again, after a ride in her Hudson car and a reception at the Kent Country club, the young aviatrix made ten complete loops. Her spiral dives are the most spectacular and involuntarily the throng sends up a chorus of gasps. In Monday's second flight she executed a perpendicular nose dive, coming straight down for 1,000 feet and then flattening out for a long sweep not twenty feet above the heads of the crowd in the home stretch of the track. Where most aviators have kept well away from the building Aliss Bay dips and banks and flips about just above them. Always she follows out her aim of giving the crowd its money's worth. In her loops she is careful to stay well within view of the grandstand.
She Is Not Fussy.
There is no fuss about her preparations either. Her husband goes over the plane to see everything is in place and tight and all the lock washers and cotter pins are secure. She ops into the seat, they prime the motor, give it a kick and away she goes. Nothing in the shape of a plane that has shown here ever took to the air with the speed of Miss Law's machine. In 200 feet she pushes the elevators and the plane hops from the ground, apparently going up at an angle of 45 degrees. With all her ability and popularity her medals for record flight and her experience over the battle fields of Europe there is nothing up-stage about the girl. She is just a wholesome, womanly woman, who enjoys flying and entertaining the throngs that turn out to see her and the more there are to see the more she tries to please. Next to her ability as an aviator the modestly with which she takes her honors seems the most pronounced attribute. Burdened with hero worship she nevertheless takes the trouble to answer questions and be affable.
Miss Law was inspired to enter the flying game when she saw the first army planes at Marblehead, Mass. near her home. She watched the planes soar day after day and finally took a ride. As she says it: "That was enough. I just had to learn to fly and here I am." Her brother, Roland Law, was the original "human rly," the man who made the jump from Brooklyn bridge as a stunt for the Pathe people and staged a long list of thrillers that have lived long in the history of filmoom the dots were? Oil tanks and oil wells. Wasn't that interesting?
"O yes, I was cold. But I was so engrossed in my flying that I didn't mind it. I wasn't thirsty. I'm a regular camel, I guess, I can go without water for hours. But when it comes to appetite, that's quite another thing and I was so hungry. Flying is fine. I enjoy every minute of it. I guess I like it better than those who watch me, if that is possible. But exhibition flying is nothing to this cross country game where you have nothing but your map and the compass to help you pick a highway through the air. I just love it and I am going to smash that record of mine before very long. Just put that down in your memory."
Tells of French Planes.
Miss Law speaks enthusiastically of her experience in France. She met all the members of the famous Lafayette esquadrille and there enjoyed a flight in one of the fast monoplane scout or fighting machines with a gun mounted on the nose of the fusilage. "My, but they are fast," she exclaimed. "I thought I had flown some fast machines over here, but do you know the only way I can give you an idea of the speed of that machine is to compare it with mine when I am making a nose dive with full power on. That monoplane literally took my breath away for a few moments. I didn't realize anything could travel so fast. It's just like falling all the time, only faster."
The little bid woman who promises such a treat for western Michigan folk this week is held in her plane by a heavy strap so she will not pitch out when the plane is upside down in the loops and is banked at steep angles. It has a peculiar looking metal buckle which she explains is an invention of Glenn Curtiss. And here her face clouded. "If Lincoln Beachey had only listened to advice and worn that little buckle he would be alive and flying today," she said. Then she demonstrated that by the flip of a lever the strap is cut loose. She explained that Beachey in his fall into San Francisco bay was drowned and not killed. His plane buried him under water and held him there and the only injury he sustained was a fracture of the leg. The doctors determined that death was due to drowning. He had been urged to use the Curtiss safety belt, but stuck to the old-fashioned harness and could not get himself free when the plane plunged into the bay.
Why of the Blue Tassel.
L. E. Colgrove, local Hudson dealer who has turned over a duplicate of Miss Law's own car for her use this week, was prompted by curiosity to ask why she had a blue tassel flying from one of the foot irons of the plane. "That's a secret," she smiled. Then she relented and explained that on the earlier planes this was attached as a drift indicator to show the aviator when the plane was end slipping. "In making a bank, if the machine is slipping, the tassel shows it. I've gotten used to that little blue cord," she confessed, and I just don't feel as though I could fly without it. There, that's my confession. It's just like a woman, you'll say, but that's the only reason I can give. I wouldn't feel safe without it and I never have occasion even to glance at it now."
"Pinched"-Nearly.
Between flights Monday Miss Law jumped into her Hudson speedster for a spin. With Mrs. Francis Campbell and Miss Delia Champlin she rolled out of the grounds before the plane had been put back in its berth. They drove to the Kent Country club where Miss Law was so warmly received that she could not break away and started for the fairgrounds, already a little late for her flight. On the Monroe avenue road she stepped on the car a little and two motorcycle policemen flagged her. When they learned who she was both smiled and told her to go ahead and to make it safe for her acted as an escort for the flying Hudson. The aviatrix reached the ground just as the announcer was calling her name. She piled out of the car with a rush.
"Back to work," she exclaimed as she climbed into the Curtiss and two minutes later she was high above the grounds, dipping and spiraling and looping of a crowd that enjoyed the exhibition in deep silence until the machine gracefully came to earth as lightly as a feather. Then the pent up enthusiasm broke loose. Miss Law's face was alight when she came back.
"Well," said she, "what that crowd lacks in size it sure makes up in appreciation."
Calls German Dog "Pollu."
Miss Law brought back from Europe a beautiful specimen of the famous German sheep dog. "We call him French," she exclaimed, "just for the same reason that all us patriots refuse to ask for German fried potatoes. I used to say he was a Belgian, but I found too many dog fanciers who knew the Belgian was black and so I just call him French now and I defy the dog fanciers, because his name is Pollu and that's surely French, isn't it?"

FOR THE WOMAN OF TO-DAY
Just Typical Outdoor Girl is Ruth Law
Woman Aviator Who Broke America's Long Distance Record Now in Toronto.

If you want to find out just how much like any other woman Ruth Law is, ask her how old she is!

(We didn't; it was a rude man that did this morning.)

She will tell you that she doesn't think the public is interested in that!

Just what is the woman like who was strong and skillful enough to do what no man has done in American-that is break the long-distance endurance record for aeroplanes?

Clear, smiling grey eyes, fluffs of light brown hair peeping from her aviator's cap blooming pink cheeks, just tall enough not to be too tall. Ruth Law is just a picture of the typical outdoor girl you can meet on any tennis court or golf links in America.

Simple as her name- Ruth Law- is she.

"I haven't done anything that any other woman couldn't do if she had the opportunity," smiled she this morning as we chatted with her at her suite in the King Edward.

"How did you come to do it?" we asked.

I've always been fond of sports. I've spend most of my life outdoors. I adore motoring or anything with an engine, so when I'd done about everything else I started to fly. I happened to be spending the summer at Marblehead, Mass., in 1912, and there Burgess, of yachting fame, had turned to airplanes. He was teaching five army lieutenants to fly, and he let me come, too. I made my first flight on July 5th, 1912, and I've been doing it ever since."

Though six months is allowed as the time it takes some people to learn to fly, Miss Law accomplished it in one month. Since then she has been giving continuous exhibitions all over America, and has had a school in Florida, where she made as many as twenty or thirty flights a day, and last summer did a 2,500-mile cross-country ride.

"I like that best of all, to go cross country where you don't know where you're going and then make a good landing," smiled she.

Here 950-mile trip from Chicago to New York in nine hours and one minute is, of course, her most sensational achievement.

"I was not familiar with the country and just had a map and compass in my exhibition machine," said she. "I wanted Mr. Curtiss to let me use an army machine, but he said a woman couldn't do it. So I had to take one that held but 53 gallons, and stop for oil at Binghampton.

"Probably no one in America has spend more time actually flying than Ruth Law this past six years, yet in spite of her wonderful records, the U.S. Government is still refusing her application for a commission in its aviation service.

It does seem hard to be just a woman sometimes, doesn't it.

But Ruth keeps on smiling just the same, and hopes that by next fall Uncle Sam will claim her. In the meantime she just goes on helping him with recruiting work, Liberty Loan and Red Cross campaigns, though she does sigh to do some "real work" for him.

But one comforting thing to her about even her exhibition work has been the number of aviators' mothers, who come or write to her to say somehow flying doesn't seem so dreadful once you've seen a woman doing it.

"They tell me," said Miss Law, "that they've been told an aviator's life at the front is three or four days, but I tell them of chaps I know who've been out there from the first, and they've never had one smash!"

Just here she rapped soundly on the table!

But France was as kind to Miss Law as it was to British women doctors whom their War Office spurned.

"Last year they let me go up in one of their scout machines over Paris and the rear lines," said Miss Law.

Glowing words of the splendid work done by girls in Britain's aeroplane factories has Miss Law.

"I saw them doing the most difficult brazing, the thing on which an aviator's life most depends. Why, when I have a machine made I have one of the oldest men do the brazing, and I watch it being made!"

Miss Law spent three months in France studying military conditions, and believes she could be of valuable service if she were granted a commission. She has a great faith in the air programme of the U.S., now that the motors are being turned out successfully, and says they cannot keep up with the applications for that service.

"But we'll need everyone," said Miss Law, who declared: "I have a theory that before this war finishes we'll have to go in more and more for the low flight attacks. Why should the air men keep up away from the enemy any more than the infantry. I'd like to see them attack in whole regiments of flying machines!"

Outside of her aviation and motor work, Miss Law confessed to a weakness for animals. Proudly she displays her French trench dog, "Poilu," which was given her in Paris. His coat is its latest color, beige and black, and is so wiry he might be a cousin of the Airedale.

She herself was wearing her flying costume, which is so like the feminine war uniforms that she wears it practically all the time these days. Covert cloth forms its tunic-like coat, aviation cap, knickers and skirt. The latter is slit at the side, and when she sits in the machine has merely to be folded back. Long tan boots complete the costume, on which she wears the official gold wings of the French service given her as a compliment.

Miss Law is looking forward to much to her four days in Toronto, and expects to visit its famous camps. A Boston girl, her home is now in Chicago, and her husband, Mr. Charles Oliver, to whom she has been married five years, travels with her as business manager.

CORNELIA.

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RUTH LAW WANTS TO ENTER SERVICE AND FIGHT ON WAR FRONT IN FRANCE
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Ruth Law and her French police dog, Poilu, who are making the hit of the Alabama State Fair. Poilu was given to Miss Law by a wounded soldier. The dog has seen service on the eastern front, having been wounded while under fire. He is said to be the first trench dog allowed to come to the States by the French government.

Will Ask Government to Give Her Permission to Join Air Squadron in War Zone.
BY ZIPP.

Mr. Mere Man, on the first thought you won't give a woman much credit for wanting to fight- for you would you think the woman joshing- but wait until you have seen Ruth Law, a daring bit of feminine humanity- and talked to her.

Ruth Law's sole ambition is to be "over there" on the front where man- who loves his freedom, desires to be at this time. Not as a spectator, mind you, but as an aviator fighting for the cause of liberty. She believes she has as much right to expect the government to five her the privilege of fighting as any man.

Miss Law has demonstrated that she can fly as well as any aviator in the world, having set records that few of the dashing knights of the airplane have come near to approaching.

"I want to help my country," said Miss Law, "and since I started in the flying business I have thought of nothing else but flying. I have adapted myself to be of some service and I think I am quite capable of taking care of myself in the war zone without asking for special favors. It appeals to me and I can hear but one voice, and that is the voice of adventure calling me over on the battle front- where the aviator has his good and bad luck and then sings his swan song- giving his life to a noble cause. I have been back of the lines and know what to expect and the trying times the aviator has to go through with. Fighting the Boche is no more hazardous than my night flying."

Wears Service Uniform.

Ruth Law has been honored by the United States as not other woman in being granted the permission to wear the service uniform. An honor that is justly becoming the young daring aviatrix, who has given much time and money in recruiting and working in the interest of the liberty loan campaign in June.

The French government officials were intensely interested in Miss Law during her visit in France last Winter with the LaFayette escadrille squadron. The young woman picked up many new points on the war plans and how to manage them. She met Guynemer, the famous French aviator, who brought down 53 German planes and just recently said Miss Law. "I will always remember this young fellow for his bravery."

Miss Law made one flight over Paris in one of the new war planes at a rate of 130 miles an hour. On starting back home Miss Law was given, Poilu, her French police dog. Poilu was given to Miss Law by a wounded soldier who asked her to take the wounded dog and care for him. She was given special permission by the French government to bring the dog to this country, which is the only trench dog which has been permitted to be brought to the United States. Poilu is a big fine looking grey dog, resembling very much a shy wolf with piercing brown eyes.

Boston Her Native Town.

Ruth Law was born in Boston, lived 15 years in New York City and makes Chicago her home. She prefers the West. Her first professional engagement with a fair was under J.C. Dent, at Louisville, who is managing the Alabama State Fair.

Flying came natural to Miss Law, having learned how to fly in four weeks after her first flight in Marblehead, Mass., six years ago. She bought her own machine and hired a special tutor who did nothing by stay with her every hour until she could manage the machine.

Last November Miss Law set the non-stop record of 591 miles from Chicago to Cornell, N.Y., coming within 97 miles of the long distance record of 812 miles by completing 124 miles for the day's journey. In June she made her 2,500 mile cross-country flight in the interest of the Liberty Loan campaign, covering the distance in ten days. Her altitude record is over 14,000 feet and many say that she could have broken the world's record on this occasion if it hadn't been for the extreme cold weather. She holds all of the records for women and expects to bag a few of the men's records.

Miss Law is a stern-speaking business woman, with a pleasant manner of frankness. Although an Easterner by birth she is truly Western in her style and is a thoroughly interesting conversationalist.

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