A squadron of six airboats attached to the Atlantic Fleet last winter and spring cruised for nine months, covering thirteen thousand miles in weather which at times forced surface craft to seek the shelters of harbors or put to sea for safety. Machines capable of attaining a speed of one hundred miles an hour and upward will be able to gain ground in any wind except a typhoon. Likewise, they will be able to navigate either around or above local disturbances. They are doing it every day. Only the most violent meteorological disturbances delay aerial activities, and then only for a short period.

Considering the comfort of passengers in aerial transportation, it may be said that where passenger space is enclosed in heavierthan-air machines, electrically heated, luxuriously upholstered and furnished with oxygen apparatus for high altitudes, flying over mountain territories or to escape local storms, the discomfort can only be one of monotony of position, which in the large types, sure to be developed in the near future, will be removed.

Air sickness will probably always trouble certain individuals, but so few are thus affected that the matter has no bearing on the future development of aerial transportation on a grand scale. Reliability of machines and equipment is not well understood, but it may be said with absolute truth that the all-metal planes are nearly fool-proof with respect to the machine itself, the great danger being in connection with the use of gasoline as a fuel. Probably ninety-five per cent of all the accidents where fire occurs are due to defective supply systems from the fuel tanks to the motors. It would appear that insufficient thought has been given to this part of the mechanical equipment of airplanes.

In the case of airships, helium will replace hydrogen, but that is not so necessary as the control of the gasoline supply. In airships and in heavier-than-air machines sprinkling systems can and will be installed, which will reduce the danger of fire in the same manner as is done by sprinkling systems in factories.

And then there are the crews. Relief pilots must be carried, so that the fatigue of long sustained flights shall not incapacitate the pilot to such an extent as to make landings dangerous.

The multiple power plant is receiving the best attention of designers. The planes depending on a single engine, or even

two engines, for sustained flight, are more likely to meet trouble than is a plane provided with three or four motors. The extra motors provide a factor of safety.

To sum up: Commercial aeronautics on a large scale, particularly in this country, on account of its area, should have no terrors for financiers. It can be nothing less than a paying proposition. Of first importance in the field of commercial aeronautics is the airship for long distance traffic, passenger or freight. Next come the airplane and seaplane, for distances up to three or four hundred miles, and relays of any distances, to include the circumnavigation of the globe.

Designs must break away from military and naval considerations. The Government must establish laws and regulations for safety's sake, and to avoid confusion with respect to responsibility, and must further provide all the aids for navigation which the peculiarities of aeronautics require; must provide public landing fields and supply bases, regulated and controlled by Government agencies; must materially extend the functions and activities of the meteorological service, and thus indirectly subsidize commercial aeronautics in the same manner in which merchant shipping is subsidized, not by cash bonuses and direct cash payments to concerns and individuals, but by the establishment of a public service having cognizance of aeronautical

matters.

Finally, bankers must come to the aid of the aeronautical industry, and to the aid of corporations undertaking the operation of aircraft for commercial uses. It goes without saying that any exploitation of transportational facilities must be founded on a solid financial basis. Otherwise, its economic life will be short. Aeronautics is here-and will be to the end of the world; and the bankers are here. The problem is to bring them together.

CLIFFORD ALBION TINKER.

THE USELESS LEAGUE

BY AN EYE WITNESS, GEORGES LECHARTIER

If we leave aside the conferences of a special and technical interest-in Brussels, we find that the League of Nations had two momentous experiences, one which took the well intentioned and vagrant Council of the League from Paris to London and back to Paris, then after a short trip to Rome, back to London, and finally, after a delightful week spent in the picturesque and fashionable San Sebastien, back to Paris again. The second experience was the first session of the League itself, which held the assizes in Geneva from the fifteenth of November to December 18, 1920.

Let us now open the record of both sessions. And let us allow the facts to speak for themselves.

During its first and wandering experience, the Council of the League had four objectives to attain: I) The organization of the League; II) Political duties of the League; III) Action of the League in the general interests of humanity; IV) Help given by the League to Associations for the development of international coöperation. Of these four objectives the most important was, of course, the political one, since it had to deal with the determination of cities, regions and peoples. There the Council would show what it meant and what its might really was. The second objective was indeed the touchstone of the League. It included in its first and urgent work: 1) the determination of the Free City of Danzig; 2) the question of the Saar Basin; 3) the determination of the circles of Eupen and Malmedy; 4) the protection of Armenia; 5) the protection of the minorities in the Ottoman Empire; 6) the protection of the minorities in Poland, Austria and Bulgaria; 7) the reciprocal emigration of minorities in Greece and in Bulgaria; 8) the appeal of Persia to the League; 9) the dispute between Sweden and Finland concerning the Aland Islands; 10) the dispute between Poland

and Lithuania; 11) the appeal of the king of Hedjaz to the League; 12) the Commission of Inquiry to Russia; 13) the International Financial Conference.

Of all those important questions the Council is so eager to obtain a satisfactory and decisive solution that it begins as soon as its second session is opened in London. The official record shows us that, between the eleventh and the thirteenth of February 1920, the Council proceeds to the appointment of the Governing Commission of the territory of the Saar and to the appointment of a High Commissioner of the League of Nations at Danzig. And then, after such a mighty effort, it rests until the 12th of March when, having reconvened in Paris, it settles down to deal with such urgent business as the protection of minorities in Turkey, and the possible appointment of a commission of inquiry into the conditions then prevailing in Russia. The Council goes so far as "to decide to ask the Government of Soviets whether they were prepared to give to the proposed commission of inquiry the necessary facilities for their work": but, evidently satisfied that they are agreed on such a vital point, they postpone the asking.

In the same overloaded session the Council, conscious of its responsibilities and resolutely neglecting the appeal of nature to obey the order of duty, adopts a resolution asking the International Health Conference "to submit to it, towards the end of April, plans of united official action for the protection of Poland and of other countries lying to the west of Russia from the epidemic of typhus." Then, of course, it breathes: it adjourns.

During its fourth session, the Council listens to the request of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and of the Republic of Latvia for admission to the League. Then somebody speaks about the registration of Treaties. All at once the Council, "interpreting in the widest practicable manner the obligations of Article XVIII of the Covenant in this connection" (Document 37 of the Assembly), authorizes the Secretariat "to register all treaties, engagements or acts establishing obligations between states, whether concluded before or after the Covenant": and it expresses the hope that "even treaties concluded between parties neither of which is a member of the League will be voluntarily

presented for registration." A member of the Council rises to insist on the wide scope of the authorization given which is to ensure publicity for international engagements so as to provide in future for a system of open diplomacy, "according to the very spirit of the League." This high achievement being obtained, the Council indulges in some conversations about financial matters concerning the League, authorization to be given to organize at Danzig the elections for the Constituent Assembly, protection of Armenia, again the protection of minorities in Turkey, the repatriation of war prisoners. At the closing, a member, yielding suddenly to a generous inspiration, proposes to send a message of sympathy from the Council to the national Associations in support of the League. The Chairman of the Council, after consultation with the members, praises the said member for his motion, well worthy of the Council, and proposes the adoption of the motion. The motion is unanimously adopted. The Council feels gratified and adjourns.

The Council has been until now so busy with the affairs of the world that it has somewhat forgotten to settle its own rules and internal administration. So, when it reconvenes for its fifth session, during the lovely month of May in Rome, it resolves to take up first the most urgent. It considers some rules of procedure for itself; it examines a plan of budget for the League and of allocations of expenses between members of the League. It argues about the convenings of the Assembly, speaks of the staff of the Secretariat, then concentrates its attention on the big questions. It proceeds to nominate a permanent armament committee, under Article IX of the Covenant, "to advise the Council on the execution of Articles I and VIII and on military, naval and air questions generally." It elects members for an International Statistical Committee, and settles the relations that will exist in the future between the Council and the Assembly on one hand and the Permanent Technical Organization of the League on the other. It decides, in principle, that the League should coöperate in the repression of the traffic in women and children. It gives some consideration to a protest concerning the status of the Saar officials in the administration of the Saar Basin. It becomes interested in the question of the circles of