12

World War, the steel industry was safe. When there were rumors of Adriatic disturbances, the steel industry was fairly safe. But when the world quieted down, the steel workers began to fear, and clamored for the right to know what the status of their breadgiving industry was. A lockout might come any day; therefore they wanted to know where they stood. Backed by the Socialists, to whom all labor had come for temporary leadership tending toward an immediate economic result, they asked for the right of controllo of the books of their firms; that is, for the privilege of checking up, verifying, and the like-not "controlling" in the sense of the word given to it by high finance, which makes it tantamount to holding a majority of the stock of a company. The men were denied this right; whereupon their Socialist leaders sent around the word: The steel industry would be the first to be made to feel labor's new force. This answer question number two.

WHY THE FACTORIES WERE SEIZED

But why not follow the usual factory methods-strike, slowing up, sabotage; ultimately, appeal to the Government? The Socialist Deputies knew too much. The steel magnates would have asked for nothing better at a time when a crisis was impending than a strike or any excuse for. dismissal or punishment. And the Government of Italy is at present more to be pitied than blamed; it has piled up so many unfulfilled promises that it can hardly move under their weight, and would surely have ended the dispute by a statement that "the guilty, never mind how powerful or numerous, will be apprehended and dealt with to the full extent of the law;" after which nothing would have happened. By the occupation of the factories, on the contrary, the Government was prevented from postponing the question to a vague future and the employers were prevented from applying the lockout. (Answer to question number three.)

The least enviable position of all was Es that of the technical experts, who were often threatened with expulsion by both employers and employees in case they did not take sides. Their attitude had to be very cleverly opportunistic; most of the technical experts with whom I came in contact had told the occupying workmen that they had no objection to working for them against the will of the employers, but only after the Government had sanctioned their occupa tion of the factories.

EXIT LENINE

The possession of unaccustomed power was sure to create a split within the ranks of Socialistic leaders. And, the split came in a most theatrical way when Nikolai Lenine ordered the Italian proletariat to begin a revolution

-the revolution. That automatically created a fourfold split: a small minority wished to follow Lenine; another small group declared itself theoretically in favor of the revolution, but practically unable to carry it out until the comrades in other lands had guaranteed support; most of the other Socialists simply refused to listen to the proposal; and the rank and file of laborers hastened to unhitch their economic chariot from the political one of the Socialists, and brought such pressure to bear that it became evident that a compromise was a matter of but a few days.

It was then that the country witnessed, not without merriment, the spectacle of the extreme wing of the Socialist party begging Giolitti to reopen Parliament. But Giolitti was not fooled by this request. He would settle the matter then and there; and he called a conference in Rome between the representatives of the warring factions.

By the date of the conference the basis of the final accord was plainly in view. The employers knew that the strict interpretation of the law, which would have made 500,000 men guilty of occupying property not their own, would be laughed out of court by a Premier so openly cynical that he dared tell the correspondent of the Associated

Press that an action when committed

by half a million men cannot be judged by a government as if it had been committed by five men. And the Socialists knew that Lenine had wrecked them by starting the attack far too soon, and by ordering from abroad a political movement which, even in the case of Socialists, should have come only from home

sources.

The Committee which is to submit to Parliament the proposal for "democratization of Italian industry " will consist of twelve members, of whom four are employers, four employees, and four representatives "of the technical and managerial element in industry "-two of the last named to be elected by factory hands and two by employers. That is very clever policy, for in reality the balance of power rests with these four neutral individuals who desire, more than anything else, that the factory should work, for they can neither cross their arms and go fishing like the employers nor expect to be fed by a Bolshevist state like the factory hands.

But the real victory has been won by the people-by the millions who are neither steel magnates nor factory hands nor Socialist agitators. If the Socialists wish to make another political jump, they will have to turn to Lenine. This the mass of sober-thinking Italian wage-earners is neither ready nor willing to do. BRUNO ROSELLI.

E

VERY axiom of life based upon human experience, such as "What goes up must come down," requires a good deal of successful contradiction before man loses his prejudice and veneration therefor. Vaudeville performers receive high pay for their ability to contradict laws of nature that the rest of us have long deemed it necessary to obey. When the telephone first made its appearance and achieved the impossible, it was to some a mere theatrical performance to be marveled over by the spectators generally; but to the men of vision it was discerned to be an instrument that would become of value to civilization.

And now, flying-the swiftest means of transportation ever known to mankind-has come to be stared at for a while, to be received and acclaimed as a new marvel of daring by the mass of onlookers, while to the few the possibilities of aviation promise to surpass at a bound the familiar achievements

of the mundane vehicles, and to give mankind a new standard of speed and economy in travel.

The danger of flying is its greatest enemy. The manufacturer who has airplanes to sell, the insurance man who estimates the risk his company runs, the eager youth who urges his old-fashioned parent to buy a family plane, the passenger who would give a thousand to find himself in Chicago before night but hesitates and balks at taking his seat between the outspread wings-all appreciate that flying is dangerous, and no amount of camouflage will remove that impression from their minds. For they think only of possible catastrophes.

What goes up must come down. Falling bodies drop earthward at a speed of sixteen feet the first second, thirty feet the next second, and so on, with sickening mathematical precision.

Almost every week the newspapers tell of the tragic crash of an airplane and the end of some gallant pilot. "Not for me!" concludes Mr. Average Citizen. "I wouldn't go up in one of those things for a million dollars!"

But is flying dangerous? In a matter of such evident importance to humanity it is well to look at the prospect thoughtfully. Let us study the figures of several of the largest aerial transportation companies that are engaged in passengercarrying and mathematically compute the risks of airplane travel to-day-today, while the airplanes and landingfields are as crude as are the De Witt Clinton locomotive and coaches now on exhibition in New York which operated on the first railway tracks in 1846 between Albany and Troy. Common fairness must concede that improvements in air travel will come as certainly as they came in railway travel.

In a single fortnight recently two machines owned and operated by two

score as far as passenger-carrying is concerned. He begins to conclude that our newspapers lean rather heavily on the tragic side of flying, since the bulk of news items concerning aviation record only frightful fatalities. A careful analysis of these news items would dis close to him the fact that nine-tenths of these fatalities, roughly estimated, are caused by two minor and unnecessary factors of flying-one subjective, the other objective, and both avoidable. One is stunt flying, voluntarily per formed by a risk-loving pilot; the other is consenting to fly through fogs or stormy weather where one's sense of direction is lost and the machine suddenly comes in contact with a mountain or a tree standing up from its crest. Avoid stunt flying and fog flying, and airplane fatalities will actually show a lower percentage than automobile fatalities per machine.

From London to Paris a daily airtained now for over eighteen months. plane schedule has been steadily mainIn the first twelve months over one hundred thousand passengers were carried by one line, with but one fatal accident, resulting in the death of the I pilot and his passenger, a New York banker. This accident was due to col liding with a tree while flying through the fog. In the land of the Germans, our late enemies, fourteen established passenger-carrying lines are in opera tion. Figures as to accidents are lack ing, but evidence is not lacking that

young ex-Navy fliers carried a total of 637 passengers about the cities of the Atlantic seaboard, and without a single casualty or accident. Another company in California has been engaged in carry ing passengers throughout the twelve months of the year, and has yet to record its first accident of any description. A gentleman residing at Southampton, Long Island, took up over two hundred of his fellow-townsmen on one Saturday this summer, running his machine into the hangar at the close of the long day's work and going in to change for dinner with the same nonchalance of the thousands of motorists who completed their outing on that day.

WHY AIRPLANES FALL AND WHY

THEY NEEDN'T

A mathematical computation on these American figures gives the student a surprisingly easy hundred per cent

these air lines are profitable and are being multiplied. For, as the sage Chancellor remarked, "The develop Iment of our commercial aviation provides war machines ready to hand." In all fairness, then, is flying danger

ous? Not stunt flying nor fog flying nor

fool flying, but just plain every-day sen. sible flying. Is flying dangerous? You must take the word of experienced pilots

h

for it, until you overcome your prejudice and try it for yourself and find that it really isn't dangerous a bit. There are rash, impetuous pilots by the score in this country who have flown their thousands of hours in the air. And except in Army flying circles, where necessity compels taking chances, I am happy to say that stunt flying is becoming more and more shunned and frowned upon by the peace-time flier.

As for storms and fogs, one can fly through them if one wishes, but a safety first principle will frequently save lives if one heeds the warning. Once in, it is difficult to get out. Landing-fields are not yet provided in out-of-the-way places. But one can always fly back to a landing-field, and, if worse comes, it is better to have a wrecked machine than a wrecked machine plus broken bones. Lieutenant Plumb, who was one of the first to complete the transcontinental race between New York and San Francisco last fall, flew with a passenger through one of the most remarkable storms ever weathered by airplane in a flight he made from San Antonio to El Paso, Texas. His account of this flight is not only thrilling and interesting as a story of adventure, ! but it illustrates in no ordinary manner the actual strength of the airplane of to-day to withstand the severest buffeting of storms.

"On Friday, June 4, at 11:16 A.M.," began Lieutenant Plumb, "I left Kelly Field in a D.H. 4-B. (De Haviland two-seater machine, capable of 130 miles per hour) with Chauffeur Hoffman as passenger, in a flight to El Paso. I dodged a number of light rain storms in Beal County and Edwards County, but on the course half-way between Del Rio and Sanderson we encountered a severe storm with the rain concentration at three thousand feet altitude. It fell in great quantities, with much display of lightning.

IN THE CENTER OF A CYCLONE

"Upon observation, I noticed that the sky in all the northwest was of a very deep blue and very dark. It looked like a great storm sweeping down from the northwest. I soon encountered the first leg of this storm, which extended as far west as the Rio Grande and was moving southeast at the rate of twenty miles an hour. I swung below, this leg, got under it, and soon saw Sanderson basking in the sunlight.

"Sanderson had been hit by this storm, for I saw the water standing in large pools on the airdrome. As Marfa was my next objective, I decided to push on without stopping. When about thirty miles ahead, I saw another leg of the big storm standing directly across my course. Straight in front of me was a gap in the blackness that looked about wide enough to drive two airplanes through, wing to wing.

Wide World Photos

"We went through a light drizzle as we entered this gap, and then we entered an arena and witnessed a scene that I dare to say the human eye has never witnessed before. Inside the gap, which was some fifteen miles off my direct course, we found ourselves in the very heart and center of a cyclonic storm. Heavy black clouds hung restlessly below us at an altitude of one thousand feet.

"I was driving along among the mountains at the north end of the Santiago Range, which rises up into peaks of six thousand feet or more, known as the Elephant, Coinega, the Goat, etc. I could see their peaks extending up through the boiling, coiling masses of black clouds. I noticed that ahead and all around me the rain was pouring down heavily, with tremendous discharges of lightning all about us and above us.

"The air currents seemed to be circling. Then they began to boil, tossing cling. Then they began to boil, tossing the airplane about the heavens like a chip on rough water. Then I realized that the situation was becoming very hazardous, for I knew that I had but a little clearance above and between some of these high crags and mountains.

"Sometimes the summer air of Texas

is very rough and bumpy above mountains and cities, but my present situation was nothing to be compared with those easy bumps. On one occasion the plane was thrown into a position literally a bank beyond the vertical. If this had happened a moment sooner, we would have been hurled against the wall of a mountain. But it happened just after we had emerged over a deep valley, where I was able to correct the stability of the plane after a fall of some five hundred feet. This brought us close to the rocks and brushwood below.

A LOFTY HELL-HOLE

"As the rain was closing in now on all sides and the cyclonic movement of the air was becoming more threatening, I decided to turn back and try to fight my way back through the gap of the mountains. But on passing between two mountains to reach the easternmost side of the circle, I was horror-stricken to find that the storm had welded together at the very gap through which I had come. Each part of the horizon now seemed as black as the rest. And this hell-hole was now closing up upon us like a writhing nest of mad serpents. "I set everything ready for my final

Fellowcrafts Photo Shop, Albany, N. Y.

fight against the encompassing tempest. Opening the throttle full out and sticking up the nose of the airplane to its maximum climb, I shut my eyes and shut my eyes and ears to the fury of the storm and thrust up toward the top of the eastern wall. Just before entering the dense blackness I cast one glance behind, I do not know why, to take a last look at my passenger. All I could see was the tip of his helmet. He was in a crouching position, realizing the danger we were

storm. But I knew the fight was not yet done, for we had yet to make our way through those twisting clouds be low and find a landing-place.

"I have had thrills in landing & burning plane and in coming down with locked ailerons, but those were a feeble in comparison with my last fight through the circling walls of that storm. We came out over the unmis takable Rio Grande at a point I judged to be at the southern end of the Santiago Mountains. I pushed northward and east up the Rio Grande to a point where the river turned east. There a glance to the north told me that the town of Sanderson was now in the center of the storm. I turned and made my way back to Del Rio, where we landed well ahead of the storm, after being out just ten minutes short of four hours. The next day, after making re pairs, we flew on to El Paso at a con

facing, but compelled to leave our fate servative altitude, from where we could in my hands.

"The rainfall was terrific. It was so dense, in fact, that I could not make out the outer struts on the wings of the plane. It seemed an age that we flew blindly through this downpour, not knowing what instant we might crash into the side of one of the projecting peaks. Finally we emerged into a gray, heavy mist, which I recognized as light clouds hovering about the edges of the

look down on the north edge of the rocky battle-grounds of the day before." Is flying dangerous?

No, flying is not dangerous, though storms and cyclones over mountain-tops provide a source of danger for those seeking it. And if they come upon one unsought, the airplane can carry one away from danger more swiftly than can the steamship, motor car, or railway train.

12

"I

-THAN

SUPPOSE you men think that I am going to keep after you, and penalize you for every little lapse of discipline.

"I see you coming late to drill, out of uniform, talking in drill, reading when on lookout duty, and returning late after liberty-in fact, doing your best to make this a slack-run post, and waiting for me to jump on you; doing your best to establish the old antagonism between the commanding officer or school-teacher and the naughty boys. "Understand right now that I am going to do nothing of the kind. I have something better to do something far more important than to play chief monitor while you break regulations every time back is turned. my

"Most of you are disgusted that you have not been sent abroad. You joined the Navy in order to go to sea, and you have been sent down to help run this naval base on shore duty. You don't believe it is very important, and you never have thought of taking charge of your own discipline and making a creditable showing.

"The fact is that you are not boys,

HE THAT RULETH A CITY

BY RICHARD WELLING

LIEUTENANT FLEET NAVAL RESERVE

and that you would every one of you dislike exceedingly to be associated with a post which disgraced the best naval standards.

"When you get your transfers to other duty, I don't propose that you shall look back upon this period as one of slackness and general mediocrity.

You can have a lot more fun, besides doing your duty, if you will take charge of this matter of discipline yourselves.

"Show me you have the ideal, the ambition, and the imagination to realize and carry out the standards that must necessarily govern a post like this, and I will leave to you, through a committee of your own selection, all these contemptible matters which should be beneath the notice of grown men of your caliber in a National emergency such as this war.

"I don't care whether a committee of the whole or two or three separate committees take charge of this matter. The manner is unimportant. You have got to do the detective work, and you have got to recommend to me the punishments which you think suitable to meet

each offense where not already provided for by U. S. N. regulations.

"In order to come within the mili tary law I shall probably approve and order the punishments that you recom mend. I pledge myself to nothing. I am merely offering a suggestion, and we ought soon to make each other's ac quaintance on lines of manhood and cooperation. You all know that military standards take little account of democratic ideals, and we are here to sustain military standards to the limit. If there is an undercurrent of democratic good feeling, so much the better when I give my drill orders like a martinet."

GOOD RIDDANCE TO ONE KIND
OF SERVICE

The above is the substance of a short talk that I had with my men as their commanding officer.

stationed

Although the post covered some two hundred and fifty square miles and several hundred men there, they were so scattered at outly ing posts and stations that less than a hundred were at this camp.

They responded immediately to the

suggestion. At first they selected a Committee of Seven of the best men in camp; subdivided the work into Mess, Camp Order, Lookout Duty, Drills, Liberty, Study, etc. Very soon they submitted a list of punishments which I approved in a general way. Shortly thereafter cases of neglect of duty occurred, and I was confronted with the old tendency of such committees to suggest punishments far too severe. In no case did it fall to me to stiffen the punishment. In several cases I lightened it. This put me in a position of befriending the men against their own Committee. It was a pleasure to note absence of eye service. It was no longer taken for granted that I was looking around for irregularities. If I noticed them, as of course I did, I usually spoke to the man who had charge of that particular matter, and correction speedily followed.

The Committee showed positive genius for selecting a punishment that would "reach" the particular delinquent, and also a wonderful scent in discovering and running down an offender where I would have been helpless.

WHAT'S THE USE OF GRUMBLING? An esprit de corps that did not exclude me developed rapidly, and the level of intercourse, especially between myself and the men, was visibly raised and dignified. Their imaginations got to work on schemes to improve the efficiency of the post. They were no longer a lot of slaves driven by me; they were self-respecting Americans driving themselves, and in constant touch with me as friend and chief adviser.

The whole problem of "squealing" or "tattling " disappeared from view. All hands were interested in seeing their own Committee vindicate itself.

After some months the same Committee, having been repeatedly elected, seemed to get a little out of touch with the majority of the men, and there was much grumbling, charging that the Committee was putting on airs. As it grew worse, one day two or three men asked me to show them the constitution or by-laws under which they were working. I replied I had never heard of any. Much surprised, they asked who had fixed the original number of the Committee. I told them they had themselves. It must be remembered that at this time, after more than a year, there had been many transfers and the majority of the original personnel had left camp. They asked whether there was anything to prevent the entire camp, through a committee of the whole, taking charge of discipline. I assured them it was entirely their affair, and the next thing I knew the entire camp had called for the resignations of the Committee, and after a long and stormy meeting reported its own recommendations of penalties for the current list of delinquents. I cannot say whether these were a little more or less strict than the

action of the former Committee, but I saw no occasion to vary these penalties, and an amazing era of good feeling and an amazing era of good feeling followed upon the action of the whole

camp.

I predicted that the time consumed by this committee of the whole would be out of all proportion too great for the small matters involved, but the spirit of Athenian democracy was in the air, and the consciousness of political initiative quite fascinated them, so that it was several months before they appointed sub-committees.

The improvement in camp discipline was perhaps only one, if indeed the chief, gain from this self-government experiment. It may be questioned whether the release from contemptible details and the coincident dignifying of each man in his relation to his task was not a greater gain, for almost every man at one time or another offered some serious suggestion about the work in hand.

It is true that there were two or three outlaws in camp, unable to grasp the meaning of it all, but they were suffering from such serious mental and physical disabilities that they were almost solitary types, and too exceptional to impair the general result.

The experiment was interesting because of the endless series of suggestions it produced as to the way the lookout duty should be organized, the way the mess could be improved and cheapened, the drill elaborated, the liberty made more convenient, the target practice improved, the boat work made more thorough-in short, the way each individual man took pride in his work.

SUGAR-BOWLS AND SELF-GOVERNMENT

As usual in entering upon a system of self-government, at first the trivial matters received the gravest consideration as if it were necessary to prove that if you treat human beings like infants or nursery charges their reactions will very largely conform to this low standard of arrested development.

It reminded one of the way the boys in a high school, when first granted a measure of self-government, began with a long and hotly debated resolution as to the method of filling the ink wells.

These grown men in my camp argued long and eloquently as to the propriety long and eloquently as to the propriety of placing the sugar-bowls on the table or the awful alternative of serving coffee already sweetened.

But if their commanding officer could purchase one hundred per cent loyalty by turning over to them these details, surely the price was none too high.

The minutes of their meetings are full of the dreariest details, and they seemed to gloat over them as though idealized into symbols of liberty.

Rarely was any serious question of military or naval efficiency taken up in meeting. The men seemed to feel that discussion of the graver questions con

stituted a debt to be privately paid in a private conversation with the commanding officer. Doubtless in time this would have been different.

Mention might be made of one case of outrageous drunkenness. Seaman Reilly (we will call him) had permission to go to a neighboring dance, but he never got beyond the village saloon, from which he had to be carried "paralyzed lyzed" drunk. The Committee sugested that he be given a little extra duty and his liberty cut off for a brief period. This was the first punishment that seemed wholly inadequate, and with many misgivings the C. O. listened to assurances that Reilly was a mere boy and had no previous experience to guide him. The C. O. had judged him to be a rather loose individual who needed both curb rein and check rein, and the C. O. prided himself on being a good judge of men. Positively it was against the C. O.'s better judgment that the above mild punishment was approved; and as the sequel showed the Committee wholly correct, Reilly proving himself to be "one of the very best, the incident had a very humbling effect on the C. O.

NOT AN HONOR SYSTEM, THANK YOU

In conclusion, it should be pointed out that the system above described was in no sense an honor system. It was based on a forward-looking friendly attitude of co-operation between officer and men. The honor system starts off all wrong by admitting the warfare basis between governor and governed, and is primarily an agreement to abstain from acts of war in certain definite particulars.

The children say to the teacher: "You stop spying and exercising an thority [e. g., in an examination], and we'll meet you half-way and stop cheating. We give our word that we'll attend to catching and punishing any delinquents, but you in turn must leave us alone. We make no promises to stop horse-play and childish pranks in school generally. This armistice relates to cheating in examinations." Or if the honor system extends to conduct throughout, why continue to call it an honor system, and why maintain the presumption of hostility? To agree to forbear and abstain from doing something wrong is a bad start psychologically, and reminds one of the Confucian "Do not do unto others as you would not have others do unto you.'

The only agreement I made with my men was that they should show that they had the proper ideal, and that they were in dead earnest in trying to realize it. From the start we co-operated as friends. If I had appointed the Committee or if I had insisted it must be made up of petty officers, it would have been a sham and a failure.

Of course it could not have been done with men incapable of being in