recognizes that fact and substitutes definite treaty stipulations for the "gentlemen's agreement" the better. Our relations with Japan are further complicated by the Anglo-Japanese alliance, which comes up for renewal this year. The original The original purpose of this compact, as we have seen, was to check the Russian advance in Manchuria. It was renewed in revised form in 1905, and again renewed in 1911 for a period of ten years. England's motives for renewing the compact on the latter occasion were quite different from her earlier motives. The situation had completely changed. Russia was no longer a menace. Japan was now the dominant power in the Far East, and if England did not renew the alliance there was danger of Japan forming one with Germany. Now that the German menace has been removed, what reasons has England for renewing the Alliance? A renewal under present conditions would bear too much the semblance of a combination to check the growing power of the United States. Nothing would promote the naval programme of the United States more than the renewal of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. For these reasons the discussions already in progress on the subject of the renewal are of great interest. Before a decision is reached, the Council of the League of Nations has to report on the question already submitted as to whether the Alliance is inconsistent with the Covenant of the League, and the matter has to be discussed at the British Imperial Conference, which meets in the early summer, for England dares not proceed in a matter of such vital importance to the Empire without conferring with her overseas dominions. SHANGHAI, CHINA One of the five "treaty ports" that were opened to the British as a result of the so-called "Opium War." The treaty of Nanking, signed at the conclusion of that war, opened to British trade the ports of Amoy, Foochoo, Ningpo, Canton, and Shanghai The First Night-Flights, that Made it Possible to Carry the Mail from San Francisco to New York in Thirty-four Hours This article is written largely upon the thought and background of Randolph Gilham Page, one of the oldest pilots in the mail service, who now is in charge of testing mail pilots chosen from a long waiting list before they are given pouches to carry. He began his training with one of the largest manufacturing companies about fifteen years ago and was an instructor in aviation both in America and France before being assigned to service on and over the German lines. But the conclusions regarding the science of aviation, the use of wireless and other instruments, and much of the substance of the article is the product of much reporting and interviewing of authorities in the Air Mail Service, the Army Air Service, and mail and Army pilots themselves. It has been checked and approved by some of these authorities.-THE EDITORS. N WOW, the conference that night late in February, there on the Omaha field, was critical. Strictly, it wasn't up to Knight to fly those 424 miles on to Chicago, over a course he had never flown. He was hungry, and he was sleepy, he said, after he circled the field, 'jazzing' his motor by way of greeting, as his habit is, and set down. "Bill" Votaw, field manager, let him drift over, across from the field, to get a bite to eat. Good "Mother" Andrew Bahm had coffee and sandwiches ready for him, at 1:15 in the morning. Then "Bill" broached the big question very gently. He didn't order, or even urge, Knight to gonight flying was voluntary! But if he didn't go-if he failed to fly that gap in the run from sea to sea-if the service failed to get the mail across the Continent in twenty-five hours or so of flying time, at the rate of nearly two miles a minute-the next day Congress might renounce even the small appropriation it had been giving us to carry on the largest and most significant of all experiments in commercial aviation anywhere in the world. We had, before that 23rd of February, when our appropriation was to come up before the House, flown the mail more than a million miles-more than forty times round the Equator, with a loss of life of eleven pilots-a loss of life smaller, you'll find, than has ever occurred in all the long history of transportation in any attempt to cover a distance so great. Yet, all through the progress of our experiment, which we have carried on with no more than absolutely necessary equipment, some Congressmen and Senators have always been ready to damn us for our enthusiasm. So you can see, when the next day was appropriation day, why Knight's trip and those others were so vital to a service whose loyalty and devotion some poet ought to sing. But there was just one plane available, and that D-H 4 had flown nearly five hundred miles. And there was just one pilot, who had traveled half as far! Knight had brought the mail-some 16,000 letters or so from North Platte to Omaha, 248 miles in the air. But the two pilots who got to Chicago from Cleveland, bound west to Omaha and scheduled to return therefrom, could not leave Chicago-one went aloft to try! And Harry Smith, in an epic flight between 7 and 11:30 at night, had flown his lap, all the way from Cheyenne to Omaha, an airline distance of 458 miles enough for one night! So there was just one plane fit. There was just one fit pilot-Knight— and he had already flown from North Platte a distance greater by a third or so than the air-line trip from Boston to New York. Then, that conference, with his wife waiting word that he had got that far through the night with not much more than the instincts of a bird to guide him. THE HANGAR AT THE OMAHA FIELD Every day the airplanes carrying the mail to and from Chicago can be seen passing over the city, flying on schedules that they keep with the utmost regularity There are a number of newly designed planes in use by the Air-Mail service, but most The air-mail line to Cuba is operated by the West Indies Airways Company, which has contracted to carry mail. The transcontinental air-mail system and its branches to Washington, St. Louis, and Minneapolis, is operated by the Post Office Department On a flight from New York to Cleveland. These planes are each capable of carrying 1,500 pounds of mail and are the largest planes in the Transcontinental air-mail fleets tion to the department and you know the kind of man he is: "On February 14th, I was scheduled to make the Cheyenne-Salt Lake trip. I was sitting in my ship warming it up at 6:30 in the morning. "The motor was running smoothly on the ground and turning up exceptionally well (about 1520 R.P.M., on the ground). Oil pressure 35, temperature of 170, and air pressure of 3. "It was a clear morning with a 15-mile southwest wind blowing. I took off about twelve minutes before sun-up and headed west. Time of take-off 6:35. "Climbing to 9,800 feet above sea level (about 3,500 feet above Cheyenne) I throttled to 1480 R.P.M., and headed west. Fifteen minutes out of Cheyenne at 6:50 my instruments read-R. P. M. 1480, oil 25, gas 3, temperature 185, altitude 9,600. "A down current of air always hits us about Horse Creek and drops us 600 to 800 feet. This is on the eastern edge of the Laramie Mountains. Then, when we get within a few miles of Telephone Canyon, we invariably hit a current of air that boosts us 1,200 to 1,600 feet. This is a singular condition that is experienced and vouched for by every pilot on this division. "At the eastern edge of the Laramie Mountains I was flying at approximately 8,800 feet. For safety's sake I started to follow a telephone line that leads from' Horse Creek to Laramie. When I got within fifteen miles of Laramie my oil pressure dropped to nine or ten, motor temperature ran 195 and suddenly my motor dropped to 1200 R. P. M. My only salvation was to attempt to land up the side of a steep mountain slope in a big snow drift. "The shock of the impact knocked further details from my system, but when I came to, and looked around, I found myself lying several feet from the cockpit in a lot of blood. The motor, with the propellor attached, was sticking in the snow drift 75 to 80 feet up the slope and the fusilage had rolled down the slope, lodging up against a few trees and rocks. "I must have crashed about seven o'clock, but when I woke it was 8:35. Outside of bad cuts on my face, a broken nose, and a |