The Birmingham age-herald., 1917-07-07

sons and is maintained by the residents
 of Del Mar Four. performances a year are given, the players being drawn from
 stock or touring companies in Los i Angeles.
 Visitors come from all over the state to the nature theatre" entertainments. The last one, held in May, presented Tom Jefferson and notable cast in his dads
 famous Rip Van Wrinkle" Grand opera, pageantry, drama and interpreta- | tive dancing are all exquisitely given. Nature has furnished a perfect setting | and acoustics such as no indoor audi | torium can boast.
 HOSPITALITY OVERWHELMING
 Come and see for yourself" said Man. | ager Wedner. Be our guest We like ] New Workers to see what we do out here, and how differently we do it!' At first felt little uncomfortable at 1 all this hospitality. Didn't know what to make of it. Though maybe they had
 mistaken me for some one else. The re-
 porter's lot Is not like this at home.
 Back east I travel in subways and am
 offered occasional cup of tea if the weather is extra bad and I am pathet- l ically soppy. Out here, bless you, l
 move in seven-passenger overlands and | peeresses with amethyst-tinted uphol- | stery and roses in crystal vawze | am fed, and housed, and ehcered and 1 entertained. I am given things, I am 1 thanked for coming and invited to coma again. I have even been promised a l building lot I feel dazed Yet that writer said nothing was free but c. s. 1 leaflets.
 You may wonder what hospitality has to do with aviation. Simply this: That they both reach their perfection of de- velopment in San Diego. In San Diego s beautiful bay, embraced on one side by | Al -a C@,,, .f,1n and on the other by the thin curve or Coronado is North Island, the 1200-acre site of the national military aviation school.
 Here, on land owned by the John D. of the Pacific coast (Mr. John D. Spreck- els), Uncle Samuel turns out aviators at the rate of one perfect, complete and guaranteed airman every other day. The
 first sound you hear in the morning IS the whirr of motors as the human fledglings make their glides and figure
 eights.
 THEY DON'T EVEN LOOK UP
 You see from six to P of them every
 time you gaze up into the blue, sunshiny
 air above the fringe of the town. They
 look exactly like dragon flies as they
 dip and soar. And they make an awful
 racket, for of course they wear no muf-
 flers and they're mostly going at the rate
 of 100 miles an hour.
 The one sure way they tell an east
 erner cut here is if he stops and squints up into the sky to see the alrplanes. San Diegans pay no more attention 10 them nowadays than to the neat little black birds that dart around the park where the colored electric fountain illum- ines the facade of the vast U. s. Grant
 hotel.
 I wanted to talk to an airman, so l called up Colonel Dade, who has charge
 of everything aeronautical over on North
 Island, and told him would drop over
 and make call. Now it is an empar-
 rassing thing when you are naturally
 hospitable and superperfectly chivalrous,
 to have to tell lady she cannot come
 and visit you because war is war and visitors are visitors, and North Island IS
 a very busy place just now, and the men
 are training for serious business. HE BRINGS A NICE AVIATOR
 But" said Colonel Dade, who is from
 Virginia and would rather lose his com mission than be rash to a woman, al though I cannot let you come to the island at this time, l will send one or our men over to see you and tell you all about us-how we learn, what we hope to do, and why North Island is the best training site in the United States Will that do?"
 told the colonel it would do, if he promised to pick me out an extra nlce aviator who knew all about everything and would talk And he promised. True to his word, next day up rolled the usual stylish motor car and out got the colo mel himself, very straight and military and good looking, and he had brought along his very incest specimen-MaJ. F. P. Lahm, who was the army's first air man.
 You have seen his name in print Tn connection with ballooning and aeroplan- ing ever since the Wright brothers made their first experiments.
 I shall tell you about Major Lahm Tn another story. Meanwhile l want you to know that the open-handed hospitable, welcoming west is not myth. but the | realest kind of a reality.