Putnam patriot., 1921-04-29


 and smaller all the time. You pass over the spire of church and you ruminate for second on the discom- fort of the good old planes being spit ted on it's point But danger doesn't count for much for you're getting very cold and there's a long trip ahead
 Twenty minutes pass, twenty min utes of fascinating novelty. You pass over large city, a strange, ant-hiii looking mass from the air, an inter ruption to the calm regularity of the country below. You tuck your fur rug about you-and no matter what the season, don't fail to take fur rug with you if you make the trlp- then you let your backbone loosen from it's first stiffness and sit back to enjoy life, saying to yourself that air blaming isn't such bad way to travel after all-if it weren't for the noise.
 At the end of fifty minutes the lit tie mechanician yells and you finally learn above the ineessant roar that the pilot has sighted the Channel. Then a moment later something hap pens. You look out and feel your heart in your smallest toe, for the map of England has suddenly gone crazy and is standing on end. But the mechanician smiles and you are re- assured. The plane has hit an air pocket, tilted and righted herself and n
 Ahead you see a long black line and beyond the green of the wa ter and before you can realize the speed you have journeyed from Lon don to the Channel in few minutes less than an hour and are winging higher and higher over one of the most uncomfortable stretches of wa ter in the world.
 rouble begins. All the good weather you had in England disap- pears and ahead loom up great gray cloud banks. For moment the plane plunges downward. The pilot decides to try to go under the cloud and as you dive at one hundred and twenty miles an hour you look out and far below you see the Channel steamers, large craft in reality, but from your heighth looking for all the world like chips with toy sails bobbing about on park pond. It is rough day on the Channel, for you can see the white caps and the great troughs between the waves, but the plane is going at such a speed that the water gives the deceptive appearance of being abso- lutely motionless. as though 1t were frozen in wide pillows of green and white.
 The cloud that We were to dive un- der proves too low and so the pilot changes his mind and suddenly the plane swerves to the right and the mounting begins. Up and up and up . you go. the little craft below beeom- ing tinier and tinier spots on the wa ter until, with a great upward swoop the plane springs above the cloud and all the land below gives way to great irridescent bank of foamy whiteness on which as you look from your win dow you see reflected in sharp out line the shadow of the plane
 Twenty minutes pass, twenty min utes of mounting still higher above the cloud. The earth is no longer visible, except when here and there a rift lets through fleeting glimpse of the water, now dark under the cloud over which you are passing at break neck speed. Again the little mechan- ician yells. Thirty-five minutes have passed since you left the English shore and now you are Tn France and just below you are the hills and tow CTS of Boulogne.
 The cloud passes and far. far down there IS France. and map as differ ent from the English landscape as seen from above as there is a differ ence between the French and English races. Roads are straight and mark ed by the long lines of poplars, tiny pinheads from up here Roofs are red and dun colored and the cultivated fields stretch off in mathematical pre- eision like so many vari-colored tiles
 At Boulogne the pilot turns and you fly steadily to the south, past Etaples and high above that long line of tragic hulks that were British hos pitals, each with it's accompanying graveyard, then you suddenly turn and are off to Parisi
 It IS now two hours since you left London. You begin to be a little bored. The novelty has ceased and you turn-just as aboard train o study your fellow passengers. There are six Americans-four men, two women, and as the guests of honor a British major and his bride, married but an hour before the flight and en route to Nice for their honeymoon. You suddenly realize that you are hungry and one of the ladies produces sandwiches Then you remember your mail which you were too excited to read before leaving and so with France being reconstructed a couple of thousand feet down below, you read letters, or as was the case with two of the travellers, a helated issue of The Putnam Patriot. Then sud denly something happens.
 More clouds. and this time the pilot shakes his head You mount again and then drop with that dull sicken-