THE AERIAL MAIL

By refusing the $1,250,000 appropriation asked for the continuance of our aerial mail service, Congress has once more displayed characteriatle narrow mindedness. On the surface indication that the returns do not justify the experiment, present schedules are abandoned, further development is forbidden. Protest against such summary action has been duly forthcoming from those best informed aeronautically in the United States; President Wilson is in opposition to the move.

That a decision reached without qualified investigation can not determine the advisability of an institution is thus demonstrated. Experts agree that rejection of the bill is ill advised; their opinion should carry more weight than a subcommittee on appropriations. An inquiry into the reasons for this denial shows that there are two causes for dissatisfaction--that the service is too costly and that it is too slow. An excessive sum, as compared with other methods of mail conveyance, is necessary for the air delivery, and owing to the interval wasted in carrying letters to and from the flying fields, no appreciable saving in time is effected.

Granting that these objections exist, do they justify the utter relinquishment, of our postal flying experiments? The New York-Chicago service has maintained an unprecedented regularity of flights, even under the disadvantage of severe winter conditions and in spite of the disturbing accidents which have in several instances resulted fatally. Those who are convinced that mail by airplane is foredoomed to failure point to the recent retirement of a British air mail concern from the cross-channel route on the ground that winter flying did not pay. Certainly aerial letter-carrying has not yet reached the point where it can be supported as a private enterprise; government aid is the only source which can keep it going. And until human ingenuity has devised some means of rapid transportation from the postoffice to the airplane itself, the flier will labor under the handicap of time checked up against him before he is actually in the air.

Sudden withdrawal of governmental support is not the way to aid an experiment undoubtedly destined to be a recognized branch of the Postoffice Department. Particularly at this moment, when invaluable experience is being gained not only for the mail service but for the aviators who would be trained pilots in case of war, is such a retrogressive policy to be condemned. The time is appropriate, not for a cry of "unjustifiable expenditure," but for renewed impetus to a most important form of our national progress.