station about six miles out. In the meantime a train went out on that branch, but it did not stop at Cynwyd. I asked the conductor why, in that emergency and since he was already running entirely outside of his schedule, his train did not make all stops, thus clearing up the business. He had "no orders" to that effect -of course. Two days later that same train was ordered to do the very thing that had been suggested. Why did it take two days? If a college teacher falls ill, or even if a building burns down, it does not take two days to rearrange the schedule of work. A few telephone calls, a meeting perhaps of two persons who are not appalled by sudden conditions, and the thing is done. If the head of the department or the dean is not available, some one, not waiting for "orders," takes charge of the situation. Of course, one does not expect the conductor of a railroad train to alter his station stops, but any one familiar with the organization of a railroad knows how many capable, honest, and hard-working men there are in positions of secondary responsibility who do not dare to act on their own initiative and who have to wait for "orders" from men who, by reason of the system, are remote from the immediate situation.

In the third place, it is unfortunately true that, in many cases, business is not conducted as honestly as the college. I presume that most readers have heard of the recent exposure of certain large coaldealers who discharged their drivers and then allowed them to reappear in the form of independent carters who preyed upon the necessities of the poor and delivered their percentage of profit to their former employers. Not so easy to detect, however, or to prevent has been the frequent breaking of contracts on the flimsiest pretexts ever since the outbreak of the European war brought about the present disturbed conditions. It has not been long since I met an exhausted representative whose business it was to provide his corporation with coal. Harrowing tales he told me of the contracts he had made with apparently honest mining producers who, let us say, agreed to furnish him with three hundred tons a day at a certain price. The next day into the same cor

a larger business who would offer a dollar more a ton for their entire output and the contract made with my friend vanished into something-certainly not into smoke! What would have happened if we had not a government with the foresight to fix prices is among the many things we have to wonder about.

Sometimes the very frankness of the gentlemen who break their contracts is itself of interest. The selling agent of a firm which furnished lighting fixtures to one of our buildings calmly explained his failure to have the work done in time for our opening by his having sent his men to work on a contract on which he was making a greater profit. War conditions, he continued, made it difficult to obtain the right kind of help.

I took pleasure in informing him that it was hard, for the same reason, for a college to secure instructors in foreign languages, but that we did not meet our classes on the opening day with that lame excuse. We took trouble and secured them. This impressed him not a bit. The idea that his brand of illumination was on trial in one building and that his unfair methods would prevent him from securing contracts in perhaps twenty others seemed not to occur to him either.

What surprises me most is this lack of consideration of the human element. It might happen to any purveyor of cement flooring, I suppose, to have his men fill the waste-pipes in the cellar of our college hall with a mixture that effectually prevented anything flowing through them ever afterward. But it seems, even from the point of view of mere money, a foolish thing to refuse to make the damage good after his bill had been paid, when a small expenditure in the direction of honesty would have secured him other contracts and the recommendation of the university. Much of this stupidity, this consideration of only the job in hand, with no outlook for the future, comes from the hitor-miss economics of our average business and has, of course, no relation to the personal honesty of its directors. As has been pointed out by Mr. Taft, in a recent editorial, only ten per cent of the business corporations in this country could tell the Federal Trade Commission the cost of

few universities or colleges to-day that are not upon an accurate budget system by means of which every dollar of funds to be expended during the coming year is carefully laid out. Yet even here flexibility is secured by discretionary power being vested in the administrative officer within, of course, the limit of his budget. I have tried to make a few comparisons between business and the college on the basis of the eficiency standard of the It is my belief that viewed even by this standard the college is more effiBut viewed from the point of view of rea' efficiency there is no comparison. For, from its very nature, a business, which is organized for profit, cannot be conducted as efficiently as an institution in which al idea of profit has been dis

former.

, atter all, what is true efficiency? pesheney in its truest sense means the performing of one's task so as to produce the best of which one is capable and to leave the creating force, at the completion of its task, better able to produce than betores

The producing forces in the college are its Faculty, its administrative officers, and its trustees. The products are its alumni, its contribution to research, and its inituence as an organized body upon the public. Those who have had opportunities to compare our student body and alumni with those of foreign universities and colleges under corresponding conditions know that while they may be surpassed passed in certain definite branches of knowledge by the foreigners, in a real knowledge of human nature and in an ability to conduct themselves like men and women in relation to others, the American college product need fear no Comparison. We have heard much about the inability of the Rhodes scholars at Oxford to meet the peculiar academic standards for which they had not prepared. But when Mr. Hoover organized The relief commission in Belgium he built upon the Rhodes scholars the most efficient system of organization conceived in modern times and dedicated to the presrivation of human life. The Belgians were amazed. "How does it happen," they asked in wonder, "that these boys

have this tact, this instinct for organization, this knowledge of human nature? Our young men can die, but they could not have done this!"

The present national crisis is purging false efficiency out of our national life and bringing to the front the elements of our real greatness. In our laboratories the best minds in the colleges are deep in vital problems from the investigation of the basic sources of the food that will keep us alive to the last analysis of the poisons that our enemy hurls against us in the hope and expectation of our death. In the campaign that will keep our public opinion true on a steady keel, other minds in our colleges are working day and night. These two products of the college cannot even be touched upon here. Nor can the story of how our alumni and student body responded when our flag went up in April, 1917, even begin to be told as yet. The service flags on the fraternity houses, studded with stars, the empty offices of the Faculty, the steady tramp as the uniforms of the R. O. T. C. go by the window are more eloquent than figures.

In the supreme test the American college has proven for all time its efficiency as the producer of men. We who knew her were certain of her, for we knew that her creating forces lived in that spirit of service which kept her ever a living and a growing thing. Forever renewing herself through contact with youth, the American college takes the best of our life and in times of peace she gives that best back again with something in its character that is not measured by the shifting standards of mere utility but upon which this republic depends as the most solid fact in its existence. In time of war she has given her best without display, in the confident knowledge that those who have known the most of life can teach the rest to die.

Through the difficult days to come she will keep that living force alive; her depleted ranks will close in; the old man will take the young man's place; and when her sons come back they will find her as they left her, just as their fathers found her in 1783 or in 1865, the custodian of that practical idealism by the side of which our material progress is but an incident.

T is difficult to realize that only twelve years have elapsed since Santos Dumont attempted his first flight in France, and less than a decade since Henry Farman won the highly coveted Archdeacon-Deutsch prize for covering, without alighting, a triangular course of one thousand yards. At that time not even the most enthusiastic advocates of flying could have foreseen the enormous influence which the new sport was to exert on future warfare. It is only now, after more than four years of war on both land and sea, that we have been able to grasp the full significance of the early efforts of those daring inventors. Truly the present war has been one of dis

coveries.

It is always interesting to look backward-in this instance to consider the rôle which it was expected that aircraft would play in naval warfare. In August, 1914, the French naval authorities had only just completed the tests of their first experimental hydroplanes, small aeroplanes equipped with floats in the place of wheels, so that they could rise from and alight on the water. This was a natural development of the land type of flying-machine, but the trials were not entirely satisfactory, and the manufacturers soon discontinued their efforts in this direction in order to place their factories at the disposal of the army, whose needs in the critical days of Mons and Charleroi were far more pressing.

The history of the growth and development of the French naval air service during the first three years of the war was very much like that of the "naval wing" of the British Royal Flying Corps. No very great progress had been made in the

development of seaplanes before the war. Such machines as were used were merely specimen models from the most successful French factories, and there had been no attempt at standardization, for flying was believed to be still in its infancy, with many years for experiment and improvement, before the new arm would be called upon to play its part under actual active service conditions.

In August, 1914, the French navy had only two aeronautic stations ready for service. Both of these were situated on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, where, in accordance with the terms of the Anglo-French entente, the greater part of the French naval forces were concentrated. The official communiqués for a long time remained silent on the work done by the naval airmen operating in that region, but it is a matter of record that within forty-eight hours after Germany's declaration of war every machine attached to the aviation centres of Nice and Bonifacio took the air and made reconnaissance flights which proved of the greatest assistance to the naval forces covering the transportation of the Nineteenth Army Corps from Algeria to France. It is evident that the extensive use of aircraft for purposes of naval reconnaissance had not been seriously contemplated before the war. The very design of the machines owned by the navy rendered them unsuited for distant operations at sea. But the necessities of the situation, and the importance of obtaining reliable information regarding the movements of the German cruisers Goeben and Breslau, compelled Admiral de Lapeyrère to call upon the naval airmen to co-operate with his sea-scouts in locating the elusive enemy.

It is no exaggeration to say that the

! ese first performances under var uditions were far-reaching. merset the Ministry of Marine in Paris, V10 Plad been inclined to subordiDetays programme to the urgent the army air service, now began esther the advisability of resuming evelopment of the navy's new arm. act, many days were not allowed to 4. before orders were issued reconstilag the various administrative services ged with the duty of studying the a a requirements of the situation, of reading the material, and of training the sonnel needed for the operations on he "naval front." And this was no easy task, for the development of a satisfactory type of seaplane had to be accomplished under the stress of war. The early landgoing aeroplanes with which the Mediterranean escadrilles patrolled the seas in the first week of the war had to be replaced by seaplanes of various sizes and models, and many months necessarily elapsed before the few factories working for the navy were able to perfect a standardized type suited to all conditions of service.

While this was going on, the organization of the "A. M."-aviation maritime as a real striking force was progressing methodically. Aviation centres, fully equipped with all the necessary accessories, were established at strategic points as fast as the machines and pilots could be obtained. In each zone the "A. M." had a different rôle to play. At Dunkirk, Boulogne, and Havre the naval airmen were occupied particularly with the task of raiding the German submarine bases on the Belgian coast; at Port Said they acted in liaison with the British landforces charged with the defense of the Suez Canal, while in Montenegro they were called upon to maintain an active sea patrol in connection with the blockading operations of the French cruisers off the Strait of Otranto. In May, 1915, the possibilities of the air service had been so fully developed that additional centres were organized at Venice, Brindisi, Salonica, Bizerte, La Pallice, and Toulon, and since then every effort has been made to line the seacoast of France with as many other stations as the needs of the Ervice demanded. No job was too im

portant and none too insignificant the moment a sufficient number of seaplanes began to be produced.

The unexpected success of the heavierthan-air craft and the importance of supplementing the existing air patrols in view of the constantly increasing activities of the German submarines emboldened the Ministry of Marine to depart from its pre-war programme in other respects. Early in 1914 the French navy had obtained a credit of thirty million francs for the establishment of a number of dirigible centres, but on the outbreak of hostilities the project was suddenly abandoned and "the credit was returned to Parliament." It was not until April, 1915, after the British naval air service had decided to operate several of its own airships from the port of Dunkirk, that the value of these larger aircraft was fully realized by the French navy. Fortunately, at that moment, the Ministry of War was able to spare a few dirigibles, and these were immediately sent to Havre and Bizerte, where important centres were in process of development for the more efficient protection of the frequent merchant convoys that plied in those waters. Nor was this all. Experiments made in England with captive balloons during the summer of 1916 decided the French navy to adopt this type also for observation purposes, and not many months passed before a number of "sausages" were to be seen floating in the air at various points along the coast-line.

Incidentally, it should be mentioned that the work performed by the various branches of the naval air service could never have been attempted without the existing methods of communication. Wireless telegraphy rendered possible an efficient co-operation between the air patrols, sea patrols, and shore stations. But there have been moments when the wireless could not be used, and at those times the aerial observers have had to resort to the use of carrier-pigeons and despatch-buoys for the transmission of their messages.

This was the last resort left to Ensign Teste after he had been left for dead by both friend and foe amid the wreckage of his sinking seaplane. His machine belonged to an escadrille from Dunkirk

tacking it, and one of the seaplanes had already managed to drop its depth bombs over the spot where the U-boat was noticed, when three German scouting planes out of Belgium swooped down upon them. Ensign Teste and his pilot, Quartermaster Amiot, were soon so hard pressed that they decided to alight in order to "continue the action on the surface." But the enemy's fire had been accurate as well as rapid. The engine of the French seaplane was quickly riddled with bullets, the machine-gun mount disabled, and the pilot twice seriously wounded. Ensign Teste picked up the machine-gun and tried to fire it from his shoulder at one of

off in the direction of the enemy before he dropped back into the seaplane, weak from the loss of blood.

Certain that they had killed both of the occupants of the French machine, the German aviators flew away in chase of their remaining adversaries. What happened to Lieutenant Teste and his plucky pilot during the next few hours had better be told in the French officer's own words:

"The hull of the hydroplane was riddled with bullet-holes, the motor was entirely useless, and one of the gasolinetanks was on fire. We struggled to plug the holes through which the sea water