seventy-five articles named by the Department of Commerce as "Principal Articles Imported," more than one-half of those entering the United States in May, 1919, actually showed higher prices in the country of production than the prices of the same articles imported in the closing month of the war, and coming from the same country. MONTHLY AVERAGE IMPORT PRICES OF PRINCIPAL ARTICLES ENTERING THE UNITED STATES IN JULY, 1914, OCTOBER, 1918, AND MAY, 1919. (Based on the wholesale price of articles in the markets of the countries from which imported, for unit of quantity stated.) The war gave an impetus to many lives of adventure, invention, experiment and industry. In no direction was that impulse felt with greater effect than in aerial navigation. The amazing achievements of airplanes, seaplanes and dirigibles during the war directed the attention of mankind to the possibilities of transportation through the air. Scarcely had the armistice been signed when a dramatic international race commenced for the honor of crossing the Atlantic Ocean between Europe and America. The first airplane to achieve this adventure was the NC-4, an American tractor biplane, equipped with four Liberty motors, each of four hundred horsepower. It had a wing span of 126 feet, a hull length of fifty feet, a gasoline capacity of two thousand gallons and an average speed of eighty miles an hour, and a carrying capacity of twenty-eight thousand pounds. Its commanding officer was LieutenantCommander A. C. Read, U. S. N., and it was manned with five other officers of the United States Navy. The NC-4 and its sister planes NC-1 and NC-3 flew from Rockaway Beach, N. Y., bound for Halifax, N. S., on the morning of May 7th. The NC-1 and the NC-3 reached their destination the next morning at eight o'clock. The NC-4 was forced down by engine trouble and proceeded on the surface of the ocean to Shatten Bar on the Massachusetts coast, where repairs were made and the flight resumed on May 15th. The three planes flew from Trepassy Bay, Newfoundland, whither they had flown from Halifax, about six o'clock on the evening of Friday, May 16th, bound for the Azores. The NC-1 and the NC-3, commanded respectively by Lieutenant-Commander E. L. Bellinger and Commander John H. Towers, were compelled to descend to the surface of the ocean by thick fog, but the NC-4 succeeded in flying to the harbor of Horta. Both the NC-3, which rode out a gale and reached Ponta Delgada under its own power, and the NC-1 were so badly damaged that they could not continue the flight. The NC-4 resumed its journey on the morning of May 27th, reaching Lisbon, Portugal, that night at 9.02. Lieutenant-Commander Read and the NC-4 flew from Lisbon headed for Plymouth on May 30th. Twice the plane was compelled to descend on account of engine trouble, first at the mouth of the Mondego River and again at Ferrol on the northern coast of Spain. At this latter port repairs were made and the NC-4 on the morning of May 31st set out on the last lap of its journey over the Bay of Biscay swooping low over the harbor of Brest where it exchanged wireless greetings with the cheering soldiers at that port of American embarkation and straight across the English Channel to the great harbor of Plymouth, where it dropped lightly at rest at 2.26 o'clock in the afternoon of May 31st, completing the first flight over the Atlantic Ocean in the history of the world. A gallant attempt was made by the United States Navy dirigible C-5 to cross the Atlantic but this came to disaster on the afternoon of May 15, 1919, when after a successful flight from Montauk, N. Y., to Halifax, N. S., the C-5 burst its moorings, was blown out over the ocean and destroyed. Harry Hawker, an Australian aviator, and LieutenantCommander MacKenzie Grieve, of the British Navy, made a spectacular but unsuccessful effort for a non-stop flight over the Atlantic on May 18, 1919. Because of stoppage in the water filter to the feed pipe, the Sopwith plane in which the attempt was made was obliged to descend to the ocean on May 19th, where Hawker and Grieve were picked up by the Danish steamer Mary. The first nonstop flight over the Atlantic was accomplished June 14-15, 1919, by Captain John Alcock, an Englishman, and Lieutenant Arthur W. Brown, an American, in a Vickers-Vimy plane. The start was made at 4.28 P. M. Greenwich time from Newfoundland and the plane landed at Clifden, Ireland, at 8.40 A. M. June 15th, a trip of 1980 miles accomplished in sixteen hours and twelve minutes. The first dirigible to fly over the Atlantic was the British rigid airship R-34. This transatlantic pioneer left East Fortune, Scotland, at 2 a. m. July 2d, and after a flight of approximately seven thousand miles via Newfoundland, arrived at Roosevelt Field, L. I., at 9 A. M. Sunday, July 6th. The return trip to England commenced just before midnight of July 9th and ended at Pulham, England, the trip consuming seventy-four hours and six minutes. PROHIBITION One of the consequences of the World War was the sweeping prohibition of the sale of alcoholic beverages which became effective July 1, 1919, when the entire country was placed upon a prohibition basis until the legal consummation of peace. Congress had passed, the President had signed and a sufficient number of State Legislatures had ratified the constitutional amendment forbidding the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors after January 16, 1920. Opposition to both wartime prohibition and the constitutional amendment was widepsread and powerful but the transition was accomplished without violent disturbance. ARMY ORDNANCE ASSOCIATION The ten thousand technical experts who were recruited, either in uniform or in shop or office, to mobilize the nation's industries for the conduct of the war, were organized in 1919 into a solid, working body prepared to meet any emergency which may arise and to conserve the "know how" which it took the nation nine months to obtain so that the millions of |