Ruth Law from Chicago to New York is the human significance of the accomplishment. Miss Law says that the fact that she is a woman makes no difference, but it does.

The fact that the new American nonstop record was made by a 120-pound young woman of twenty-eight in a rebuilt aeroplane of almost obsolete type doubles the prominence of this achievement in the public. mind. General Wood reflected the popular admiration for Miss Law when, as he helped her from her seat at the end of her flight at Governor's Island, he said: "Little girl, you beat them all."

In a nutshell, this is what Miss Law did. In a one-hundred horse-power, two-year-old biplane she flew without a stop from Chicago to Hornell, New York, a distance of 590 miles, thereby breaking the record of 452 miles made by Victor Carlstrom in the New York Times" flight on November 2. Flying on to Governor's Island, with a stop at Binghamton, Miss Law completed the entire trip of 884 miles from Chicago to Governor's Island in eight hours fifty-five minutes and thirty five seconds. Carlstrom's total time in the air from Chicago to New York was eight hours and seventeen minutes.

With true sportsmanship, Carlstrom was one of the first to congratulate Miss Law, pronouncing her flight "the best performance to date in American aviation."

Few persons took Miss Law seriously when she announced her intention of attempting the Chicago-New York flight. Although she holds the woman's record for altitude, she had never before flown more than twentyfive miles across country. Moreover, her machine is less than half as large as the one in which Carlstrom made his record, and carried only fifty-three gallons of gasoline as against two hundred gallons carried by Carlstrom.

Miss Law's record has been stamped as official by the Aero Club of America.

THE AVIATOR'S ACCOUNT
OF HER FLIGHT

Miss Law's account of her record non-stop flight as telephoned to the New York Times" from Binghamton immediately after her arrival there is an interesting human document.

"I have made the longest flight a woman ever made. But I am not boasting about that; the real thing I have done is to show that it is an easy thing to fly from New York to Chicago without stopping if one has the equipment. . . . As soon as I can get a

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machine that will carry enough gasoline I am going to make the flight from Chicago to New York without stopping.

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Now this flight of mine is a personal affair; the expenses are paid by me. I have done quite a bit of flying of many sorts, but I had never tried any distance flying; that was the only kind of flying I hadn't tried.

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Before I took my little army scout plane to Chicago I had tried to get a bigger machine, but M. Curtiss was so busy making aeroplanes for the war that he couldn't get one ready for me. I then decided that my little one would have to do. It is a baby machine, with a wing spread of twenty-eight feet, has a one-hundred horse power motor that will develop a hundred and ten horse-power, and is a 'pusher'—that is, the propeller is behind the driver, who sits out unprotected. The tank carried only sixteen gallons of gasoline, and so I had another tank fitted in that brought the fuel capacity up to fifty-three gallons. That was half enough for the flight of about nine hundred miles from Chicago to New York. Even that crowded the little plane so that all the extra clothing I could take along was one skirt. That skirt proved to be most convenient.

"It was in landing at Hornell and leaving that I had the two close shaves of the trip. I had calculated that the fifty-three gallons of gasoline I had when I left Chicago would just carry me to Hornell. But I had counted some on a wind which wasn't there to help me. Ten miles from Hornell I saw that my gasoline was almost gone; it gave out absolutely two miles from Hornell, and I glided for the two miles on to the race-track just outside the city. It seemed that every one in Hornell was there to welcome me, and the race-track was so crowded that I almost struck some people in landing..

"It was in leaving Hornell that I came as near to being wrecked as I ever want to be. Blocking the path to the east was a hill six hundred feet high on top of which there were tall trees. . . . I went up as steeply as I could, but it looked as if I was headed straight to a collision with the trees. Just before I got to them the machine responded bravely and I got over those trees . . . with branches striking the bottom of the aeroplane.

"There wasn't anything to scare me in the flight. I have been flying for a long time, and it didn't mean anything to be flying five thousand and six thousand feet up.

"It was the only distance flight I ever

Like the record-breaking flight of Miss Law, the trip of a dozen aeroplanes from Mineola, Long Island, and Governor's Island, New York, to Princeton, New Jersey, and return, indicated that the day of the common use of the aeroplane for public and private business and pleasure may be near at hand. It also did much to stimulate public interest in military aviation.

The aeroplane squadron, which was called "The Football Special," flew to Princeton to see the football game between Princeton and Yale. The aviators were army men and civilians, and they were commanded by an army man. Ten of the machines flew from Mineola to Princeton, and two sped through the air to the football game from Governor's Island. On the return trip two machines dropped out, but the other ten all successfully completed the voyage of about fifty miles to the Long Island aviation center.

Such flights as this and as the ChicagoNew York trips of Ruth Law and Victor Carlstrom do much more for the practical development of aviation than the dangerous and spectacular "stunts" of circus aviators.

GIVING SOMETHING BESIDES THANKS

The President in his Thanksgiving Proclamation suggests that the people of the United States think not only of the blessings and mercies that have been their lot, but also of the pitiful distress of the peoples "upon whom war has brought disaster without choice or possibility of escape on their part." In the light of what is happening abroad, we Americans have no reason for self-congratulation. If we have been kept from the devastation of war, it is not because we are better or more deserving of good than other peoples.

It is therefore most fitting that the President should have added to his summons of the people to thanksgiving these words:

And I also urge and suggest our duty, in this our day of peace and abundance, to think in n sympathy of the peoples of the world

upon whom the curse and terror of war have so pitilessly fallen, and to contribute out of our abundant means to the relief of their sufferings. Our people could in no better way show their real attitude toward the present struggle of the nations than by contributing out of their abundance to the relief of the sufferings which war has brought in its train.

What the President here urges we hope Americans will do. The means for conveying relief to the suffering people of Europe are ample. We here give the names and addresses of a few of the more important agencies for the transmission of such relief:

The War Relief Clearing-House for France and Her Allies. Thomas W. Lamont, Treasurer, 40 Wall Street, New York City.

Committee of Mercy. August Belmont, Treasurer, 200 Fifth Avenue, New York City.

The Polish Victims War Relief Fund, 33 West Forty-second Street, New York City.

Permanent Blind Relief War Fund. Frank A. Vanderlip, Honorary Treasurer, 590 Fifth Avenue, New York City.

The American Relief Committee in Berlin for Widows and Orphans of the War. John D. Crimmins, Treasurer, 13 Park Row, New York City.

The British-American War Relief Fund. Henry J. Whitehouse, Treasurer, 681 Fifth Avenue, New York City.

American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief. Charles R. Crane, Treasurer, 70 Fifth Avenue, New York City.

Commission for Relief in Belgium, Equitable Building, 120 Broadway, New York City.

The Dollar Christmas Fund for Destitute Belgian Children. Henry Clews, Treasurer, 15 Broad Street, New York City.

American Committee for Training the Maimed Soldiers of France. Mrs. Edmund Lincoln Baylies, Room B, Plaza Hotel, New York City.

French Wounded Emergency Fund, 34 Lowndes Square, London,or care Mme. CharcotHendry, 11 rue de la Tour des Dames, Paris.

American Committee of the American Ambulance Hospital in Paris, 14 Wall Street, New York City.

Vacation War Relief. Miss Anne Morgan, 7 East 39th Street, New York City.

American Girls' Aid. Miss Gladys Hollingsworth, 293 Fifth Avenue, New York City.

Central Committee for the Relief of Jews. Harry Fischel, Treasurer, 63 Park Row, New York City.

The Serbian Relief Committee of America. Murray H. Coggeshall, Treasurer, 70 Fifth Avenue, New York City.

Let Thanksgiving Day be a day for giving something besides thanks.

A newspaper recently published a cartoon which portrayed an American family standing on the sidewalk between a butcher shop and an automobile agency trying to determine whether they should buy a turkey for a Thanksgiving dinner or a motor

car.

Those who have seen the price of foodstuffs increasing during the last year may not unnaturally be moved to ask what was the joke in this cartoon. For those who are contemplating the necessity of paying forty cents a pound for their Thanksgiving turkey there is little humor in the comparison of the price of a turkey and the price of an automobile.

The rise in the price of foodstuffs, however, hits hardest of all those who are contemplating neither the purchase of a turkey nor the purchase of an automobile.

The New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor has recently published the results of a study which it has been making to determine what the recent increases in the cost of food mean to the poor families of the city. The New York "Times publishes the list of food prices compiled by the Association. The figures in this list are taken from the actual purchases of staple foods made by families in November, 1915, and in November, 1916.

The average increase in the cost of staple food products is shown by this investigation to be practically thirty per cent, and it is to be remembered that this list is made up of necessities and not luxuries.

Some of the most startling increases are the following: Codfish, which in 1915 cost ten cents a pound, now costs fifteen, an increase of fifty per cent. Eggs have gone up fifty-eight per cent in cost, butter thirty per cent, bread twenty per cent. Oatmeal, macaroni, and rice show respective increases of twenty-five, thirty-three, and twenty per cent. Beans, which in 1915 cost eighteen cents, now cost thirty cents. Cabbage has gone from eleven to fifteen cents a head. Potatoes, eighteen pounds of which could be purchased for forty-two cents in 1915, now cost ninety cents, an increase of 114 per cent. This is the largest jump shown in the records of the Association. Apples come next; for twelve pounds, which cost in 1915 thirty cents, it is now necessary to pay sixty cents. Only barley, molasses, tomatoes, coffee, tea, cocoa,

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chuck steak, and bacon have not increased in cost to the consumer during the present year. Not a single item, according to the figures of the Association, has decreased in

cost.

TAGORE

At Carnegie Hall, New York City, on November 21, Sir Rabindranath Tagore, the Indian poet and philosopher, delivered a lecture on the cult of nationalism. The religious spirit, the poetry, and the drama of this notable visitor will, we believe, find readier acceptance throughout the West than his exposition of what he regards as the fundamental evils of Western civilization.

Tagore's address, delivered in eloquent English, was, in the main, a denunciation of Western national organization as a fundamental evil in itself. According to Tagore, the old-time famines of India, the tyrannies of despot princes, the wars which swept India for so many centuries, are infinitely to be preferred to the soulless efficiency of our Western society. Western government Tagore defined as organized self-interest. He seems to feel that from this organized self-interest no good fruit can come. Indian civilization he compared to the hand loom, the product of which possesses spiritual individuality. Western civilization he compared to the unceasing shuttle of the power loom, producing a surplus of product, colorless, uninteresting, and dehumanized. He called the history of Japan to witness that the adoption of Western civilization could not be made without a sacrifice of spiritual qualities and the loss of the finer things in human nature.

This is a brief and perhaps an inadequate. presentation of the main theme of Tagore's notable address. All that Tagore said of the dangers which can spring from over-organization is perhaps true. We believe, however, that, together with opportunities for evil which undeniably exist in the new spirit of organization which has been born of the West, there are compensating and almost unlimited opportunities for the development of the spiritual qualities of mankind.

The organized government which has the Prussian spirit as its ideal finds no stronger condemnation than has been visited upon it by Western civilization itself. Yet France has not lost her soul in changing from the world of irresponsible despotism to that of an organized democracy. Without organization of the Western stamp, the steamers, rail

ways, and even the lecture bureau which brought Tagore to America could hardly exist. In this, at least, the New World should tend to be content with some elements of that spirit of organization which Tagore so strongly condemns.

"THE YELLOW JACKET"

There has recently returned to New York City a play which attracted attention in the metropolis some time ago. It is about to depart again for a tour of the country, and the fact that many parts of the United States are to have a chance to witness its fantastic humor, its strange and curious conventions, its poetry, and its appeal to the imagination, makes it doubly worth while to call it to the attention of our readers at this time.

The play to which we refer is "The Yellow Jacket," staged by Mr. and Mrs. Coburn. It is a play written by an Occidental, but presented in the costume, the spirit, and with the conventions of the Chinese stage. The setting for the play is a replica of a Chinese theater in San Francisco.

There is, despite the unfamiliar setting of the play, something curiously Elizabethan in the manner of its presentation. For the author and players are bold enough to take it for granted that their audience possesses imagination. We are so used to having our plays presented to us like a ready-cooked breakfast food, prepared for digestion and with no opportunity or need of masticating the ideas presented, that it is a delightful relief to see a play to which the audience is obviously expected to bring something more intangible than tall hats and operaglasses.

If, on the one hand, "The Yellow Jacket" appeals to the imagination by the things which it leaves unsaid and unseen, on the other hand it is much more direct and simple than the plays which the average Occidental is accustomed to.

According to the Chinese convention, a character must not only display his virtues and vices by his acts, but upon his first appearance upon the stage he is required to give a brief sketch of himself-such a statement of his career as might well be included in "Who's Who."

We had hoped that this admirable convention might free us of one of the greatest curses of the modern drama, but we were doomed to disappointment. Even with every legal and moral justification for his customary

monologue destroyed, the Man Who Sat Behind Us carefully expounded the purpose and character of each of the actors as they appeared. Perhaps those of our readers who see "The Yellow Jacket" may have better fortune in this respect than the editorial envoy of The Outlook. We fear, however, that the instinct for spoiling good drama by bad explanations is too deeply rooted in the American people for even "The Yellow Jacket" to drive it thence.

SHERLOCK HOLMES IN NEW YORK

The reports of some of the feats of detective work accomplished by modern policemen are as entertaining and no less bizarre sometimes than the feats accomplished by Sherlock Holmes and Monsieur Lecoq in the pages of fiction. Romance is not dead. The report of a remarkable piece of detective work by Sergeant John F. Brennan, of the New York City Police Department, as published in "Motor Life" and republished in "Motordom" is as thrilling as a tale by Conan Doyle or Gaboriau.

On June 24, 1916, at about midnight, Foreman John McHugh, of the New York Street Cleaning Department, while driving in a light buggy near Sixty-ninth Street and Park Avenue, was run down and killed by an automobile speeding on him from behind. No one saw the accident, and there was no description of the car to provide a clue for the police, but Patrolman John G. Dywer, who discovered the wreck of the buggy, had the presence of mind to examine the street for even the minutest evidence. This is what was found: Twenty-one pieces of glass, none more than two inches long; a nickelplated lamp-rim six inches in diameter, stamped "Ham Lamp Company, Rochester, New York;" a piece of automobile tire about three inches long.

With this material Brennan went to work. In the Police Headquarters Training School he had been teaching members of the Traffic Squad that to the expert automobiles have almost as much individuality as human beings. Trying to put his own theories into practice, this is what he learned: The pieces of glass proved to be from three lenses, one a plain glass, one a mirror lens, and a third a concave-convex lens. Measurement of the curves of the glass fragments led him to believe that the first two lenses were eight (Continued on page following illustrations)