manufacturing costs standardized and the elements of newness worn
off, this price will fall as sharply as it has already fallen during
the war.

But what, after all, is cost in comparison with time? Modern
civilization will pay dearly for any invention which will increase
ever so little its hours of effectiveness. The great German liners
before the war lavished money without stint to save a day or two in
crossing the Atlantic. The limited express trains between New York,
Boston, Washington, and Chicago have for years made money by carrying
busy men a few hours more quickly to their destination. What will not
be paid if these times of travel can be reduced practically to half?

The element of danger has been reduced to a minimum and will be still
more reduced as emphasis is laid on safety rather than wartime
agility. Many men, of course, will meet their death in the air, just
as in the early days many men met their death in ships and in railroad
trains, but this will not be a deterrent if the goal is worth
attaining. There will be accidents in learning to fly, there will be
accidents of foolhardiness and of collision or in landing, but they
will decrease to the vanishing-point as experience grows. Already the
air routes which have been established have a high record of success
and freedom from fatalities.

The great need of aviation to-day is faith--faith among the people,
among the manufacturers, among the men who will give it its being. Its
success is as inevitable as that day follows night, but the question
of when that success is attained, now or generations from now, is
dependent on the vision which men put into it. If they are apathetic
and unreasonable, if they chafe at details or expect too much, it will
be held back. If, on the other hand, they go to meet it with
confidence, with coolness, and with a realization both of its
difficulties and its potentialities, its success will be immediate.

The task is one of the greatest, the most vital, and the most
promising which mankind has ever faced. With the general theories
proved and demonstrated, the great crisis of invention has passed, and
the slow, unspectacular process of development and application has set
in. Now has come the time for serious, sober thought, for careful,
analytical planning, for vision combined with hopefulness. It is well
in these early days, when flight is with the general public a very
special and occasional event, to remember what has