ing at a speed of 100 miles an hour. In ordinary circumstances he
thought that a dive of 500 feet after the upside-down stretch should
get him the right way up, but it really took him nearly 1500 feet.
Fortunately, however, he commenced the dive at a great altitude, and so
the distance side-slipped did not much matter.

It is sad to relate that Mr. Temple lost his life in January, 1914,
while flying at Hendon in a treacherous wind. The actual cause of the
accident was never clearly understood. He had not fully recovered from
an attack of influenza, and it was thought that he fainted and fell
over the control lever while descending near one of the pylons, when the
machine "turned turtle", and the pilot's neck was broken.

CHAPTER XLV. Accidents and their Cause

"Another airman killed!" "There'll soon be none of those flying fellows
left!" "Far too risky a game!" "Ought to be stopped by law!"

How many times have we heard these, and similar remarks, when the
newspapers relate the account of some fatality in the air! People have
come to think that flying is a terribly risky occupation, and that if
one wishes to put an end to one's life one has only to go up in a
flying machine. For the last twenty years some of our great writers have
prophesied that the conquest of the air would be as costly in human life
as was that of the sea, but their prophecies have most certainly been
wrong, for in the wreck of one single vessel, such as that of the
Titanic, more lives were lost than in all the disasters to any form of
aerial craft.

Perhaps some of our grandfathers can remember the dread with which many
nervous people entered, or saw their friends enter, a train. Travellers
by the railway eighty or ninety years ago considered that they took
their lives in their hands, so to speak, when they went on a long
journey, and a great sigh of relief arose in the members of their
families when the news came that the journey was safely ended. In George
Stephenson's days there was considerable opposition to the institution
of the railway, simply on account of the number of accidents which it
was anticipated would take place.

Now we laugh at the fears of our great-grandparents; is it not probable
that our grandchildren will laugh in a similar manner at our timidity
over the aeroplane?

In the case of all recent new inventions in methods of locomotion there
has always been a feeling among certain people that the law ought to
prohibit