BACHELORS AS AIRMEN

Evening Post, Volume XCVI, Issue 155, 28 December 1918, Page 9

BACHELORS AS AIRMEN

MARRIAGE A HANDICAP. ,

The effect of marriage on airmen is one of the points discussed by Captain T. S. ESppon. E.A.M.C M.R.C^S., stationed at an -aerodrome, and Lieutenant E. G. Manuel, K.A.I? . a pilot o£ 600 hours' experience, in a "Report on the Essential Characteristics of Successful and Unsuccessful Aviators'' in the Lancet.

"The majority* of successful pilots," says the report. "are unmarried, and our own observations tend to show that marriage is a definite handicap, owing to the increased sense of responsibility If a man marries after he has flown several hundred hours; and flying has become automatic, marriage may*not apparently affect him for some time. In come cases it may even make him steadier and more carefnl, but sooner or later it will in most cases' have a definitely deteriorating effect. '

"The unmarried man. faced with the possibility of crashing while doing his first solo, in most cases dismisses the thought or takes the risk in the same way as a horse rider pute his mount at a fence in strange country The married man has the knowledge of what \death may mean to his wife and familyj and, moreover, has the opportunity in many cases of discussing it with his wife and manufacturing in/ his. own home a condition of nervousness which, eventually becomes co great that he confesses to hi* instructor that he haß completely lost his nerve."