Page 6 Advertisements Column 2

Evening Star, Issue 16469, 6 July 1917, Page 6

A -writer in the London ‘ Times ’ thus enthuses over the British aviator:—“ Yon take the ordinary English youth from school, or from a cadet corps, or from an oflico, or from a regiment, and give him throe or four months’ training, and throw him up into the air in France—and he does tho rest. I have lived with more than one fighting squadron in France, and have seen the flights set forth in the morning, and watched for them aa they come doubtfully homo, trying to find their way through the curtain of low clouds. I have spent ‘ dud ’ days of rain and mist with the pilots in the intimacy of the crowded mess, and have learned. I think, something of their quality. I know nothing comparable with it or them. They are a race apart. They are almost children in years—the average age of one squadron I know is 25 ; but there is a maturity entirely their own, horn of experiences unknown. to ns, in their grave faces and laughing even. Their flying life is reckoned not in years or even months, but in hours; so that a man who has flown 50 hours is experienced, and one who has flown 250 hours 10 days of time—is a veteran. These hours are numbered to Fate and by the average of casualties. Fifty hours wihou a crash would be luck; 500 would he pracically impossible. Will in. such spans is he fighing pile’s life compassed, for beyond a ceram number of hours he knows that his fatal moment is overdue—that he has exceeded the allotted span of life. He may ho two or three-and-twenty, on the threshold of life; but every dav that ho goes on flying ho knows that the chances, the law of averages, aro increasingly against him. Ho knows it; hut it never changes his outward demeanor, or his appetite for the endless shop that these super-children talk. ,or for the music and dances that thev lovo, or for the rags and strafes that fill the. hours of the ‘dud’ day. He goes on, with more and more achievement to Ids name, until tho day when those who hurry to the window of the mess-hut when tho homing machines are heard in. the skv, and say ‘One still to com?,’ wait in vain for him. Perhaps some comrade who saw it brings tho news of his end. It may have happened thus or thus, hut one thing is pertain —it will have been, like his life" quick and beautiful.” Reporter: “ What is the secret of your success in politics? How do you manage to beat down tho opposition?” * Politician ; “Young man, I don’t try', to beat ’em down; I pay ’em what they ask.”—From tho American Press. Inventions that save household drudgery are to be welcomed. That is why housewives are enthusiasts over Easy Monday, tho scientific clothes washer, as it does away with washboard slavery, and washes the clothes bettor. One. shilling packet contains coupons for £IOO prize.—[Advt.]