psa aN aoe pacineaennensenmprenesenentser sae ieee see eenaneee TES OE EAE jem 8 et oe Seana ee nee Bas S . a eee . aan = Hil ii a pas aie rea eeeennieannneel iversity il E;169;.V27;1926 \ - - ~ = i cere? rieReners : " . r neces SS cat) eee ATT =a q ULE irgini i = Library ruising cross country; or, Th : :LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA FROM THE BOOKS OF EMILY DINWIDDIE 1879-1949 AELEAPER RAEN ERECT THETTETT "TTT THT rT wOTATIER LEPERATED UAT ELERA AU EL ELTETRD RATTAN U ETON UU UTORUEULERUOUEDOATANUUREEROOORURROU RON N NOUN OSUROU UDO ODUED I PVUUER ESRC UGU IT TEUEUO TTT MReR RSD TC TTP LETT ran TereBT ee rere eaeaE eeJ i } i i‘ bh f ie ——oooe TEUTLAAe T Tite ne RUA Van eee eeeCRUISING CROSS COUNTRY OR THE JOURNEYINGS OF AN EDITORUNIVERSALIST PUBLISHING HOUSE 176 Newbury Street, Boston Dorchester Avenue and Sixtieth Street, Chicago } , } } : i { ; ——— ee EEiiesmmmnmensteedinseaamnERanenE AU LUTEAL LLULESEIEEEET TPTTEAT St eV TTP ETT eee TE tte ieee EPP EEE ELE EEL MEEVEE ED 3CRUISING CROSS COUNTRY OR THE JOURNEYINGS OF AN EDITOR z i John van Schaick, Jr. Py | (Johannes ) Editor of The Christian Leader (Universalist) Author of “The Little Corner Never Conquered” “Cruising Around a Changing World” BOSTON and CHICAGO UNIVERSALIST PUBLISHING HOUSE ¥9) 26Copyright, 1926, by the UNIVERSALIST PUBLISHING HOUSE , i ‘ 7 " piaaezeyvityy UEUUEN PALEREERO EOE TE Ge ee TEE THREAT LT UP EU LD LEU e Rene U none eee aes eee DET e aa eae ee eeent teesDedicated to the Comrades who have cruised with meEUVERTAEL ERR wan FUSEINT LUAU LAER e AOR P eee eee eee oeChapter nde. If. IV. VI. Vil. VIII. IX. X. XOle XII. XD: XIV. XV. XVI. XVII. XVIII. XIX. XX, XOX: XXIT. XXIII. XXIV. XXV. CONTENTS SWINGING ROUND THE CIRCLE Page The Start of a Longer Journey ............ 1 OldPKortileavenworthio re ee 7 Above the Missouri in an Airplane......... 15 AtthesKootiotsthewRockiesi4.5 6 oor - ee 25 At the Grand Canyon of Arizona .......... 35 Going; toiCaliforniass rere 43 A State Convention in California .......... 51 A City with Nerve and Courage ........... 59 In Santa Barbara the Beautiful ...........- 69 In the Santa Clara Valley of the South ..... 83 Around San?Brancisco Bays) 32-0 4.) a 91 NorthtoiSeattle i 4 . 2....5....2.. The Joys and Sorrows of an Editor—I ..... The Joys and Sorrows of an Editor—II Wniversalststorelo-cavin sie ce ie sa IN WASHINGTON Inaucurations Faswandebresentia.... .-5-.-. The President, “His Lady,’’ and the Judges . Japanese Cherry Blossoms in Washington Mintwood; Our Fourth Floor Back......... AROUND BOSTON UprontOurgROol ca ss cc Os Ne @IGURCOTELOFSe shaver | 0.0), ae. oe & TheiPauleReveresbrall yes aoe 2. ceed AaGelebrationiolsLatriots, Day, 94. 62.0... WRUEUAURRA ED LRU ROU ARDEE ROO Upp eeeea elias Page 229 237 249 261 271 281 291 301 oll ol 3390 345 349 309 Co o> GC =) Nar Wwe CO =] — o9l 403 411 417 EE EM EL fy he a lia ey,CONTENTS VACATION DAYS IN MAINE The Unexpected Trip to Nicatous An August Week End in Maine The Thoughts That Throng the Woods THE JERSEY COAST The Sedges Some Sundays at the Sedges The Mother Sea The Four Way Lodge Bits of Old History Up the NavesinkARE eR AE ' | iF i i } 7 a t ij MH ‘ | es THROU eee eee.PREFACE In the past four years I have written “Cruising” articles under the general headings: “Cruising Around a Changing World,” “Cruising About These United States,’ “Cruising in Convalescing Countries,’ “Cruising Close By,’ and “Cruising Cross Country.” The first of these appeared in book form. I have discussed subjects as widely separated as the Taj Mahal and a second-hand book shop, a mission in Egypt and a church in Maine, a trip to California and a trip to the suburbs. I have dealt with Audubon Societies and Church Conventions, with Pullman cars and family genealogies. All this has been with the idea of getting people to see that this is not a wrecked and ruined world, but a good world, not the sport of chance but the creation of a Good God, and to realize that men have a part in a creation which was not finished some thousands of years ago but is going on now. These articles have appeared in the Universalist Leader and its successor the Christian Leader. I have shortened some of them for publication, but have not attempted any thoroughgoing revision. I believe that in the paper the articles have served a useful purpose in acting as a foil for the more serious things which it is the policy of the paper to publish. Whether they ought to be dignified by appearing in book form is a different question. Opinions may differ. Those who say ‘“‘no” can console themselves with the reflection that water always seeks its level, and that there is not much danger of this book getting any reading it does not deserve. Some people, however, will want the book as a souvenir of journeys they have taken with the author over a period of many months. A publishing house has been willing to take the risk and a faithful and able assistant* has been willing to read the proof. Why not let the book appear for the people who want it? It will not clutter up many shelves. *Miss Florence I. Adams, to whom I return hearty thanks.PREFACE But who knows? Something herein set down may send some boy or girl to the great books, or to God’s out of doors. There is a fellowship extending beyond the boundaries of separated churches and taking in people outside all churches. It is made up of those who realize that there is more truth than any one of us sees, that no part of truth is out of harmony with any other part, and that all of itis divine. It is the fellowship of the free, the inquiring, the appreciative, the tolerant, the reverent, the helpful. Those who like these articles may see in them a desire to extend the boundaries of this fellowship. John van Schaick, Jr. ol i ee ——Swinging Round the CREUEUU EAL eeeCHAPTER I THE START OF A LONGER JOURNEY HE Chicago morning papers publish accounts of a the address yesterday of the president of the American Railway Association, in which he asserted that the railways of the United States carried 931,000,000 passengers in 1924, nearly nine times the population of the United States, that only 149 were killed and that the number injured was less by 15 per cent than the average for the past four years, and the smallest since 1901. Fewer employees were killed and injured than in any year since records were started in 1888. ‘“‘A person to-day,”’ he said, “‘is in far less danger speeding across the country at sixty miles an hour on a railway train, than he is in crossing a street in any of the principal cities of the United States.” Having come 786.4 miles from Washington in nineteen hours, forty-four and four-tenths miles per hour including stops, and having started on a circuit of several thousand miles, we are happy to read these reassuring words. Bound for California and the State Convention of Universalists, we left Washington on what is called the Capital Limited of the Baltimore and Ohio R. R. yesterday at 3 p.m. At 9 a. m., on the dot, Central time, we rolled into the station here. The train is one in which the company and employees take pride—solid Pullman, club car and observation car, “train secretary, barber, valet, shower bath, maid and manicure.’”’ We could use only so much space, eat only so much food, employ only so many of the facilities, but all these arrangements made us2 CRUISING CROSS COUNTRY and the Daughters of the Revolution homeward bound feel important and distinguished. Better than physical comforts are the little friend- ly touches of the crew. The conductor said: ‘“The whole train is yours. Go through from front to back. Here is my card and it means what it says.”’ Under his name were these words: “‘I will per- sonally appreciate any use you can make of our service.” Going west from Washington on this line, we follow the Potomac for a long distance. We parallel the old Braddock trail, the route taken by General Braddock and George Washington back in the French and Indian War on their fatal march toward what is now Pittsburgh, to drive out the invading French. Names of stations here and there recall those far-off days just as the name of this hotel in which I am writing, ‘““The La Salle,’”’ speaks of a still earlier period. The line of the B. & O.—the line of the Potomae— was in the no-man’s-land of the Civil War period. Leaving Washington, first there is the Monocacy, where General Lew Wallace delayed Early; then Harper’s Ferry with its memories of John Brown and its great battle a little later; South Mountain and Antietam on one side, the Shenandoah and all its famous raids and rides on the other. At Martins- burg, eighteen miles west of Harper’s Ferry, they still tell about Stonewall Jackson, and how often he raided the town. The B. & O. shops and yards were there. Jackson’s men even stole locomotives, hauled them with horses over dirt roads thirty miles and put them in use on Southern railroads. One young officer named Sharp, especially successful in stealing locomotives from the B. & O., became “master of transportation” for that same railroad after the war. It was a beautiful day for the beginning of ourSWINGING AROUND THE CIRCLE 3 longest cruise cross country. The sun shone out of a sky which was better than cloudless. It was one of those days when great fleecy clouds, all lighted up by the sun, stand out against the blue. From the time when we rolled out of the Union Station in Washington at 3 p. m., until night came down upon us as we were crossing the Alleghanies, we were pass- ing through a flower garden. Cherries, plums, pears and apples were in bloom. The dogwood was at its height on the lower levels. The redbud was still brilliant higher up. It was a relief to have the last letters answered, the last bags packed, the last orders given, and to settle back relaxed and watch the green fields, the orchards and woods. Around Wash- ington the leaves of forest trees and bushes were fully out. Beyond Cumberland the trees were still half bare. And the greens of all these different trees were as different as the trees themselves. Then it grew dark and the long train labored up the heavy grade, two engines pulling us with mighty power. We were still up and looking out when we crossed over and began the descent. We saw the shooting flames and glaring reflections of the furnaces around McKeesport and Pittsburgh. And then the day ended. Fast asleep, we rushed on across the corner of Pennsylvania, over the whole width of Ohio and well across Indiana before we sat down to breakfast this morning. Breakfast over, Chicago was at hand. We watched as if it had been the first time the approach to this fascinating city. It may not be the most beautiful part of the city, but the miles and miles of interlacing tracks, the many railroad systems converging from north, east, south and west, are a revelation to the stranger. Chicago was cold and it was a good day to rest. We turned on the steam in our room at the La Salle and I took a nap while the Madame read and sewed.CRUISING CROSS COUNTRY Soon after lunch Tilden of Lombard College and Brigham of St. Paul’s called. Brigham brought news that Miss Hathaway, our Japan missionary, had arrived that morning on her way East. With Tilden we went over the story of the struggles and the victories of the college he is serving so well. We no longer are bothered by the thought that such an institution is duplicating, competing and unnecessary. Every such college has more than it can do. The young men and women of the country are applying for admission to our colleges in larger numbers than can be accommodated. Lombard, with more students than ever before in its history, with higher scholastic standards, and a better faculty, is hard after the half-million dollar extra endow- ment it absolutely has to have to make outgo and income meet. With Brigham we drifted into the fascinating story of St. Paul’s Church on the Midway. Wisely he is going after an endowment also. He has a beau- tiful plant strategically placed, a college church, but the powerful financial backers of the church one by one have died; the neighborhood of the church is not one that can pay the operating expense of a plant like St. Paul’s. There is a gap here also to be bridged, and Dr. Brigham slowly, patiently, persistently, is bridging it. We left undone most of the things we planned to do to-day in Chicago. But before we took the sleeper for Kansas City, we drove for an hour or more out Michigan Avenue, along the lake front and through Lincoln Park. After the congested streets of down- town Chicago at 3 p. m., this other Chicago was a relief. Here is an expanse of water like the ocean. When the breeze is fresh as it is to-day, the waves make one think of the sea. And the people use this openSWINGING AROUND THE CIRCLE D space and the park alongside. “There is no park in the country,” said Dr. Brigham, who went with us, ‘more used than Lincoln Park.” That is the true spirit. Not how many we can keep out of the park— the problem is how many we can get to come in and use the park, appreciate it, grow up to its beauty, drink in its rest, its recreation, its health. We talked about the big houses built along the lake front, the homes of the men who made Chicago, and the inevitable changes time makes. And we paused at the great statue which gives its name to the park and seems to pervade it, St. Gaudens’ great statue of Lincoln. It is worthy to be mentioned in the same breath with the statue of Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. We were glad to know Brigham better, this son of a Universalist clergyman, this father of a Universalist clergyman—one in California, one in Chicago, one in Massachusetts—‘“‘perhaps spread out pretty thin,” said Dr. Brigham, “but exerting a real influence,’”’ I added. Travel is a hardship in spite of every modern comfort. It is a sacrifice of home, ease, peace and freedom. But it pays. I never have undertaken a journey without having to exert my will to overcome inertia. I never have come back from one without a feeling of thanksgiving that I have had the chance to go. The perspective changes in travel. With most of us it ought to change. Chicago, Tuesday, April 28, 1925.4 TT RUPEE eee eee. vial |CHAPTER II OLD FORT LEAVENWORTH NIGHT run from Chicago, a view of flooded fields in Missouri while we read of droughts in Colorado, and we rolled into Kansas City. Here we left our main route westward to make a visit to my brother, Colonel Louis J. van Schaick, and his family at Fort Leavenworth. “A little to one side of the main trails,” said Major Elvid Hunt, describing Fort Leavenworth, “out of the public eye and mind for the present, but preparing with the greatest energy for its next service of the nation.” It was established as an army post in the spring of 1827. In two years it will have a centennial celebration. Colonel Henry Leavenworth of Jefferson Barracks, St. Louis, was ordered to go up the Missouri River, choose a site, and start a post to protect trading caravans using the old Santa Fe Trail, which started out from where Kansas City now stands. Colonel Leavenworth chose the high bluffs some thirty-four miles up the river from Kan- sas City, where the Fort now stands. It has had an interesting history. Thousands and thousands of pioneer settlers visited it or passed by, on the old Oregon Trail or the Sante Fe Trail. From it, for years, detachments of soldiers were sent out to protect caravans of traders. From here Indian fighters went forth. Better than that, here, under the big trees, peace conferences with Indians were held. Here General Kearney outfitted the Army of the West in the Mexican War. When Kansas was organized as a new territory in 1854, to this fort the first Civil Governor came. He had to live with the —— os8 CRUISING CROSS COUNTRY sutler, for no quarters were available, but the gallant officers of to-day seem a little ashamed of that bit of old military jealousy. It probably wouldn’t happen now. So on through the Civil War, the Spanish War, the World War, the Post has gone its way. It now houses the General Service Schools of the Army, the successor of the old Infantry and Cavalry Schools established here by General W. T. Sherman in 1881. The Post has a population of 4,000—1,000 of whom are children of school age. It not only gives a rigid course to Regular Army officers, but each year assembles a class of Reserve and National Guard officers for three months of intensive work. My brother has had a long term of duty here—first a year in the line school and a year in the staff school, as a student, then in executive and teaching jobs for three years more. It has made him dig. It has re- awakened all his old enthusiasm for books. It has set him reading more widely than he ever has before in his life. In a little more than an hour from Kansas City we descended at the Fort. There stood a team of army mules, an army bus, my brother and his little three-year-old adopted daughter. So lacking in imagination are we, or so busy about our own affairs, that we do not sense the significance of things like the birth or adoption of a child. As I saw this bright, attractive, fun-loving, happy little girl and felt her arms about my neck, I realized the existence of a new niece. When our army was in Russia, during the war, a clean young Irish-American soldier befriended two little girls in a Russian village, whose parents had been killed by the Bolsheviki. When the troops left he married the younger girl, not quite sixteen, and brought her home. Her first child died. Three yearsSWINGING AROUND THE CIRCLE 9 ago, when the mother was eighteen, the second one came at Fort Leavenworth, and it cost the mother her life. The baby weighed only three pounds. It was tossed aside by the doctor to be thrown out while he concentrated on saving the mother. Two nurses coming along, seeing signs of life, took the little thing, hastily improvised an incubator, and fed it with a medicine dropper. The mother died. The baby lived. My brother and wife, deeply touched by this sad history, knowing that the father had no relatives to help, perfected all necessary arrangements and adopted the child. She bears the Russian name of Olga. She is one more illustration of the principle that we steadily insist upon, that there is no such thing as a waste human product. Science and sympathy together every year make more of the useless useful. The faith of those nurses was the faith which inspired Dr. Howe in his work for Laura Bridgman. Nothing has pleased me more in a long time than to see the way in which little Olga has been given a chance for happiness and usefulness. I ean not write of all the comings and goings of the three days at the Fort. I met many fine, up- standing, intelligent, cultured men and women. Perhaps not all of them think as I[ think on social or economic subjects, and perhaps I do not think as most of them think about the kind of ‘“‘prepared- ness” this country should make for war. But we peace people make a mistake when we classify all army and navy folks with the wooden-headed, un- imaginative, prejudiced ones we often come across who lose their tempers and call names when one does not agree instantly with what they say. Itisa picked group, to be sure, at Fort Leavenworth—men fit to teach grown men the higher principles of combat, command, supply, intelligence, transport, communi-10 CRUISING CROSS COUNTRY cation, etc. One of the most interesting and thought- ful discussions of education and especially of peda- gogy I have heard in some time I heard at this Post. And it was interesting to see the kind of men who make up the Reserve—coming from all over, bankers, merchants, lawyers, doctors, what not—buckling down to their studies with an intensity and de- termination one seldom sees in college. General Harry C. Smith, a keen, quick moving, quick thinking officer, is in command at Fort Leaven- worth, and he was most courteous. He is under orders to go to the War College in Washington, and we had the honor of attending a farewell dinner to him given by the Reserve Officers of Kansas City, Mo. There was one experience we had at this Fort which made a lasting impression. It was a visit to the Disciplinary Barracks, or prison. I do not refer to the Federal Prison, situated on one corner of the Reservation, that is a civil institution. It has 3,243 prisoners crowded into quarters intended for 1,400. Mr. Biddle, the warden, keeps it clean. There is no foul air or smell. They are well fed. But there is only the slightest chance to classify, to teach, to set at useful work, to rehabilitate. The last day of our visit to the Post was the day that my brother’s class of Reserve Officers was scheduled to visit the Disciplinary Barracks of the Army. Wives were invited and arrangements made for all to lunch with the prisoners. Colonel George O. Cress, formerly head of a school back East, is in command, Major Edgar King, one of the most dis- tinguished psychiatrists of the United States, is on the staff, and Captain Alexander D. Sutherland, a liberal Presbyterian, who takes the Universalist Leader, is the chaplain. We saw first a drill by a company of the prisonersSWINGING AROUND THE CIRCLE 11 —the men who have been picked out to be returned to the army, as soon as they earn the right by good conduct and development in other ways. It was a silent drill, no oral command, the men responding instantly to the music. Involved in it was the most vigorous kind of military calisthenics and marching I ever have seen, and they did it with a snap, a pride, a hope, which made me forget absolutely that they were men under restraint. We made the rounds of the “Barracks,” sleeping quarters, or cells, kitchens, dining rooms, library, laundry, store room, chapel, gymnasium, and hospital. We came then to the great assembly hall and rested a few moments while Chaplain Sutherland and Major King told us what they were trying to do. I was proud of my profession as I[ talked to this chaplain, saw his opportunity, noted the intelligence and sense of his methods and caught his spirit. He is like the chaplains in the war—up against “‘reality,”’ and dogmatism, pettiness, insistence on non-essen- tials, always die in the atmosphere of reality, assum- ing of course that there is a man to breathe it in. Part of his work is getting jobs for discharged pris- oners, and up to date he has placed 500. One-half of all the prisoners are students in the morning school and 76 per cent take vocational training. For Major King I have an equal enthusiasm. The principles he enunciated so simply and effectively are the principles that we Universalists have been contending for in our social service and reform work. They are the principles of the great scientists. And what are they? Something as simple and obvious as that two and two equal four, but until recent years disregarded in 99 per cent of work for those who break the laws. “We must study the human material we get,’’ said Major King. ‘‘We must do it as thoroughly as we12 CRUISING CROSS COUNTRY can. We must go back into the boy’s family. We must learn what we can from his associates in the town where he was raised, from the people he has worked for, from any schools he may have attended and from himself. We find out, if we can, if there has been early neglect—or early and late neglect—if he has failed to get schooling, or has contracted bad habits. Knowing what is lacking in his previous life and experience, we are in a better position to apply a remedy.” “Since we began to study our human material,”’ he went on, “the need of drastic punishment has passed away almost entirely.” Those are words that I should like to see in- cluded in the commission of every warden and jailer in this country, and painted on the wall of the sleep- ing room of every other prison official. They are not bad words for the rest of us, either. The principles they state are fundamental in all education—for both the normal and the abnormal. There are some 900 men in these ‘“‘Barracks,”’ and the methods used have been worked out by study of the men. The usual stupid classification of prisoners by age or by anything except what the men actually are was characterized in scathing terms by Major King. “A boy of fifteen may be the most dangerous type of criminal,” he said. And even with all that has been accomplished the methods are not regarded as fixed or perfected. “We make many mistakes yet. We have much to learn,” said this modest, competent man. Vastly different from the usual type of reformer, with few illusions, absolutely free of sentimentalism, Major King nevertheless is a reformer and the most useful kind of reformer. There are some men, he thinks, that he can doSWINGING AROUND THE CIRCLE 13 little with in our present stage of knowledge and or- ganization of society. But he has visions of a work vastly more fundamental than what he is doing. He would like to run a training school for the army instead of “Disciplinary Barracks.’”’ He would like to get the young soldier at the first sign of need and have him sent for ‘‘training,” instead of waiting to have him sent as a prisoner. I have made clear, I trust, that the Army Dis- ciplinary Barracks are educational and reformatory in their operation. They are full of hope. The officers are hopeful. The men are hopeful for themselves. For Juncheon we had the food prepared for the men—soup, broiled salmon, cream sauce, mashed potatoes, spinach, raisin pie, coffee. It was delicious food, ordered thirty days before we came—not pre- pared for us. After luncheon we saw the squads march off to work—to the garden, to the fields, to the chicken farm, to the cow farm, to the pig farm. The highest class sleep outside the walls of the prison. They are this far on the way back to normal life. In buses and other motors we made the tour ourselves—get- ting separated and finally coming back in a grand rush and a cloud of dust to catch the 2.15. The Memphis major of the Reserve brought me through on high speed over some awful bumps, saying “‘hell”’ but once, and “damn” but twice, and instantly apolo- gizing, although I told him his characterization of things had the highest marks of good English— “strength, clearness, precision and adequacy.” It is a curious thing that one and the same Fed- eral Government, run by the same officials, sup- ported by the same tax payers, controlled by the same voters, can do so much in the same community for one type of prisoners, so little for the other type.14 CRUISING CROSS COUNTRY We ought not to rest until the men in the Federal Penitentiary for civilians have the same chance as the men in the Disciplinary Barracks of the army. And we ought to be grateful to the army for applying with such sense and such success the most scientific methods known to penology. Colorado Springs, May 4, 1925.CHAPTER III ABOVE THE MISSOURI IN AN AIRPLANE VERY year thousands of people go up in air- H planes. Every civilized and many a _half- civilized country employs them. In the United States we have our commercial planes, our mail planes, and the service planes of the army and navy. At summer resorts people can go up twenty or thirty minutes for $2, $3, or $5. One can charter planes for longer trips. Services like those between Atlantic City and New York, London and Paris, Paris and Cologne, are well established. ‘“Here’s an advertisement from the London Punch,” Collier's says, “that ought to set American travelers, shippers and business men thinking: “Azrway travel is safe. . . . The recent decision of practically all the Life Assurance Offices, whereby ordinary life assurance policies now cover all risk of fatal accident to travelers on British Cross-Channel Airways, is a convincing tribute to the safety of travel in the ma- chines of Imperial Airways, Ltd. ... Travel by Imperial Airways between London, Paris, Basle, Zurich, Ostend, Brussels, Cologne, Amsterdam, Han- over, Berlin, Southampton and Guernsey. Pas- sengers are allowed 30 lbs. of baggage free. Excess baggage, including cabin trunks and luggage in ad- vance, is carried at moderate charges.’ The British lines are part of a network covering Europe from London to Constantinople. Fares are not extrava- gantly high. Accidents are rare.” No longer can one take the attitude that he has done a brave thing or had quite an adventure if he has gone up ina plane. ‘Too many people have gone16 CRUISING CROSS COUNTRY up scores of times. Too many in the line of duty have battled with air conditions which the ordinary man would not dream of facing. And yet for every man it is an adventure the first time, and I suspect many other times. He launches out in a new element. He sees the world from a new standpoint. He makes himself a part of a great development and advance in human affairs. There is a change now in the attitude of the air services of the Government about taking civilians up. The old attitude was: Don’t do it. Don’t even take the people who might have legitimate excuses. Don’t take officials who are not directly concerned. Don’t take army or navy officers even who have no business in the air. The new attitude is to encourage every officer to go up every time he has an opportunity. Make it a part of his experience. Get him accustomed to it so that he will not hesitate even an instant if he ought to make a quick trip by plane, or become upset and unfitted for duty either by dread in advance or fear en route. The more officers in the service who get so they can take it precisely like a quick trip by railroad or motor, the better the service. In the same way, the Government services want to advance knowledge about planes among all classes of civilians. They have a missionary attitude in the matter. Every man taken up understands the air service better. He catches something of the spirit of the men in it. He sees more clearly the possi- bilities. I don’t mean to say that the army and navy can go into the business of educating civilians whole- sale, for they have too few menand planes. They have many jobs of their own on their hands. But they don’t block such arrangements as they used to. They don’t feel hostile to them. When they can they like to do it.SWINGING AROUND THE CIRCLE 17 They realize of course that there is fear of going up among people in general. The tragedies of the air still occur. One such accident as happened last year at Croydon, England, to the great passenger plane for Paris, where all on board were killed, deters many people from using the planes. Balancing this, however, is the dissemination of knowledge about the advance in the manufacture of planes, the more powerful and more dependable motors, the higher average of ability in pilots, the body of ex- perience which the race has gained in mastering the air. Until my visit to Fort Leavenworth I had never flown. During the war, I had my own job cut out for me, and soon discovered that a part of it was not to complicate the other fellow’s job or to add to his burdens. I never asked to go up, although I was so placed that a simple request would have done it. Traveling with my wife in various places, it seemed to me a little unfair either to expose her to the possibility of facing a tragedy alone or to have the anxiety if she knew I was going. When I reached Fort Leavenworth, however, on this trip, I found that my brother, Colonel Louis J. van Schaick, an instructor in the General Service Schools, had arranged with his colleague, Colonel Roy C. Kirtland, for me to have a flight. He said, “Of course if you don’t want to do it, it’s all mght.”’ Perhaps I was a little cowardly about it, but I just couldn’t say ‘“‘no.” It was scheduled for the morn- ing of my arrival. The wind was blowing eighty miles an hour—tearing huge limbs from the trees— in places blowing trees down. The officers themselves postponed the flight. The next day they had to send their pilots to Kansas City to meet some Martin Bombers coming up for a demonstration. ‘So it was put for Friday, May 1—May Day at 9 o’clock in the morning. Meanwhile I quietly made an unofficial18 CRUISING CROSS COUNTRY codicil to my will and tucked it away in a safe place, a proceeding which would have seemed as ridiculous to the air service people as it would have seemed to me to have a man dash into his room and make a farewell memorandum if [ had invited him to drive from Washington to Baltimore or from Boston to Lynn in my car. May Day dawned wonderfully beautiful—fleecy clouds in a deep blue sky, the sun shimmering on the river, making even the muddy Missouri look like silver, birds singing for all they were worth, a cool bracing breeze but no frost. Officially as we left the ladies we were bound for a quick inspection of the chapel and the Y. M.C. A. building. It was too early for the ladies to go, wesaid. Wedid stop at thechapel, open the door and peek in. We did pull up at the Y. M. C. A. building, where my brother found a boy sweeping the floor. “My boy,” said he, “walk through this building just as fast as you can go and show us what you have got.” The boy knew his business, and was off likea shot. Wesaw gymnasium, pool, lockers, dining-room, kitchen, library, lounge and several class rooms, and would have successfully done the furnace room and attic also well within our two and one-half minutes if my brother had not pulled him up. That boy in blue jeans and a broom knew what was wanted without any words, did no arguing, told what they had and never put onthe brakes. Barring accidents, he will reach a worth while goal. The Y. M. C. A., by the way, has an unusually well equipped building, and is doing an important work at this post. Then to the flying field, two miles off. “Well, let’s get it over,’’ was my unvoiced attitude. Two huge planes stood on the field in front of the hangar as we drove up, but we found that the pilot was not there. He had just gone away. There was a mis-SWINGING AROUND THE CIRCLE 19 take about the hour. Captain Wills had been as- signed. Colonel Kirtland had said of him: “He js one of our best. He brought me up from so and so the other day with a bad side wind and landed me, at eighty miles an hour.’”’ In place of Captain Wills, Lieutenant Smith, a New York City boy, came dash- ing down by motor, accompanied by a charming fellow in civilian clothes, one of our pilots in service in the Philippine Islands. During the forty-five minutes that we had been waiting, the mechanics had tuned up the smaller of the two planes. It was one of the new army in- struction planes, capable of eighty miles an hour, solid, steady and fool proof. The seat for the passenger is by the side of the pilot’s seat, and has the same con- trols. The pilot can watch the beginner closely and instantly correct a blunder. It must take a very special type of man to make a good instructor of would-be pilots. Other mechanics put me in a warm flying suit and helmet, as the day was rather cold. Then they strapped a parachute on me. It weighed twenty- three pounds and hung down my back against my legs. They explained with some care that I was to pull a special ring on the left side if I fell or had to jump, to open the parachute, and not to get the “‘chute’’ caught against the side of the car getting out. I looked with some interest at the ring, fingered it af- fectionately, wondered idly if I ought not to give it a preliminary tug or two to be sure it was in good working order—but these were thoughts I kept to myself. My respect increased for the sergeant who jumped the other day with orders to fall a thousand feet before pulling the cord, to see whether or not a man lost consciousness in falling that way. If the old theory had been right, there would have been no one to pull the cord for this sergeant. Luckily, it20 CRUISING CROSS COUNTRY was wrong. A man falling from a tall building is not dead before he hits the ground. He sees the good eld earth coming toward him at terrific speed, and that ends it. The mechanics were concerned about my glasses, were sure they would be blown off, tried to fit the goggles of the helmet over them, wanted me to re- move them altogether. The last I declined to do be- cause I didn’t intend to go to the trouble of making my will and then see nothing. The pilot told me that he thought the wind shield would protect them unless I leaned too far over the side. I promised him not to lean out too far, and kept my glasses on. Now we were ready to go. The pilot climbed up and I followed—a mechanic lifting after me the clumsy parachute, which I placed in the seat and sat on. Straps to hold us in were fastened securely, but by devices possible to release instantly. “Contact,” called the mechanics at the propeller. ‘‘Contact,”’ said the pilot. They turned the great blade over, jumping aside as they did so. “Twice,” “thrice,” and the engine started. A nod by the pilot to other mechanics, and the blocks were pulled away from the wheels. A farewell wave by my brother, a hearty “Good luck,” and we started over the green field— faster, faster—and before I realized it we were off the ground and in the air. The surprising thing to me was the stability of the plane. We had a good day. There were no air pockets. Strict orders had been given against “‘stunts.”’ The machine traveled with the power, the precision, the evenness, of a high grade motor car on a good road. There was a great noise, but not as much as I expected. By shouting we could talk. My own glasses protected my eyes ade- quately and showed no disposition to fly off. We rose gradually to a height of two miles, circling over the military reservation, over the city of Leavenworth,SWINGING AROUND THE CIRCLE 21 over the river, and then went off down the river as far as Lansing, Kansas, only a few miles away. All of us have seen pictures taken from planes, and so there is no surprise over the magnificent views. On the other hand, they are not disappointing. The fields were outlined distinctly as a checker-board. The patches of green woods were scattered every- where. The boundaries of great institutions like the Federal Penitentiary at Leavenworth showed dis- tinctly. ‘Playing ball,” the pilot yelled as we went over the prison, and I saw the tiny moving figures of men behind the high walls. Down there was the fellow I had seen who had been in his punishment cell for seven years except the one hour a day he is let out in a tiny yard within the walls, alone. “A dan- gerous man.” Here was I sailing over him in bound- less space. How much merit and how much luck had gone into the making of these two lives—only God knows. But I am sure that it is far better not to try to decide that question, and to study with more care the brains and bodies of all men we lock up. “Since we began to study our human material,’’ said Major King of the army prison, “‘we never have had to resort to drastic punishments.’”’ We went over two Federal prisons as we started, the Army Disciplinary Barracks and the Federal Penitentiary, and turned around over another prison—a state institution down at Lansing. Now I began to observe the far views, the far- stretching prairie, the distant line of hills on the horizon, the snake-like curves of the Missouri. ‘‘Atch- ison,” called the pilot, pointing up the river, and I saw it in the haze, or thought I did. After we turned, he put the machine over a little jump—telling me he was about to do so. Just a baby jump, like a horse jumping a ditch, but the interesting thing was the quickness of response of22 CRUISING CROSS COUNTRY the plane, the apparent ease of control. The latera] controls are with the feet—the vertical, controlling the up and down direction, are with a stick which the pilot shoves back and forth, the stick on my side moving also, hitting my legs, advising me that my comrade was busy. Then he took his hands and feet off, to show me how the plane traveled alone— an amazing demonstration of advance in plane con- struction. Passing from over the land to over the water there was always a perceptible jump of the machine. I was prepared for this, for Colonel Kirtland had said: ‘We can tell when we pass from asphalt to grass, from grass to plowed fields, from land to water. A turn- pike on a hot day makes its presence felt high in the air.