I can’t help expressing the wish that men already trained could have more opportunity to fly. Many excellent flyers who served in the war, and later, want to keep in practise. They can, of course, join the reserves and fly Peteys (P.T.s), the training plane which replaced the Jennys, recently condemned. But flying a P.T. doesn’t equip one to pilot the modern pursuit and larger planes. Unless these men are able to afford the luxuries of planes of their own, they can’t obtain any adequate training and their great value in possible national emergency is lessened. Could they be permitted to fly new type planes that are in the army hangars, it would save all the lost motion of retaining them in time of need, besides keeping them interested. Probably no department of aviation touches the business people of the country more closely than the air mail, which, by the way, includes not only letters but express and freight as well. The Aircraft Year Book analysis of the activities of the Post Office Department is so admirable I again quote from it ♦verbatim: “The Post Office Department, relieved of the details of the actual operations of flying the mail through letting out this work at public bidding to private operators, has been devoting its efforts exclusively under the direction of Second Assistant Postmaster General W. Irving Glover, to the building up of the network of privately operated air mail lines and of bringing to the attention of the public the value of the air mail service. ♦ “verbatum” replaced with “verbatim” “One of the high lights in the operation of the air mail service in 1927 was the splendid demonstration by this service of the safety of commercial operations with able pilots, good equipment and efficient ground organization, under most trying flying conditions. This is attested by the Post Office Department’s record last year of a single fatality in 1,413,381 miles of day and night air transportation. “Another achievement was the steady increase in the use of the air mail by the public. This is shown by the fact that while the mileage flown by private mail route operators was practically the same in June, 1926, as in June, 1927, the amount of mail carried by these private lines had increased from 29,673 pounds in June, 1926, to 55,026 pounds in June, 1927. Another measure of the increase in the use of the air mail service is found in the Government figures showing that while the number of miles flown in carrying mail during the first half of 1927 was practically the same as the mileage flown in the last half of the year, the compensation to the operators which is based on the poundage carried, had increased nearly 50 per cent. The Government figures show that while the average revenue per mile to operators during the first half of 1927 was 58.4 cents, it had jumped to 76.9 cents during the last half of the year.