A young American woman has crossed the Atlantic in an aeroplane and has arrived safely on the shore of Wales. Within the past few months three other women have lost their lives in attempting the same feat, and Miss Earhart is to be congratulated on escaping their fate. The voyage itself, for nearly all the way through fog, _is a remarkable achievement made possible by the skill and courage of the pilot. But his anxiety must have been vastly increased_ by the fact that he was carrying a woman passenger, and, as the “Evening Standard” has properly pointed out, _her presence added no more to the achievement than if the passenger had been a sheep_. [This is the zoological last straw! After two weeks of mutton at Trepassey I’m sure the boys could not have endured the proximity of a sheep as cargo on the Friendship.] Miss Earhart has been acclaimed by Welsh villagers, congratulated by Mr. Coolidge, lionized in London, and she is offered large sums of money to appear in the films. For us, it is all a rather pitiful commentary on “so-called civilization.” Society cannot profit directly or indirectly from Miss Earhart’s journey. _She is an international heroine simply and solely because, owing to good luck and an airman’s efficiency_, she is the first woman to travel from America to Europe by air. A scientist has died after many years of agony because of his devotion to the work of healing, and for him there are only brief paragraphs in the newspapers, while Miss Earhart has columns. Women suffer constant discomfort and risk infection from loathsome diseases, working for the unhappy in slums, in leper colonies, in the fetid tropics, and their names remain unknown. _Certainly, the sense of values in the modern world is sadly distorted._ [Illustration: description: Montage of 3 photos with flight crew in unflattering poses caption: THE CAMERA, TOO, HANDED US BRICKBATS—THESE ARE CULLED FROM OUR LESS (OH, FAR!) FLATTERING PHOTOGRAPHIC SOUVENIRS ] [Illustration: description: Drawing with 2 vertical panels. Panel 1 shows waving man in car pulled by horses. Panel 2 shows waving woman in motor car. caption: YESTERDAY’S HERO, AND TODAY’S John T. McCutcheon in _The Chicago Tribune_ ] For compensation, here is another clipping, a chuckling commentary upon back-seat driving, of course utterly unfair to my sex: AS A BACK SEAT DRIVER WOULD HAVE MADE THAT FLIGHT (_Two Hundred Miles Off Trepassey._) The Woman: Where are we now? Pilot: I can’t quite make out. The Woman: There must be some way of telling. Pilot: I just don’t seem to recognize anything. The Woman: Are you sure that place we left was Trepassey? Pilot: That’s what it was called on the map. The Woman: Well, maybe the map was wrong. I don’t feel as if we were headed for Europe. Hadn’t we better stop and make certain? * * *