in the evolutionary progress of the world which favors the view that the coordinating instrumentalities which guide the activities of every organism, and which are very powerful in man, may enable us some day to find a way of coordinating the non-coordinated activities of the many millions of individuals of a great community like these United States, and thus of creating an ideal democracy. I see in the organization of the National Research Council the first step in that direction. [Illustration: Facsimile of Letter from President Harding] THE WHITE HOUSE WASHINGTON October 14, 1922. My dear Doctor Pupin: I accept with regret your resignation as a member of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. In doing so I want to express to you the thanks of the Government and people of the United States of your services as a member of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics since its organization in 1915. I take this occasion to record recognition and appreciation of the fact that, as Chairman of the Subcommittee on Aircraft Communications, during the World War you undertook to develop a reliable means of communication between aircraft in flight, and that, by virtue of experiments conducted and directed in your own laboratory, you were successful in contributing in an important respect to the development of one of the great marvels of our age, the radio telephone. I regret that you cannot continue to devote your talents to the scientific study of the problems of flight as a member of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. Most sincerely yours, _Warren G. Harding_ Dr. Michael I. Pupin, Columbia University, New York City. Ideal democracy, if attainable at all, will certainly be attainable in our country, whose traditions are gradually eliminating racial hatreds and suspicions and making them unknown human passions on this blessed continent. If I have ever contributed anything substantial to the progress of this splendid movement, whether as an immigrant or as an inventor, it has been most amply rewarded by the generous spirit of the letter on the opposite page, written by a man whom I had the honor of knowing personally and who to me always represented the ideal type of a genuine American. * * * * * These few concluding lines I wrote on the day when this good American breathed his last. His memory will always encourage us in the belief that our blessed country is destined to become the first ideal democracy of the world. INDEX Action and reaction in electricity, 296-299 Adams, John Crouch, 181 Adams, President, 315 Adelphi Academy, Brooklyn, 108-110, 120 Alexander the Liberator, Czar, 8, 9 Alhazan, 204 Alps, travels in, 146-150, 208 Alternating-current theory, 283-289, 294 American Association for the Advancement of Science, 291, 359