There is, of course, an element of individual gamble to those who enter this competition. Undoubtedly there will be many failures, as in all new fields; failures come to those who put in capital as well as those who contribute their scientific knowledge. But by the same token there will be great successes both financially and scientifically. The prize that is being striven for is one of the richest that have ever been offered and the rewards will be in accordance. This has been the case at the birth of every great development in human progress and will undoubtedly be the case with the science of flight. Until a field becomes standardized it offers extremes on both sides rather than a dull, dreary, but safe average. As aviation runs into every phase of activity it will require every kind of man--manufacturer, scientist, mechanic, and flier. It offers problems more interesting and more complex than almost any others in the world. The field is new and virgin, the demand world-wide, and the rewards great. For the flier there is all the joy of life in the air, above the chains of the earth, reaching out to new, unvisited regions, free to come and go for almost any distance at any level desired, a freedom unparalleled. For the manufacturer there is all the lure of a new product destined in a short time to be used as freely as the automobile of to-day; for the scientist there are problems of balance, meteorology, air pressure, engine power, wing spread, altitude effects, and the like in a bewildering variety; for the explorer, the geographer, the map-maker a wholly new field is laid open. The best men of every type are needed to give aviation its full fruition. In Europe this is realized to a supreme degree. England especially, and also France and Italy, have put their best genius at work to fulfil the conquest of the air. Their progress is astonishing and should be a challenge to the New World. After the natural hiatus which followed the armistice the leading men have set to work with redoubled vigor to take first place in the air. In twenty years' time our life of to-day will seem centuries old, just as to-day it is hard to realize that the automobile and motor-truck do not date back much over a generation. No change that has ever come in man's history will be so great as the change which takes him up off the ground and into the air. This swift and dazzling era that is so close upon us is hardly suspected by the great mass of people. The world will be both new and better for it. Less than the train or the motor-car will the airplane disturb its features. On the blue above white wings will glitter for a moment, a murmuring as of bees will be heard, and the traveler will be gone, the world unstained and pure. Meanwhile high in the clouds, perhaps lost to view of the earth, men will be speeding on at an unparalleled rate, guiding their course by the wireless which alone gives them connection with the world below.