For flying was still a hazardous business back in the middle twenties, and tragedy cast its shadow all too often over the little station at Pensacola. Perhaps it was this that focused people’s thoughts on things far removed from “pounds per horsepower.” After dinner that evening, the commandant and his lady sat with me around the fire that provided the only warmth against the evening chill, and discussed books they had just finished reading. The commandant had been deep in a treatise on nuclear theory as discussed in a book called _The New Knowledge_. It had been written in a popular and entertaining vein by a scientific author whose name I don’t now recall and, besides setting forth clearly the new idea as to the structure of the atom and a theory of electronics, it had developed an absorbing spiritual theme. The author, recognizing the resemblance between the laws controlling the actions of electrons within the atom and those that controlled the astronomy of the universe, had emphasized his own conviction that no conflict existed between religion and science. On the contrary, the more a scientific mind studied the revelations concerning the physical world, the stronger became his convictions as to the existence of an infinite God. The commandant’s lady fingered a book she had just finished but seemed to hesitate about opening a discussion of it. “If you are like the rest of the students,” she smiled, “you’ll have your nose buried so deeply in that precious _Flight Manual_, that you’ll have no time for anything else.” The commandant was rather proud of that _Flight Manual_. It was the book of instruction for the flight-training course that had been evolved out of long experience with many students. It had been compiled by one of his instructors, Lt. Barrett Studley, who was also writing a book on the subject. Every detail was so well covered in it that it had become a veritable “student’s bible.” No matter how often he read it and reread it or practiced the maneuvers described in it, every new reading revealed something there he had not previously absorbed. Even the instructors boned the manual—and found new inspiration in doing so. As Mrs. Upham talked, the commandant stirred the fire until it burned brightly, shining on his wife’s serene features. “My book,” she said, “bears on the same theme as the one developed by _The New Knowledge_ but approaches it from a wholly different point of view.”