The Gordon Bennett International Cup race at Chicago this year brought to this country two of the best racing machines in the world and has stimulated interest in aviation to a higher pitch than it has ever had in the United States. At the next Gordon Bennett, I hope to see an American surpass even Vedrines' speed of one hundred and five miles an hour for one hundred twenty-four and eight-tenths miles. RACING TYPES OF TO-MORROW There have been many meets since Rheims, some international, some of local importance; indeed almost every citizen of a civilised country has had a chance to attend some one of them without too great a journey, but what I have said of one meet is true to some degree of all: that racing and contests in general, especially between different makes of machines, is of the greatest use to the development of the aeroplane, just as competition among automobile manufacturers, in putting out racing machines, helped the development of that vehicle. There are at the present time a number of types and makes of aeroplanes, each claiming some especial advantage over the others, and trying to demonstrate it. Some of these will drop out–some of them have dropped already–some will develop toward the aeroplane of the future, which we can only infer from the machines of to-day. The way to bring about this "survival of the fittest" is by speed contests and endurance races, where the American manufacturer pits his machine against the foreign-made article and the biplane contends against the monoplane. The public believed, when these two types came into being, that there would be a sharp division of uses between them; that the biplane would excel in just certain directions, the monoplane in others, and the public has watched the various records of speed, of endurance, of distance, as they changed back and forth between the two types, and has found that deciding their relative merits and assigning their special uses was by no means the simple and summary process they thought it would be. The contests will have to evolve new rules and regulations; for instance, there will have to be some means of handicapping machines with very high-power engines and small plane surface as in the case of monoplanes, which, with a minimum of plane surface and high power engines, have a speed advantage over the biplanes, that with equal engine power have much larger plane surface. Perhaps the method of handicapping now used in certain races of stock automobiles, that is cubic displacement of the engine, will be adopted. PUBLIC INTEREST IN MEETS The aviation meet at Los Angeles, California, in 1911, was a good indication of what great and deep interest the public have in contests in the air, and will have in the great races of the future.