Magnificent new hotels sprang up miraculously; department stores, surprised in their inadequacy by the multiplication of population, were adding annexes treble the size of the original stores. Everybody owned a motor-car.... The cabaret moved westward and found a welcome in a town once famous for its staidness. The handling of motor traffic became a greater problem for the police than the protection of the city from crime. And yet people scarcely realized what was happening. They took it as a matter of course--and flew high with the city. Across the ocean another type of highflyer was coming into prominence. One might say the war had passed through its second phase. The first phase was the phase of fighting-men, of armies, of obtaining soldiers with rifles. The second phase was the artillery phase, the high-explosive phase. Each for its months filled the papers and demanded the interest of the world.... Now was approaching the third, the aeroplane phase. It was beginning to overshadow the other two in public estimation. Aeroplanes were no longer contraptions which one went to the country fair to watch performing tricks. They had come into their own. They ranked as a _necessity_. They had emerged from the cloud of obscurity which hung low over the battle-fields, and men were made to realize that victory in the air meant victory in the fields below.... Potter Waite had thought much of this, had hoped for it, had even ventured to prophesy it. One might say he was deeply interested in highflying of both sorts. A certain fascination which mechanics held for him since childhood had enabled Potter to finish a turbulent college career with a mechanical-engineering degree. This, or what it represented, he had never put to use except in the way of a pastime. But aeronautics interested him. He was so fortunate as to be rich enough to play with aeroplanes, to fly aeroplanes, to own and experiment with aeroplanes, and there was something about the risk of it, the romance of it, the thrill of it, the novelty and the miracle of it, that fitted well into the recklessness of his unsatisfied nature. So he had been one of the country's earliest amateur aviators. The part taken by the aeroplane in the Great War had quickened that interest, solidified it. It had become something more than the fad of a rich young man to him.