over these canals, which are virtually carried up over mountains, and offer one of the most interesting European trips a tourist can make. Maxim had to go to England and Hotchkiss to France to get their guns adopted. Sir Hiram Maxim told me of the heartbreaking time he spent in his native country, America--he was born in Maine--trying to get his inventions properly developed, and the lack of consideration he received here by our own government officers, while in England, on the contrary, he was received with open arms. The late King Edward visited him, and the English took up his invention and knighted him. The Wright Brothers' first recognition and the first dollar they ever received as profits in their years of experimental effort came from France. I remember well when Wilbur Wright came to France with his flying machine and secured the recognition that the Wright Brothers had not been able to secure in the United States, their native country. The Wright Brothers and their and our own European representative, Mr. Hart O. Berg, occupied for a time one of the rooms in our suite of offices in Regent Street, London, as their headquarters, and I am therefore familiar with some of their difficulties in getting recognition in this country. It has been said that Americans invent and the Europeans develop. This statement seems to be borne out in fact, so far as our military inventions at least are concerned. From the time the Wrights first introduced the flying machine in Europe all the important countries over there have been consistently assisting inventors in improving the construction of the planes and machinery for driving them, while our own country has stood almost at a standstill. Our government gave no aid to foster this American invention so that it could be gradually developed, but rather our authorities made the first requirements so difficult to fulfil that there was no incentive to work; which is a mistake often made by men with a theoretical rather than a practical education. A practical man may evolve something radically new in the arts or sciences, but to get it introduced into the government service it must first be passed upon and approved by men who at the country's expense have received, for the most part, a purely theoretical education; and nine times out of ten these men get some additional theories of their own which they insist must be incorporated in the machine or apparatus, and thus make it impossible of operation or delay its accomplishment. It is probably due to this cause that we are now forced to go to France for plans of our aeroplanes and their driving machinery to enable us to compete with the Germans' machines.