EXPENSE AND DANGER OF AIR RACES BETWEEN COLLEGES MAKES THEM UNDESIRABLE, SAYS GODFREY CABOT

"Aviation as a college sport," said Godfrey L. Cabot '82, president of the New England Aero Club, and a speaker at the banquet of the Aeronautical Society next week in the Union, in an interview yesterday, "is wholly impractical. Its prohibitive expense and its extreme danger should be enough to discourage even the thought of it."

When it was suggested to him that the advocate of the Harvard-Columbia-Yale air-races had maintained that the expenses would not be greater than the sums spent for football each year, Mr. Cabot replied: "Yes, but football gives satisfaction to thousands of people, and much of its cost is paid by gate receipts. Aviation brings satisfaction only to a few, and you can't sell tickets for an air-race.

"And for all satisfactory equipment the expense would be terrific. If only one machine were used at each college the upkeep alone would cost more than ten thousand dollars. This would be a considerable sum of money to spend on one representative of the college each year.

"As for the comparative danger of football, I can say that in my lifetime I have played football with hundreds of young men and boys, and I have never heard of one of them being fatally injured in the game; in the comparatively short time that I have been flying I have gone up with three pilots who have subsequently been killed.

"Of course, under the right conditions flying can be made safe, but those conditions are never racing conditions. There are two essentials for safe flying--comparatively low speed and a high altitude. It is obvious that racing permits neither of these.

Recommends Aerial Preparedness.

"I do think, however, that it is of the greatest importance that college men be trained in practical and theoretical aviation. The future safety of the country depends on having always available a large number of trained aviators, for the wars of the future will be decided in the air, I am convinced. And the colleges are the obvious sources of material for skilled pilots.

I consider that it is highly advisable that, preferably as a branch of universal training, the Government provide aviation fields at the various colleges. If they cannot give practice in actual flying, they can at least teach the theory of flight and the construction of airplanes.

When asked for his views on aviation outside of colleges Mr. Cabot replied: "In order to provide a field for aviators in peace time we must develop our commercial aviation. More extensive aerial mail routes and privately owned fast freight lines operated under government subsidy offer great possibilities. This is being done on a large scale on the Continent and there is no reason why we should let them get ahead of us. If we are to have control of the air we must have machines built in this country, and machines will not be manufactured unless there is a demand for them in commercial fields.

"Transatlantic mail service offers a great opportunity for American enterprise. For this purpose we must make it possible to pick up burdens on the wing, in order that a plane could start on its trip across the Atlantic with a full load of baggage and comparatively light supply of fuel. Passing over its mother ships stationed along the route it could pick up supplies of fuel from the mastheads. This is not as impractical as it seems. In the fall of 1918 I succeeded in picking up a load of 150 pounds in a flight by means of an elastic rope.

Landing Places Needed.

"The first great development in aviation here should be the establishment of a large number of well-appointed landing places along the important trade routes. The vast majority of flying accidents are caused by the lack of good landing places. If, for example, it could be made possible for a pilot flying from Boston to New York to be never out of gliding distance of a sufficiently large and even landing ground the danger of the flight would be practically eliminated.

"Another needed improvement is the confining of air travel to certain well-defined routes where traffic could be controlled and where planes would be under constant observation."