The authors of this volume, one a captain in the American air service, the other a lieutenant in the Royal air force of Canada, claim that it is the training, not the individual, that makes the pilot and that “any ordinary, active man, provided he has reasonably good eyesight and nerve, can fly, and fly well. If he has nerve enough to drive an automobile through the streets of a large city ... he can take himself off the ground in an airplane, and also land—a thing vastly more difficult and dangerous.” (Introd.) The authors also claim that aeronautics in the future must cease to be a highly specialized business, that the airplane will become a conveyance of everyday civilian use and that what they have written is based on actual accomplishments to date. Contents: War’s conquest of the air; The transition to peace; Training an airplane pilot; Safety in flying; Qualifications of an airplane mechanic; The first crossing of the Atlantic; Landing-fields—the immediate need; The airplane’s brother; The call of the skies; Addendum.
+ Booklist 17:18 O ’20
SWINBURNE, ALGERNON CHARLES. Selections; ed. by Edmund Gosse and Thomas James Wise. *$2 Doran 821
(Eng ed 20–9019)
Mr Gosse and Mr Wise, who edited Swinburne’s letters and a collection of “Posthumous poems,” have prepared the first selection from his works since the one compiled by Watts-Dunton in 1887. This early volume, the present editors say, “was not broadly characteristic of Swinburne’s many moods and variety of subjects.” The aim has been to make the new selection more representative.
“Without having at hand the older volume of selections made by Swinburne himself it may yet be said that the present selection is a good one. It would have been more ‘representative’ if it had included one or two of the ‘Songs before sunrise,’ and the omission of ‘Laus veneris’ and especially ‘The leper’ is regrettable. What one would like to have would be a volume of selections including these poems and omitting the two choruses from ‘Atalanta,’ and another volume containing the whole of ‘Atalanta.’” T. S. E.
+ − Ath p72 Ja 16 ’20 1400w Booklist 17:107 D ’20
“The present selection is, in almost every way, admirable, and represents adequately the poetical genius of the author.”