The Congress Investigates

Last week a Congressional Committee went to Manhattan, set itself up in the Waldorf Hotel and began to take testimony on the air service needs of the U. S. The inquiry was extended to include civilian connections of the aeronautics industry and it brought on to the stand a widely varied, colorful cast of characters from the industry.

Admiral W. A. Moffett, Chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics, Navy Department, fighting bitterly against a United Air Service, supremely confident of the Navy's ability and superiority to handle air matters on its own; breezy General "Bill" Mitchell, with his riding crop and spurs, a cavalry man who can fly, an Army man strongly advocating the service union which the Navy dreads; Godfrey Cabot, President of the National Aeronautic Association, a Bostonian of the great Cabot clan, so far interested in New York City as to advocate Governor's Island as a landing field, but in a cool detached manner; R. E. M. Cowie, President of the American Railway Express, a canny, able old Scotchman, describing how the pushcart gave way to the horse-cart, the horse-cart to the express train, and predicting that the Express company will give unlimited business to the first responsible air transport company; Grover C. Loening, Manhattan society man, young, sparkling, decidedly of the "beaumonde" yet one of the ablest aeronautical engineers in the country who pictured the amphibian flying over land and alighting on rivers in the very heart of cities; dignified.