Peking, Mar. 13. self in Chinese military affairs A sopeignce who interests him-recently stopped off in Paotingfu to see what the Chihli folk were doing with the aeroplanes of which they have possessed themselves in various ways, and has brought back the impression that, under anything like workable conditions, the Chin-"se can organize and run a flying department. Judging from his observations they are cither natural fliers endowed with exceptional ingenuity or they are blessed with phenomenal luck.
Conditions at the Government field at Nanyuan have of course been impossible. The interference of the Pengtien troops, irregularity of pay, feuds between the office staff and the flying staff, feuds between the old pilots and the new pilots, the constant exercise of official "patronage" which forced
physically and mentally unfit in upon the staff many who were both spite of every effort to establish standards by medical examination, and many similar evils have militated against the success of Nanyuan experiment. It has long been an open secret that agents from Paotingfu were exercising the selection which should have been the Government's function and were carrying away the best student pilots and the best workmen and mechanicians as fast as their superior talents became manifest Peking was left those whom careful selection, free from "patronage," would have relegated to the discard in the first instance.
The result is that in discipline, esprit clu corps and actual flying achievements Paotingfu has a flying corps now much superior to Peking's.
Story or 4 Hanptey-Page.
It will be remembered that in 1990 Tsno Kun, like Chang Tso-lin, took away three Handley-Page machines. Every foreigner having any knowledge of aviation has been prophesying that if the Chinese student mechanicians tried to as semble these machines and if the Ohinese student pilots, accustomed only to the small training machines used at Nanyuan, ever tried to fly these huge ''busses" there would be spectacular aerial tragedy.
The foreign observer who recently passed through Paoting now reports that the Chinese have not only assembled a Handley-Page without assistance, instructions or advice, but have been flying the first machine assembled with conspicuous success. The mechanicians enticed away from Nanyuan seem to have assembled the big machine without any great difficulty and when a student pilot volunteered to make the trial flight, confidence was such that the high authorities
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.