Tea Party

Many aeronautical experts hold the dirigible the answer to the problem of how to make trans-Atlantic air services both profitable and safe. Two nations, Germany and England, have been rushing airship construction with this purpose in mind, but while a giant German Zeppelin will be ready for flight next month, English efforts to build the R-100 at Howden, Yorkshire, have met with serious delays. Government subsidies, already totaling $1,750,000, are at an end until test flights may prove successful. No funds are available for the wages of 300 skilled workmen, now sheathing the airship in silver linen, completing the structural ribs behind which the gas bags will be placed, testing the six Rolls-Royce engines.

Adroit in arousing public sentiment, Commander Charles Dennistoun Burney, M. P., builder in charge of the R-100, last week gave a tea party. Fifty guests, including several M. P.'s, mounted a staircase with mahogany balustrades, inspected a kitchen equipped with electric stoves, visited 39 sleeping cabins, each with a window and beds. Mrs. Burney, onetime Chicago debutante, was hostess.

Wondering if they had strayed by mistake into the Berkeley or the Savoy, guests followed host & hostess to the promenade deck, sat down in wicker chairs. Proudly, Commander Burney told them the R-100 is the world's largest dirigible, with a hull as big as many an ocean liner.