Joyhopping Publisher

When an incalculably rich and potent publisher stoops to the lowly plane of author, and writes a piece for his paper, the subject must be dear to his heart. Last week it was no less a publisher than Capt. Joseph Medill Patterson who appeared as contributor to his nickel weekly, Liberty-His subject was aviation and to adumbrate his emotion he quoted from Kipling (with emendations) as follows:

Priests in your pulpits,

Taxpayers in pews,

Kings on your thrones,

You know as well as me,

Ye've only one virginitie to lose

And where ye lose it,

There your hearts will be.

Capt. Patterson's heart is in the air; notwithstanding that he never learned to fly. He tried hard. He spent weeks, months, under the patient tutelage of Lieut. Frederick H. Becker at the Curtiss Field School. He got along all right when Becker was with him. But on his first solo flight he sat frozen at the controls, and missed collision in a crowded sky by sheer act of God.

Never again will he hop off alone, Capt. Patterson said. But he announced plans for a four or five weeks' joyhop over the blue Caribbean, when Lieut. Becker will be at his side. Floyd Gibbons, famed journalist, will be guest. From Cuba to Central America, South America and the close-linked West Indies, he planned to circle the famed buccaneer waters. Last week his new plane, the Liberty, was being tuned up at Mitchel Field, L. I. She is a three-ton yacht of the air, with luxurious cabin, two motors of 520 horsepower each, speed of 140 miles per hour. She cost $75,000.

* Capt. Patterson is also co-publisher with Col.

Robert Rutherford McCormick of the mighty Chicago Tribune, and of the tabloid Daily News, Manhattan (biggest circulation in the U.S.).