Posthumous

Murderers in the death house, deposed kings, women scandalously divorced, disowned prodigal sons, can always dispose of the effusions of their pens. The yellow press is always ready to lap up their stuff and give worthwhile remuneration. Papers and magazines on a higher plane will readily print matter from pens whose writings they would not have bought had it not been for the fame or fortune of the hands that held them.

So it doubtless was with an article which appeared last week in the Saturday Evening Post, an article entitled "With The Shenandoah," by Zachary Lansdowne, U. S. Navy. At this end the editor appended a note: "This article was written by the late Lieutenant Commander Lansdowne some weeks before the last trip of the Shenandoah and was found among his papers."

The Naval Court of Inquiry investigating the loss of the Shenandoah wrote to the editor of the Post asking whether the article was authentic (as it doubtless was) and whether it was complete as Commander Lansdowne first submitted it. Indeed, rumor in Washington had it that he had submitted the article some weeks before his death and it had been returned, and that when the Post got it again some paragraphs had been deleted. This view seemed to be supported when Mrs. Lansdowne admitted that she had taken out some paragraphs concerning the possibility of using the Shenandoah in the Arctic before forwarding the article for publication.

Doubtless the Post was justified in refusing the article before (if it did so) and publishing it now, for from its text it is obvious that Commander Lansdowne was not a professional writer, for his manner is stilted. He is somewhat given to making obvious remarks, and before his death it was impossible to appreciate the last line of the article: "What the morrow may bring forth no man can say."

The text of the article will doubtless be recorded by the President's Air Inquiry Board, and the Court cf Inquiry into the Shenandoah disaster will probably make much of it. In speaking the praises of dirigibles (which is the major function of the article), Commander Lansdowne himself apparently answered the statements of those who said that he feared to go on the fatal trip on account of weather conditions. The article said: -"The airplane is now reasonably safe, and the great airship inflated with helium is beyond a doubt the safest method of travel known to man, taking precedence over walking on account of traffic congestion on the streets. ... In the air the airship is practically independent of weather, as storms with attendant high winds merely delay progress to windward. . . . Severe thunderstorms and disturbances with strong vertical air currents may be avoided by changes of course, as these disturbances usually extend over a comparatively small area and move at a rate of speed well below that of an airship. Thus the airship can avoid the tornado, and may prove to be more secure in Kansas than a stone house."