THE air mail service has completely broken down. Formal orders by the President, that the army curtail in operations and confine flying to a few essential routes really means the Pencial disruption of nation wide schedules of delivery.

Thus ends the first stage of what will come day be recorded as the biggest administrative blunder of our post was decade and the most conspicuous example of what political muckraking can do when it gets started.

Unquestionalbly there were injustices and irregularities in the original award of air mail contracts. Undenbtedly officers of companies speculated and made profits, but the method of procedure for such things is to put the evidence before the courts, put the guilty in jail and meanwhile let the service to the public go on.

The President has hinted in two public statements that he relied on two cabinet officers the Postmaster General and the Secretary of War. It is interred that he took their advice. This is true. But the implication in some published reports that Mr. Roosevelt seeks to escape personal responsibility is an unwarranted assumption. For the President is not the kind of man who "passes the buck" to others. He has said publicly that when he makes a mistake, he will acknowledge it and retreat.

Experiment Abandoned

The action of the President in ordering a curtailment of army flying is such a retreat. It is the abandonment of an experiment that proved tragic. The death of ten army mail flyers persuaded Mr. Roosevelt to act quickly. But when he recommends that the pending legislation be passed at once, the Chief Executive may also have been wrongly advised. For the bills which have been drafted at the request of the Post Office Department would, as they now are worded, prevent the re-establishment of air mail service in America.

Here are the reasons:

First, the bills provide that no companies that sue to get their claims--in other words, companies that seek to clear their names of the charge of "collusion" in getting contracts--shall be eligible to bid.

Second, no companies whose officers were guilty of "collusion" can bid unless they are financially reorganized. Anybody who knows what that means in legal terms and in point of time knows what that means in legal terms and in point of time knows that a year or more is required for such steps, since stock-holders or security owners' consent must be obtained.

Now, it may be asked, who is going to bid for the privilege of carrying the air mail? New companies with no flying experience? Or old companies that are already carrying passengers and have set up organizations? That was the trouble in the first instance about competitive Lidding. The Post Office Department found it couldn't accept just anybody's bid. There had to be a determination of who would be able to perform, who could carry out the contracts. This is why the law provided for the award to the "lowest responsible" bidder and ultimately made it necessary for departmental discretion to be used in order to get the best service in different parts of the country for the public.

Formation of New Lines Unjustified

Meanwhile it is estimated that the users of air mail run into the millions and that approximately 80,000,000 pieces of air mail are carried annually. The volume had been slowly increasing. Passenger lines needed the revenges from air mail to help them make ends meet and earn a return on capital invested. New passenger lines would hardly be set up to compete with existing lines even if mail subsides were granted. For the history of aviation shows that there isn't enough volume of business on the main routes to justify new lines any more than there would be for the building of any more railroads between New York and Washington.

Colonel Lindberg, the man who knows more about mail flying than anybody else in America, is here conferring with the Secretary of War and will see the President. If the Administration will forget Colonel Lnidbergh's public protest and devote itself now to straightening out the whole mess, there is nobody who can be of more help than the Colonel. He is an army reserve officer. If the War Department authorized him to organize the service and arrange for the letting of contracts for temporary service with the existing companies, until such time as the legistlation could be perfected and its objectives achieved, the air mail service could be saved a painful and costly interruption. That is the direction in which things may be working, even though the administration is not yet ready to announce just how or when it expects to give back to the public the service it once had.