A double force of clerks is kept constantly busy going over each application for a passport.

to forward his application and fee to the State Department, to receive his passport without formality. The discovery that Yankee passports have been used to enable European reservists to join the colors has changed all that. Under the new order of things, an applicant for a passport must appear before the clerk of a Federal or State court in the district in which he resides, and if he be not known personally to the clerk of the court, he must produce witnesses who will establish his identity. Furthermore, he must disclose what countries he proposes to visit and why he is going.

Most radical, though, of the new exactions is the requirement that every applicant for a passport shall supply two photographs of himself. Heretofore certain very cautious European powers have employed photos of passport holders as an extra safeguard against the transfer or misuse of passports, but Uncle Sam has never until now found it necessary to supplement the detailed description on the passport with a likeness of the individual. One of the duplicate photos now required must be attached to the passport application by the clerk of the court

IMPRESSING THE GREAT SEAL OF THE UNITED STATES ON A PASSPORT

before whom the applicant appears, and this portrait, along with the application, remains on file for future reference in the Passport Bureau at Washington. The other photo is forwarded to Washington and is affixed to the passport. And it is affixed to stay fixed. It is pasted down and then picture and parchment are impressed and transfixed with dies and seals that presumably render it impossible for any person to tamper with the photo without detection.

battery, and a parachute to provide for slow descent. The shaft is twenty feet long, and the whole device weighs fifty pounds. A firing stand, with sights, completes the apparatus necessary. Rocket, stand, and all, can be carried to the front on a small hand cart.

The rocket is first aimed in the proper direction. An electric current is then sent to the gyroscope, which assists the vanes in keeping the rocket from whirling. Another current ignites the charge of powder, and the rocket ascends almost vertically. At the moment of the greatest elevation, which occurs about eight seconds after firing, the exposure is made. by an electro-pneumatic device. The parachute, which is packed between the camera and the head, then opens. Its release allows the rocket shaft to drop a distance of about thirty-three feet, when it is brought up by a cord attached to camera and parachute. This allows the camera to descend the last thirty feet slowly, after the rocket shaft has already reached the earth.

The exposure is made at a height of about two thousand feet, and is sharp and clear. The whole apparatus descends within a very short distance of the place from which it was discharged. The rocket can be used in places which would be impossible for the aeroplane to

DESCENDING WITH A PICTURE The parachute keeps the stick, with the camera in the cap attached to the connecting cord, from dashing to the ground and shattering the apparatus.

reach; there is little possibility of its being brought down by shell fire; and even if it were, the loss would be only of a comparatively cheap piece of apparatus. Apparatus for developing the negative exposed by the rocket camera could be carried on the hand cart which is used to transport the rest of the apparatus. Any one of several different methods could be used for this purpose, and within ten minutes from the time of firing, the finished negative. would be at hand.