Our Army at the Front

over the apparatus. And although by September 1, 1917, she had large numbers of aviators in the making in France, the

fields, to be built and equipped by America, as well as half a dozen big repair-shop

aiting in France to go up that very day, ther

ers were scattered among the French schools under French supervision. Meanwhile, the engineers and s

t of the world happened to be in dispute, and they required no more additional furbishing up than a short rest from the journey.

ys in France. This, of course, takes no account of the first weeks at the battle-front, which are only nominally training, since in the

ut four months in patrol, on the line, before he is a thoroughly capable handler of a battle-plane. They cap that by say

p their own romantic, adventurous system of single-man combat, and were borrowing the German system of squadron formation. They were reluctant enough to accept it, let alo

m-that prudence which does not mean a niggardliness of fig

he had to, he was not only squandering his own greates

h a flier who lost his life to the Germans through excess of friskiness, they we

l kill a man and wreck a machine. Your country can

machine, his further behavior was in the hands of American officers so

ench system and the American-was that all American aviators s

things the French

gster gnawed his pencil indoors and cursed the fate that had placed him with a country s

-man?uvres for the infantry. And because they had no golden days of derring-do to look back upon, they did less grumblin

ugh their newspapers, were contemptuous of the army and all its works. They maintained that it would be impossible for American transports to bring more than half a million men

r warfare). Nor do we doubt that the technical resources of the enemy will achieve brilliant work in this branch. But all t

e in the Weser Zeitung: "The only American hel

illion in France at the most indulgent estimate, said, over and over, that a million were to be feared, ju

In the French school supervised by the Americans the schedu

er permitted there were flights till 11, when the pupil knocked off for a midday meal. He was told to sleep then till 4 in the

itted no more than a dummy machine, which wobbled along the ground like a broken-winged duck, and this he used

sualty. But if a man had an accident it was a perfectly open-and-shut affair. Either he ruined himself or he escaped. It was part of the French syste

his final examination, a triangular flight of about ninety miles, with three landings. The landings are th

nd. And no man went to battle till he could do spiral, serpentine, and hairpin turns, could manage a tail spin, and "go into a vrille"-a corkscrew fall which permi

le, the American aviators who joined the French Army at the beginning of the war, was taken into the American Army in the late su

erican squadrons. This air unit was finally placed at 12 fliers and 250 men, and before Christmas there

a spur of railroad to link the largest of them with the main arteries of communication, and the labo

nt entertainers, a little newspaper building, plenty of office-barracks with typewr

nd a mile and a half wide, where all kinds o

s just behind the fighting-lines, which hav

ot a late start. But on the anniversary of its beginning it had unmeasured praise from

equipment for an ace, and his training has been unprecedentedly thorough. And he has dedicated his