ion, General
Pershing had nothing but anxiety for their safety every time they made
a flight. But here, too, if all signs are not deceiving, war has
helped us to awake. Aside from the activity in our training-schools
where thousands of our young men, surpassed by none anywhere, are
being trained, the building of our airplanes is taking a great step
forward. The experience gained on the other side is helping us here.
At first it was the automobile factory that furnished the satisfactory
motor. But now through the war the airplane factories have made
enormous progress and helped the aviator to attain new marks in speed,
reliability and endurance. While this war lasts every improvement in
the airplane is utilized to make added destruction. Yet we can not
doubt that after the war we will see further progress made in the
airplane in the peaceful contests which are to follow.

INTRODUCTION

BY PROF. HERMANN BOeLCKE, DESSAU

Oswald Boelcke was born on the 19th of May, 1891, in Giebichenstein, a
suburb of Halle on the Saale. Here his father was professor in the
high school. His sister, Luise, and his two brothers, Wilhelm and
Heinrich, were born before him in Buenos Ayres, Argentina. There his
father had had his first position--rector of the German Lutheran
School. Later, Oswald's brother Martin was born in Halle and his
brother Max in Dessau. Oswald was the first child born to the Boelcke's
in Germany. On the 17th of July, the wedding-day anniversary of his
parents, he was baptized by his uncle, the Rev. Edmund Hartung.
This occurred during a vacation spent at his grandmother's, at
Freyburg-on-the-Unstrut, in the same church in which his mother had
been baptized, confirmed and married, by the same minister. After a
year the family moved to Halle, where he could romp joyously on the
Viktoria-platz with his two older brothers and his sister.

At the age of four and a half years he moved to Dessau, in 1895, where
his father had received a position as professor in the Antoinette
School, connected with a teachers' seminary. He had another year and a
half of joyous play in this city. Then he was sent to school, and he
owed his education to the Friedrichs gymnasium at Dessau, from which
he graduated in the Easter of 1911. When he was three years old he had
had a severe attack of whooping-cough. This had left a strong tendency
to asthma, and was the cause of much trouble at school through
illness. In fact, it was a weakne