mate
of his work was modest; he had acted, he said, as a ferment and a
popularizer, and had helped to put France on the right track; but it was
his pride that he belonged to the great school, the school of
Lilienthal, Pilcher, Chanute, and the Wrights, who went to work by a
progressive method of practical experiment, who combined daring with
patience, and found their way into the air.

Ferber, after his visit to America, had failed to induce the French
authorities to purchase the Wright aeroplane, which he had never seen,
but which, from descriptions and photographs, he was able to
reconstruct, much as a geologist reconstructs an animal from fossil
bones. The refusal of the French Government to purchase and the
withdrawal of the Wrights from their public experiments gave France a
period of respite for two years, during which time French aviation
rapidly developed on lines of its own. At the back of this movement was
M. Archdeacon, who as early as 1903 had established a fund and had
offered a cup as a prize for the first officially recorded flight of
more than twenty-five metres. The Voisin brothers, Gabriel and Charles,
having set up their factory at Billancourt-sur-Seine, built machines for
him, box-kites and aeroplanes. After a time the Voisin brothers went
into business on their own account, and employed M. Colliex as their
engineer. Their earliest customers, Leon Delagrange, who had been
trained as a sculptor, and Henri Farman, who had combined the
professions of cyclist, painter, and motor-racer, were distinguished
early French flyers. That both these men had been artists seems to bear
out the favourite contention of Wilbur Wright and of Captain Ferber. To
be an artist a man must create or initiate; the accumulation of
knowledge will do little for him. A politician or a lawyer can reach to
high distinction in his profession without the power of initiating
anything. It is enough for him to handle other men's ideas, to combine
them and balance them, to study and conciliate other men, and to suggest
a compromise. But the artist, like the scientific discoverer, must act
on his own ideas, and do battle, single-handed, with the nature of
things.

The earliest experiments of M. Archdeacon and the Voisins were made with
man-carrying Hargrave box-kites, or with gliders made on the same
principle, which were towed in the air behind a fast motor-boat
travelling down the Seine. The next step was to fit an aeroplane with an