and I thus have a chance to send
it.

VII

August 3, 1914.

Well--war is declared.

I passed a rather restless night. I fancy every one in France did. All
night I heard a murmur of voices, such an unusual thing here. It simply
meant that the town was awake and, the night being warm, every one was
out of doors.

All day to-day aeroplanes have been flying between Paris and the
frontier. Everything that flies seems to go right over my roof. Early
this morning I saw two machines meet, right over my garden, circle about
each other as if signaling, and fly off together. I could not help
feeling as if one chapter of Wells's "War in the Air" had come to pass.
It did make me realize how rapidly the aeroplane had developed into a
real weapon of war. I remember so well, no longer ago than Exposition
year,--that was 1900,--that I was standing, one day, in the old Galerie
des Machines, with a young engineer from Boston. Over our heads was a
huge model of a flying machine. It had never flown, but it was the
nearest thing to success that had been accomplished--and it expected to
fly some time. So did Darius Green, and people were still skeptical.
As he looked up at it, the engineer said: "Hang it all, that dashed old
thing will fly one day, but I shall probably not live to see it."

He was only thirty at that time, and it was such a few years after that
it did fly, and no time at all, once it rose in the air to stay there,
before it crossed the Channel. It is wonderful to think that after
centuries of effort the thing flew in my time--and that I am sitting in
my garden to-day, watching it sail overhead, like a bird, looking so
steady and so sure. I can see them for miles as they approach and for
miles after they pass. Often they disappear from view, not because they
have passed a horizon line, but simply because they have passed out of
the range of my vision-? becoming smaller and smaller, until they seem
no bigger than a tiny bird, so small that if I take my eyes off the
speck in the sky I cannot find it again. It is awe-compelling to
remember how these cars in the air change all military tactics. It will
be almost impossible to make any big movement that may not be discovered
by the opponent.

Just after breakfast my friend from Voulangis drove over in a great
state of excitement, with the proposition that I should pack up and
return with her. She seemed alarmed at the idea of my being alone, and