I looked down at the up-rushing ground. At that instant I
felt the machine give a lurch and right itself. I grabbed the
controls, turned on the motor, and resumed my line of flight only
two hundred feet in the air. All this happened in a few seconds,
but my helplessness seemed to have lasted for hours. I had had a
very close call--not as close as the man who fainted, but
sufficiently so for me.

[Illustration: _Distinguishing Marks of American Planes._]

We have said that the process of training a flyer is remarkably
expeditious. So far as the fundamentals of his profession are
concerned it is. But his education in fact never ends. In the mere
matter of reconnaissance, for example, experience is everything. One
might imagine that ten thousand men marching on a road would look
alike in numbers whatever the nationality. Not so. To the untrained
eye five thousand or six thousand French troops will look as
numerous as ten thousand British or Germans. Why? Because the French
march in much more extended order. Into their democratic military
methods the precision and mechanical exactitude of German drill do
not enter. With the same number of troops they will extend further
along the road by at least a third than would a detachment of either
of the other armies.

[Illustration: _What an Aviator must Watch._

1 _Watch_
2 _Altimeter-registering height_
3 _Compass_
4 _Pressure gauges for two gasoline tanks_
5 _Dial registering engine revolutions_
6 _Inclinometer, registering level fore and aft_
7 _Oil pulsator_
8 _Control stick, with thumb switch_
9 _Switches, two magnetos_
10 _Air speed indicator_
11 _Gasolene supply pipe_]

And again. Great skill has been developed in the course of the war
in the art of concealing positions and particularly in disguising
cannon. The art has given a new word to the world--_camouflage_.
Correspondents have repeatedly told of their amazement in suddenly
coming across a battery of 75's, or a great siege gun so cunningly
hidden in the edge of a thicket they would be almost upon it before
detecting it. From an airplane 2500 feet or more in the air it
requires sharp eyes to penetrate artillery disguises. A French poilu
in a little book of reminiscences tells with glee how a German
observation aviator deceived his batteries. A considerable body of
French troops being halted in an open field, out of sight of the
enemy batteries, fo