d indignation among observers during
the early days of our entrance upon the war.

CHAPTER VIII

INCIDENTS OF THE WAR IN THE AIR

In time, no doubt, volumes will be written on the work of the airmen
in the Great War. Except the submarine, no such novel and effective
device was introduced into the conduct of this colossal struggle as
the scouting airplane. The development of the service was steady
from the first day when the Belgian flyers proved their worth at
Liege. From mere observation trips there sprang up the air duels,
from the duels developed skirmishes, and from these in time pitched
battles in which several hundred machines would be engaged on each
side. To this extent of development aerial tactics had proceeded by
midsummer of 1917. Their further development must be left to some
future chronicler to record. It must be noted, however, that at that
early day the Secretary of the Treasury of the United States,
pleading for a larger measure of preparation for the perils of war,
asserted that the time was not far distant when this country would
have to prepare to repel invading fleets of aircraft from European
shores. This may have been an exaggeration. At that moment no
aircraft had crossed the Atlantic and no effort to make the passage
had been made save those of Wellman and Vanniman. When the guns
began to roar on the Belgian frontier there was floating on Keuka
Lake, New York, a huge hydro-airplane with which it was planned to
make the trans-Atlantic voyage. The project had been financed by Mr.
Rodman Wanamaker, of Philadelphia, and the tests of the ship under
the supervision of a young British army officer who was to make the
voyage were progressing most promisingly. But the event that plunged
the world into war put a sudden end to experiments like this for the
commercial development of the airplane. There is every reason to
believe, however, that such a flight is practicable and that it will
ultimately be made not long after the world shall have returned to
peace and sanity.

[Illustration: Photo by Kadel & Herbert.

_Later Type of French Scout._

_The gun mounted on the upper wing is aimed by pointing the machine
and is fired by the pilot._]

Airmen are not, as a rule, of a romantic or a literary temperament.
Pursuing what seems to the onlooker to be the most adventurous and
exhilarating of all forms of military service, they have been chary
of telling their experiences and singularly set u