by a machine, and
when he returns to the mess he really has little to tell except as it
relates to mechanism and technique.

The Royal Flying Corps, which is the official name, never wants for
volunteers. Ever the number of pilots is in excess of the number of
machines. Young men with embroidered wings on their breasts, which prove
that they have qualified, waited on factories to turn out wings for
flying. Flight itself is simple, but the initiative equal to great deeds
is another thing. Here you revert to an innate gift of the individual
who, finding in danger the zest of a glorious, curiosity, the
intoxication of action, clear eye, steady hand answering lightning
quickness of thought, becomes the D'Artagnan of the air. There is no
telling what boyish neophyte will show a steady hand in daring the
supreme hazards with light heart, or what man whom his friends thought
was born for aviation may lack the touch of genius.

Far up in the air there is an imaginary boundary line which lies over
the battle line; and there is another which may be on your side or on
the other side of the battle line. It is the location of the second line
that tells who has the mastery of the air. A word of bare and impressive
meaning this of mastery in war, which represents force without
qualification; that the other man is down and you are up, the other
fends and you thrust. More glorious than the swift rush of destroyer to
a battleship that of the British planes whose bombs brought down six
German sausage balloons in flames before the Grand Offensive began.

I need never have visited an aerodrome on the Somme to know whether
Briton and Frenchman or German was master of the air. The answer was
there whenever you looked in the heavens in the absence of iron crosses
on the hovering or scudding or turning plane wings and the multiplicity
of bull's-eyes; in the abandoned way that both British and French
pickets flew over the enemy area, as if space were theirs and they dared
any interference. If you saw a German plane appear you could count three
or four Allied planes appearing from different directions to surround
it. The German had to go or be caught in a cross fire, and manoeuvered
to his death.

Mastery of the air is another essential of superiority for an
offensive; one of the vital features in the organized whole of an
attack. As you press men and guns forward enemy planes must not locate
your movements. Your planes with fighting planes