ke, stretching to a height
of several thousand feet. It is straight, and apparently rigid as far as
the top, where it sprays round into a knob. Altogether, it suggests a
giant piece of celery. It does not seem to disperse; but if you pass on
and look away for a quarter of an hour, you will find on your return
that it has faded away as suddenly as it came, after the manner of
ghosts. Whether the pillars are intended to distribute gas is uncertain,
but it is a curious fact that on the few occasions when we have seen
them they have appeared to windward of us.

Like babies and lunatics, Archie has his good and bad days. If low
clouds are about and he can only see through the gaps he is not very
troublesome. Mist also helps to keep him quiet. He breaks out badly when
the sky is a cover of unbroken blue, though the sun sometimes dazzles
him, so that he fires amok. From his point of view it is a perfect day
when a film of cloud about 20,000 feet above him screens the sky. The
high clouds forms a perfect background for anything between it and the
ground, and aircraft stand out boldly, like the figures on a Greek vase.
On such a day we would willingly change places with the gunners below.

For my part, Archie has given me a fellow-feeling for the birds of the
air. I have at times tried light-heartedly to shoot partridges and even
pigeons, but if ever again I fire at anything on the wing, sympathy will
spoil my aim.

FRANCE, _October, 1916_

VI.

BATTLES AND BULLETS.

... I am not sure which is the more disquieting, to be under fire in the
air or on the ground.

Although the airman is less likely to be hit than the infantryman, he
has to deal with complications that could not arise on solid earth. Like
the infantryman, a pilot may be killed outright by a questing bullet,
and there's an end of it. But in the case of a wound he has a far worse
time. If an infantryman be plugged he knows he has probably received "a
Blighty one," and as he is taken to the dressing-station he dreams of
spending next week-end in England. A wounded pilot dare think of nothing
but to get back to safety with his machine, and possibly an observer.

He may lose blood and be attacked by a paralysing faintness. He must
then make his unwilling body continue to carry out the commands of his
unwilling brain, for if he gives way to unconsciousness the machine,
freed from reasoned control, will perform circus tricks and twist itself
into a spin