re at it.
Oh, yes, by the way, coming home, you'll be down pretty low. Every
Boche machine in the air will have you at a disadvantage. Better
return by the shortest route."

One feature of the programme did not appeal to us greatly, and this
was the attack to be made on the observers when they had jumped with
their parachutes. It seemed as near the border line between legitimate
warfare and cold-blooded murder as anything could well be.

"You are armed with a machine-gun. He may have an automatic pistol. It
will require from five to ten minutes for him to reach the ground
after he has jumped. You can come down on him like a stone. Well, it's
your job, thank the Lord! not mine," said Drew.

It was my job, but I insisted that he would be an accomplice. In
destroying the balloon, he would force me to attack the observers. When
I asked Talbott if this feature of the attack could be eliminated he
said:--

"Certainly. I have instructions from the commandant touching on this
point. In case any pilot objects to attacking the observers with
machine-gun fire, he is to strew their parachutes with autumn leaves
and such field-flowers as the season affords. Now, listen! What
difference, ethically, is there, between attacking one observation
officer in a parachute, and dropping a ton of bombs on a train-load
of soldiers? And to kill the observers is really more important than
to destroy the balloon. If you are going to be a military pilot, for
the love of Pete and Alf be one!"

He was right, of course, but that didn't make the prospect any the
more pleasant.

The large map at the bureau now had greater interest for us than ever.
The German balloons along the sector were marked in pictorially, with
an ink line, representing the cable, running from the basket of each
one down to the exact spot on the map from which they were launched.
Under one of these, "Spa. 124" was printed, neatly, in red ink. It was
the farthest distant from our lines of the four to be attacked, and
about ten kilometres within German-held territory. The cable ran to
the outskirts of a village situated on a railroad and a small stream.
The location of enemy aviation fields was also shown pictorially, each
one represented by a minute sketch, very carefully made, of an
Albatross biplane. We noticed that there were several aerodromes not
far distant from our balloon.

After a survey of the map, the commandant's afterthought, "by the
shortest route," was not