one country has been essentially that of another country, and we
Americans may yet learn of the air from the English. In England the
air is just another medium of travel, as much a medium as the ground
and water--but that is, of course, another story.

In 1917 the Royal Flying Corps, later incorporated into the Royal Air
Force, came to Canada to take up the instruction of Canadian boys for
flying in France. Americans enlisted with the pick of the Canadian
youth, and droves were sent overseas. Very soon the cream had been
skimmed off and there came a time when material was scarce. Meanwhile
the war raged, and there was no option but to take drafted men from
all sections, Montreal in particular. Many could not speak
intelligible English, and few had enjoyed any educational advantages.
The men who came as cadets to be trained as pilots in 1918 graded much
lower in personal and physical qualifications than the type of the
previous year. And yet these same drafted men, who had withstood for
three and a half years the call of their country, had more control
over their machines at the end of their course than the men of the
year before.

At the end of four, five, or six hours' solo these men could do all
the high maneuvers, commonly thought dangerous, such as the barrel
roll, the loop, the stall turn, the Immelmann turn. An astounding
showing compared to the boys of 1917, who were forbidden to stunt and
who rarely disobeyed the orders. In our American service we had
specially selected men. They were college men, tested, qualified, and
picked. But our men--and it's no reflection on them--seldom did their
higher maneuvers with less than fifty hours of solo flying.

There is just one answer--it is a matter entirely of training.

It might be said that the Canadian casualties on the Texas
flying-fields near Fort Worth during the winter of 1917-18, when the
Royal Air Force occupied two airdromes, were the cause of comment all
over the country. There were fifty fatalities in twenty weeks of
flying, and machine after machine came down in a fatal spinning-nose
dive, or tail spin, as the Americans speak of the spin.

Shortly after the Royal Air Force returned to its airdromes in Canada
in the middle of April the Gosport system of flying training, which
had been used successfully in England, was begun on the Curtiss J.N.
4B-type training-plane. The result was an immediate and material
decrease in fatal accidents. In July, 1918, th