n one lever spells up and down in the other
spells right and left. It is a testimony to the extraordinary
cool-headed skill of the Wrights, and to their endless practice and
perseverance, that they were able to fly such a machine in safety, and
to outfly their rivals. The French school centralized the control in a
single lever with a universal joint attachment at the lower end. The
movements of this lever in any direction produced the effects that would
instinctively be expected; a backward or forward movement turned the
machine upwards or downwards, a sideways movement raised one wing or the
other so as to bank the machine or to bring it to a level position
again. The vertical rudder was controlled either by a wheel attached to
this central lever, or by the pressure of the pilot's feet on a
horizontal bar. The French moreover improved the means of taking off and
alighting. The early Wright machines were launched on rails, and
alighted on skids attached to the machine like the skids of a sledge. To
rise into the air again after a forced landing was impossible without
special apparatus. By means of wheels elastically fixed to an
undercarriage the French inventors made the aeroplane available for
cross-country journeys. But the greatest difference between the two
types of aeroplane, the American and the French, was their difference in
stability. The Wright machine demanded everything of the pilot; it could
not fly itself. If the pilot relaxed his attention for a moment, or took
his hands from the levers, a crash was the certain result. The machine
was a bird which flew with extended bill and without a tail; whereas the
French machines had a horizontal tail-plane, which, being held rigidly
at a distance from the main planes, gave to the machine a far greater
measure of longitudinal stability.

All these advantages told in favour of French aviation, and secured for
it progress and achievement.

A few dates and facts may serve to show its rapid progress at a time
when it was making history week by week. On the 30th of September 1908
Henri Farman made the first cross-country flight, from Chalons to
Rheims, a distance of twenty-seven kilometres, which he covered in
twenty minutes. Three days later, at Chalons, he remained in the air for
just under three-quarters of an hour, covering twenty-five miles, that
is, about forty times the distance that had won him the
Deutsch-Archdeacon prize in January. Between April and September