r
frenzied acclamations to the hero of the meeting.

'For certainly "Le Tham," as the French call him, was the popular hero.
He always flew high, he always flew well, and his machine was a joy to
the eye, either afar off or at close quarters. The public feeling for
Bleriot is different. Bleriot, in the popular estimation, is the man who
fights against odds, who meets the adverse fates calmly and with good
courage, and to whom good luck comes once in a while as a reward for
much labour and anguish, bodily and mental. Latham is the darling of
the Gods, to whom Fate has only been unkind in the matter of the Channel
flight, and only then because the honour belonged to Bleriot.

'Next to these two, the public loved most Lefebvre, the joyous, the
gymnastic. Lefebvre was the comedian of the meeting. When things began
to flag, the gay little Lefebvre would trot out to his starting rail,
out at the back of the judge's enclosure opposite the stands, and after
a little twisting of propellers his Wright machine would bounce off the
end of its starting rail and proceed to do the most marvellous tricks
for the benefit of the crowd, wheeling to right and left, darting up and
down, now flying over a troop of the cavalry who kept the plain clear of
people and sending their horses into hysterics, anon making straight
for an unfortunate photographer who would throw himself and his precious
camera flat on the ground to escape annihilation as Lefebvre swept over
him 6 or 7 feet off the ground. Lefebvre was great fun, and when he had
once found that his machine was not fast enough to compete for speed
with the Bleriots, Antoinettes, and Curtiss, he kept to his metier of
amusing people. The promoters of the meeting owe Lefebvre a debt of
gratitude, for he provided just the necessary comic relief.'--(The Aero,
September 7th, 1909.)

It may be noted, in connection with the fact that Cockburn was the only
English competitor at the meeting, that the Rheims Meeting did more than
anything which had preceded it to waken British interest in aviation.
Previously, heavier-than-air flight in England had been regarded as
a freak business by the great majority, and the very few pioneers who
persevered toward winning England a share in the conquest of the air
came in for as much derision as acclamation. Rheims altered this; it
taught the world in general, and England in particular, that a serious
rival to the dirigible balloon had come to being, and it a