ritain.

Just as records were made abroad, with one exception, so were the
really efficient engines. In England there was the Green engine, but the
outbreak of war found the Royal Flying Corps with 80 horse-power Gnomes,
70 horse-power Renaults, and one or two Antoinette motors, but not one
British, while the Royal Naval Air Service had got 20 machines with
engines of similar origin, mainly land planes in which the wheeled
undercarriages had been replaced by floats. France led in development,
and there is no doubt that at the outbreak of war, the French military
aeroplane service was the best in the world. It was mainly composed of
Maurice Farman two-seater biplanes and Bleriot monoplanes--the latter
type banned for a period on account of a number of serious accidents
that took place in 1912.

America had its Army Aviation School, and employed Burgess-Wright
and Curtiss machines for the most part. In the pre-war years, once
the Wright Brothers had accomplished their task, America's chief
accomplishment consisted in the development of the 'Flying Boat,'
alternatively named with characteristic American clumsiness, 'The
Hydro-Aeroplane.' In February of 1911, Glenn Curtiss attached a
float to a machine similar to that with which he won the first
Gordon-Bennett Air Contest and made his first flying boat
experiment. From this beginning he developed the boat form of body
which obviated the use and troubles of floats--his hydroplane became
its own float.

Mainly owing to greater engine reliability the duration records steadily
increased. By September of 1912 Fourny, on a Maurice Farman biplane, was
able to accomplish a distance of 628 miles without a landing, remaining
in the air for 13 hours 17 minutes and just over 57 seconds. By 1914
this was raised by the German aviator, Landemann, to 21 hours 48 3/4
seconds. The nature of this last record shows that the factors in such a
record had become mere engine endurance, fuel capacity, and capacity
of the pilot to withstand air conditions for a prolonged period, rather
than any exceptional flying skill.

Let these years be judged by the records they produced, and even then
they are rather dull. The glory of achievement such as characterised the
work of the Wright Brothers, of Bleriot, and of the giants of the early
days, had passed; the splendid courage, the patriotism and devotion
of the pilots of the War period had not yet come to being. There was
progress, past question, but