the "high loneliness" of the air.
That sounded rather like nonsense at the time, and then I reflected that
for a Prussian that might be true. There may be something in the German
composition that does demand association and the support of pride
and training before dangers can be faced. The Germans are social
and methodical, the French and English are by comparison chaotic and
instinctive; perhaps the very readiness for a conscious orderliness
that makes the German so formidable upon the ground, so thorough and
fore-seeking, makes him slow and unsure in the air. At any rate the
experiences of this war have seemed to carry out this hypothesis. The
German aviators will not as a class stand up to those of the Allies.
They are not nimble in the air. Such champions as they have produced
have been men of one trick; one of their great men, Immelmann--he was
put down by an English boy a month or so ago--had a sort of hawk's
swoop. He would go very high and then come down at his utmost pace at
his antagonist, firing his machine gun at him as he came. If he missed
in this hysterical lunge, he went on down.... This does not strike the
Allied aviator as very brilliant. A gentleman of that sort can sooner or
later be caught on the rise by going for him over the German lines.

The first phase, then, of the highest grade offensive, the ultimate
development of war regardless of expense, is the clearance of the air.
Such German machines as are up are put down by fighting aviators. These
last fly high; in the clear blue of the early morning they look exactly
like gnats; some trail a little smoke in the sunshine; they take
their machine guns in pursuit over the German lines, and the German
anti-aircraft guns, the Archibalds, begin to pattern the sky about them
with little balls of black smoke. From below one does not see men nor
feel that men are there; it is as if it were an affair of midges. Close
after the fighting machines come the photographic aeroplanes, with
cameras as long as a man is high, flying low--at four or five thousand
feet that is--over the enemy trenches. The Archibald leaves these latter
alone; it cannot fire a shell to explode safely so soon after firing;
but they are shot at with rifles and machine guns. They do not mind
being shot at; only the petrol tank and the head and thorax of the pilot
are to be considered vital. They will come back with forty or fifty
bullet holes in the fabric. They will go under this fire alon