ance--Tobogganing
from the clouds--France from the air--A good flight.

Personal experience now intrudes in answer to the question whence come
all the aeroplanes that take the place of those lost or worn out, which
was made clear when I was in London for a few days' change from the
fighting on the Ridge through a request to a general at the War Office
for permission to fly back to the front.

"Why not?" he said. "When are you going?"

"Monday."

He called up another general on the telephone and in a few words the
arrangements were made.

"And my baggage?" I suggested.

"How much of it?"

"A suit case."

"The machine ought to manage that considering that it carries one
hundred and fifty pounds in bombs."

On Monday morning at the appointed hour I was walking past a soldierly
line of planes flanking an aerodrome field scattered with others that
had just alighted or were about to rise and inquiring my way to the
"Ferry-Pilot's" office. I found it, identified by a white-lettered sign
on a blackboard, down the main street of temporary buildings occupied by
the aviators as quarters.

"Yes, all right," said the young officer sitting at the desk, "but we
are making no crossings this morning. There is a storm over the
channel."

Weather forecasts, which had long ago disappeared from the English
newspapers lest they give information to Zeppelins, had become the
privilege of those who travel by air or repulsed aerial raids.

"It may clear up this afternoon," he added. "Why not go up to the mess
and make yourself comfortable, and return about three? Perhaps you may
go then."

At three I was back in his office, where five or six young aviators were
waiting for their orders as jockeys might wait their turn to take out
horses. Everybody is young in the Royal Flying Corps and everybody
thinks and talks in the terms of youth.

"You can push off at once!" said the officer at the desk.

Of course I must have a pass, which was a duplicate in mimeograph with
my name as passenger in place of "machine gunner;" or, to put it another
way, I was one joy-rider who must be officially delivered from an
aerodrome in England to an aerodrome in France. Youth laughed when I
took that view. Had I ever flown before? Oh, yes, a fact that put the
situation still more at ease.

"What kind of a 'bus would you like?" asked the master pilot. "We have
all kinds going over to-day. Take your choice."

I went out into the field to choo