system
of artillery fire, which, he assured me very earnestly, would make
pudding of the German trenches. While the salad was being served one
of the staff-officers was called to the telephone. When he returned
the general raised inquiring eyebrows. "_N'importe, mon general_," he
answered. "Colonel ---- telephoned that the Boches attacked in force
south of ----" and he named a certain sector, "but that we have driven
them back with heavy losses." Then he resumed his interrupted dinner
as unconcernedly as though he had been called to the telephone to be
told that the Braves had defeated the Pirates in the ninth inning.

While we were at breakfast the next morning the windows of the hotel
dining-room suddenly began to reverberate to the _bang-bang-bang_ of
guns. Going to the door, we saw, high overhead, a great white bird,
which turned to silver when touched by the rays of the morning sun.
Though shrapnel bursts were all about it--I counted thirty of the
fleecy puffs at one time--it sailed serenely on, a thing of delicate
beauty against the cloudless blue. Though few airplanes are brought
down by artillery fire, the improvement in anti-aircraft guns has
forced the aviators to keep at a height of from 12,000 to 17,000 feet,
instead of 2,000, as they did at the beginning of the war. The French
gunners have now devised a system which, when it is successfully
executed, makes things extremely uncomfortable for the enemy aviator.
This system consists in so gauging the fire of the anti-aircraft guns
that the airman finds himself in a "box" of shrapnel; that is, one
shell is timed to burst directly in front of the machine, another
behind it, one above, one below, and one on either side. The
dimensions of this "box" of bursting shrapnel are gradually made
smaller, so that, unless the aviator recognizes his danger in time,
escape becomes impossible, and he is done for. Occasionally an
aviator, finding himself caught in such a death-trap, pretends that he
has been hit, and lets his machine flutter helplessly earthward, like
a wounded bird, until the gunners, believing themselves certain of
their prey, cease firing, whereupon the airman skilfully "catches"
himself, and, straightening the planes of his machine, goes soaring
off to safety. Navarre, one of the most daring of the French fliers,
so perfected himself in the execution of this hazardous ruse that he
would let go of the controls and permit his machine to literally fall,
som