anti-aircraft batteries becomes too great.

From this it is evident that the preference of German Aviation for
taking the offensive was not sufficient to induce it to offer battle
above the enemy lines, and the tendency of the staff was to group
squadrons into overpowering masses. The French had preceded their
opponents in the way of technical progress, but the Germans made up for
the inferiority, as usual, by method and system. The French were
unrivaled for technical improvements, and the training of their pilots.
Their new machine, the Spad, was a first-rate instrument, superior in
strength, speed, and ease of control to the best Albatros, and the
Germans knew that this inferiority must be obviated. All modern battles
are thus preceded by technical rivalry. The preparation in factories,
week after week, and month after month, ultimately results in living
machinery which the staff uses as it pleases.

Living machinery it is, but it is in appearance only that it seems to be
independent of man. A battle is a collective work, to which each
participant, from the General-in-chief to the road-mender behind the
lines, brings his contribution. Colossal though the whole seems, perfect
as the enormous machine seems to be, it would not work if there were not
behind it a weak man made of poor flesh. A humble gunner, the anonymous
defenders of a trench, a pilot who purges the air of the hostile
presence, an observer who secures information in good time, some poor
soldier who has no idea that his individual action was connected with
the great drama, has occasionally brought about wonderful results--as a
stone falling into a pool makes its presence felt to the remotest banks.

Amidst the fighters on the Aisne, Guynemer was at his post in the
Storks Escadrille. "All right! (sic) they tumble down," he wrote
laconically to his family. There were indeed some five tumbling down: on
May 25 he had surpassed all that had been done so far in aerial fights,
bringing down four German machines in that one day. His notebook states
the fact briefly:

8.30.--Downed a two-seater, which lost a wing as it fell and was
smashed on the trees 1200 meters NNE. of Corbeny.

8.31.--Another two-seater downed, in flames, above
Juvincourt.--With Captain Auger, forced another two-seater to dive
down to 600 meters, one kilometer from our lines.

Downed a D.F.W.[22] in flames above Courlandon.

Downed a two-seater in flame