on the Somme, was Guynemer's eleventh; and at
that time he had flown altogether 348 hours, 25 minutes. This journal of
fifty pages enables us to measure the distance covered.

Impassioned young people! You who in every department of achievement
desire to win the trophies of a Guynemer, never forget that your
progress on the path to glory begins with "doing chores."

CANTO II

LAUNCHED INTO SPACE

I. THE FIRST VICTORY

The apprentice pilot, then, left the ground for the first time at the
Pau school on February 17, 1915, in a three-cylinder Bleriot. But these
were only short leaps, though sufficiently audacious ones. His monitor
accused him of breakneck recklessness: "Too much confidence, madness,
fantastical humor." That same evening he wrote describing his
impressions to his father: "Before departure, a bit worried; in the air,
wildly amusing. When the machine slid or oscillated I was not at all
troubled, it even seemed funny.... Well, it diverted me immensely, but
it was lucky that _Maman_ was not there.... I don't think I have
achieved a reputation for prudence. I hope everything will go well; I
shall soon know...."

During February he made many experimental flights, and finally, on March
10, 1915, went up 600 meters. This won him next day a diploma from the
Aero Club, and the day following he wrote to his sister Odette this hymn
of joy--not long, but unique in his correspondence: "Uninterrupted
descent, volplaning for 800 meters. Superb view (sunset)...."

"Superb view (sunset)": in the hundred and fifty or two hundred letters
addressed to his family, I believe this is the only landscape. Slightly
later, but infrequently, the new aviator gave a few details of
observation, the accuracy of which lent them some picturesqueness; but
in this letter he yielded to the intoxication of the air, he enjoyed
flying as if it were his right. He experienced that sensation of
lightness and freedom which accompanies the separation from earth, the
pleasure of cleaving the wind, of controlling his machine, of seeing,
breathing, thinking differently from the way he saw and thought and
breathed on the land, of being born, in fact, into a new and solitary
life in an enlarged world. As he ascended, men suddenly diminished in
size. The earth looked as if some giant hand had smoothed its surface,
diversified only by moving shadows, while the outlines of objects became
stronger, so that they seemed to be cut in relief.

The