farm buildings snuggle in the valleys or straggle on the slopes. The
wide and changing perspective is full of a harmony unspoiled by the
jarring notes evident on solid ground. Ugliness and dirt are camouflaged
by the clean top of everything. Grimy towns and jerry-built suburbs seem
almost attractive when seen in mass from a height. Slums, the dead
uniformity of long rows of houses, sordid back-gardens, bourgeois public
statues--all these eyesores are mercifully hidden by the roofed surface.
The very factory chimneys have a certain air of impressiveness, in
common with church towers and the higher buildings. Once, on flying over
the pottery town of Coalport--the most uninviting place I have ever
visited--I found that the altered perspective made it look delightful.

A westward course, with the fringe of London away on our left, brought
us to the coast-line all too soon. Passing Dovstone, the bus continued
across the Channel. A few ships, tiny and slow-moving when observed from
a machine at 8000 feet and travelling 100 miles an hour, spotted the
sea. A cluster of what were probably destroyers threw out trails of dark
smoke. From above mid-Channel we could see plainly the two coasts--that
of England knotted into small creeks and capes, that of France bent into
large curves, except for the sharp corner at Grisnez. Behind was
Blighty, with its greatness and its--sawdust. Ahead was the province of
battle, with its good-fellowship and its--mud. I lifted the puppy to
show him his new country, but he merely exhibited boredom and a dislike
of the sudden rush of air.

From Cape Grisnez we steered north-east towards Calais, so as to have a
clearly defined course to the aircraft depot of Saint Gregoire. After a
cross-Channel flight one notes a marked difference between the French
and English earthscapes. The French towns and villages seem to sprawl
less than those of England, and the countryside in general is more
compact and regular. The roads are straight and tree-bordered, so that
they form almost as good a guide to an airman as the railways. In
England the roads twist and twirl through each other like the threads of
a spider's web, and failing rail or river or prominent landmarks, one
usually steers by compass rather than trust to roads.

At Calais we turned to the right and followed a network of canals
south-westward to Saint Gregoire, where was an aircraft depot similar to
the one at Rafborough. New machines call at Saint Gre