square, not as large as a postage-stamp. With thumb and
forefinger I could have spanned the distance between Soissons and
Laon. Clouds of smoke were rising from Allemant to Craonne, and these
were constantly added to by infinitesimal puffs in black and white. I
knew that shells of enormous calibre were wrecking trenches, blasting
out huge craters; and yet not a sound, not the faintest reverberation
of a gun. Here was a sight almost to make one laugh at man's idea of
the importance of his pygmy wars.

But the Olympian mood is a fleeting one. I think of Paradis rising on
one elbow out of the slime where he and his comrades were lying,
waving his hand toward the wide, unspeakable landscape.

"What are we, we chaps? And what's all this here? Nothing at all. All
we can see is only a speck. When one speaks of the whole war, it's as
if you said nothing at all--the words are strangled. We're here, and
we look at it like blind men."

To look down from a height of more than two miles, on an endless
panorama of suffering and horror, is to have the sense of one's
littleness even more painfully quickened. The best that the airman can
do is to repeat, "We're here, and we look at it like blind men."

We passed on to the point where the line bends northward, then turned
back. I tried to concentrate my attention on the work of identifying
landmarks. It was useless. One might as well attempt to study Latin
grammar at his first visit to the Grand Canon. My thoughts went
wool-gathering. Looking up suddenly, I found that I was alone.

To the new pilot the sudden appearance or disappearance of other
_avions_ is a weird thing. He turns his head for a moment. When he
looks again, his patrol has vanished. Combats are matters of a few
seconds' duration, rarely of more than two or three minutes. The
opportunity for attack comes almost with the swiftness of thought and
has passed as quickly. Looking behind me, I was in time to see one
machine tip and dive. Then it, too, vanished as though it had melted
into the air. Shutting my motor, I started down, swiftly, I thought;
but I had not yet learned to fall vertically, and the others--I can
say almost with truth--were miles below me. I passed long streamers of
white smoke, crossing and recrossing in the air. I knew the meaning of
these, machine-gun tracer bullets. The delicately penciled lines
had not yet frayed out in the wind. I went on down in a steep spiral,
guiding myself by them, and seein