remove what discomfiture we may have felt, told us,
through an interpreter, that he was sure we would become good air-men.
The _tres bon pilote_ could be distinguished, in embryo, by the way he
wore his goggles.

The beginners' class did not start work with the others, owing to the
fact that the Penguins, driven by unaccustomed hands, covered a vast
amount of ground in their rolling sorties back and forth across the
field. Therefore Drew and I had leisure to watch the others, and to
see in operation the entire scheme by means of which France trains her
combat pilots for the front. Exclusive of the Penguin, there were
seven classes, graded according to their degree of advancement. These,
in their order, were the rolling class (a second-stage Penguin class,
in which one still kept on the ground, but in machines of higher
speed); the first flying class--short hops across the field at an
altitude of two or three metres; the second flying class, where one
learned to mount to from thirty to fifty metres, and to make landings
without the use of the motor; _tour de piste_ (A)--flights about the
aerodrome in a forty-five horse-power Bleriot; _tour de piste_
(B)--similar flights in a fifty horse-power machine; the spiral class,
and the brevet class.

Our reception committee of the day before volunteered his services as
guide, and took us from one class to another, making comments upon the
nature of the work of each in a bewildering combination of English and
Americanized French. I understood but little of his explanation,
although later I was able to appreciate his French translation of some
of our breezy Americanisms. But explanation was, for the most part,
unnecessary. We could see for ourselves how the prospective pilot
advanced from one class to another, becoming accustomed to machines of
higher and higher power, "growing his wings" very gradually, until at
last he reached the spiral class, where he learned to make landings at
a given spot and without the use of his motor, from an altitude of
from eight hundred to one thousand metres, losing height in volplanes
and serpentines. The final tests for the military brevet were two
cross-country flights of from two hundred to three hundred kilometres,
with landings during each flight, at three points, two short voyages
of sixty kilometres each, and an hour flight at a minimum altitude of
two thousand metres.

With all the activities of the school taking place at once, we were a