EARLY METHODS—DEVELOPMENT OF SCHOOLS—STUDYING STRUCTURE OF PLANES, MOTORS, THEORY OF FLIGHT, AERODYNAMICS, MAP READING—FRENCH SYSTEM—GOSPORT SYSTEM From the time of the first flight of the Wright brothers in 1903 to the breaking out of the Great War in July, 1914, the art of flying an aeroplane was not taught systematically either in private or military schools, primarily because flying in a heavier-than-air machine was regarded by civilians as a very dangerous sport and by military authorities as hardly more than a dubious scout for locating troop or train movements. For that reason very few civilians were induced to take up aviation except a few of the more daring sportsmen. Consequently, civilian flying on a large scale did not flourish. It is true, however, that several small schools attached to manufacturing plants did attempt to teach the rudiments of flight and aircraft construction. These schools did not prosper because only a few pupils who wished to give exhibition flights attended, and the art of flying and aircraft development suffered. In England several schools were started with indifferent success for the same reason as obtained in America, and in France and Germany, aside from a few aviators who were striving for new world’s records, most of the flying training was in the army. Therefore most of the great fliers, like the Wrights, Beachy, Martin, Curtiss, Farman, Bleriot, Garros, Vedrines, Graham-White, Sopwith, A. V. Roe—to mention only a very few—learned to fly themselves. For that reason the toll of lives taken in flying was high. Nevertheless, that did not stop these daring fliers from stunting and exploring all the aerial manœuvres possible with a heavier-than-air machine. As a result Pegout looped the loop; Ruth Law flew at night; Bleriot crossed the channel; Garros the Mediterranean Sea; Vedrines flew from Paris via Constantinople to Cairo; and in July, 1914, Heinrich Oelerich climbed to 26,246 feet altitude in Germany, and in the same month another German flew for twenty-four hours one minute, without stopping. Meanwhile France had trained several hundred aviators for her army and Germany had five or six hundred trained fliers, including those in the Zeppelin service. The United States army had hardly more than fifty fliers when the Mexican trouble broke out, and only half a dozen aeroplanes to use on the Mexican border. As soon as the war began and aircraft demonstrated that the side which got control of the air could put out the eyes of the opposing army and that the great struggle might be decided in the air, all the belligerent nations began to train aviators for the war in the air. France was the first to develop a school of flying, and the French method, with slight variations, was adopted by England and the United States. A description of their method will give a comprehensive conception of the training necessary for a military flier in the war.