Another day we went sixty-five miles to Biarritz. It is a bathing resort on the ocean. I went down over the ocean and circled around the lighthouse on the way back and then sped down the beach just over the water line. I didn’t see any submarines, but maybe they saw me first and beat it. I got back to the school just before dark and didn’t have gasoline enough left to go five miles. They gave it to me for being gone so long, but it was a great trip. The next day I tried for an altitude and made next to the highest in this school—6,500 meters or 21,320 feet. It wasn’t much joy. I froze three finger tips and frosted my lungs I think, and had chills and headache till supper time. For an hour I pounded my hands together while steering with my knees. There were six strata of clouds. The last was above me and at the top. I didn’t see the ground for an hour and a half. When you realize that they do their fighting between five and six thousand feet, you see what endurance it will take. They are right to make the test high for aviators. The most fortunate of us are being sent to Cazaux on the coast near Bordeaux. There they have all kinds of target practice from an aeroplane. You shoot at floats in a lake by diving at them, and at sausages dragged through the air by another plane. Well, we have done some of that here. We went up and dropped a parachute and then pretended it was a German plane and dived at it back and forth. Believe me, it was no easy matter to aim a gun into that machine while you are diving down at a speed of 250 miles an hour. Then we go in pairs for team work and dive at it turn about. The last few days we have been having a great time. We divided into two groups and called one the French and the other the Boche, and we go out and hunt each other up and down the valley. We have sham combats and keep our squadron formation during the maneuvers. We do this for ten days before going to Cazaux. I am unusually lucky to get so much of this training, and am pleased about it, though I’m afraid I’ll not be in Paris for Christmas. (I hope you will write and tell me about your dance and your Christmas holidays, and I’ll tell you what I do Christmas.) As for this war, I’m not saying a word, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you and your children would get a chance to fight in it. There have been hundred-year wars before now, and our modern civilization is not so small that it can’t reproduce what has been done before. But if every American has to return to the United States and start producing, raising, and training soldiers for the next fifty years to beat them, we’ll thrash them, by God, if it leaves America a desert and Germany a hole in the ground. The shoes the family sent me are a perfect fit and just what I wanted, and the socks were a surprise. As for that surprise box, I will continue to enjoy that for many a day. I ate a little and passed around a little each day. Good night, Bob. Don’t lose any sleep over studies.