twenty-five miles; but that was in America, and, besides, the Parisians were not very sure about it; but here in France it was the first time that mortal man had flown over the heads of humanity by mechanical means. The Blériot-Voisin machine, though very ingenious in its construction, did not succeed that day; Santos Dumont, the little plucky Brazilian, was the real conqueror: future laurels were being reserved for M. Blériot. The French, indeed, have pioneered in the air. The brothers Montgolfier were the first to make ascents in their balloon; and the balloon originally appeared as a military engine for observation above the battle-field of Fleurus, where the Revolutionary General Jourdan vanquished the Austrians in 1794. The dirigible is also largely the product of French invention. One of the amazing features of the war was the rapid development of aviation after the outbreak of hostilities. In a few months only the aeroplane emerged from its experimental stage and appeared as a highly finished and accurate instrument of war. An immense stride was attained when the machine was first adapted by the French to carry cannon, which enabled the attack upon another aeroplane to be made in the horizontal plane instead of vertically, as was necessary when one machine had to mount above another in order to drop bombs or _flèchettes_—one of those refinements of cruelty which the present war has produced. Incidentally, there are some who say that the German _flèchettes_, launched from the skies, were of such inferior steel that they buckled up when they touched a hard object. However that may be (and we have no reason to complain of such an arrangement), weight, whether in the form of cannon or other armaments, was constantly added to the aeroplane, and the problem then arose as to the maintenance of speed. In the aerial machine, speed is the first requisite, especially nowadays when it is necessary to mount and mount, perhaps, to six thousand yards to overfly the enemy craft, be he Zeppelin or fellow airman. And a few minutes make all the difference—the difference of kilometers—in the pursuit; thus speed must always be combined with those offensive properties that are being gradually added to the battle-plane.