But it must be conceded that superiority in the machines should be accompanied by superiority in pilots. In a conversation which I had at the time of writing this chapter with M. Louis Blériot (who knows as much as any man living of the practical side of aviation and even its scientific side), the famous winner of the cross-Channel prize confessed that France had not sufficiently developed her rich treasure in expert and adventurous men—the very pick of the pilots of the world—though the English, too, were extraordinary for their _sang-froid_ and were remarkable airmen. For in the air as on the land, in the last resort, it is the personal element which tells. A school, urged Blériot, was necessary to form such super-pilots as Garros and Pégoud, men renowned for ever for their prowess in the air. For the conquest of the air is to the swift and strong and fearless. Prudence and sagacity, and the slow measured wisdom that comes with the years, play no part in so breathless a pursuit. It is a game for young gods, not for the pale _savant_; a sport for young eagles, for a man must be sharp of eye, strong of claw and sinews to cleave his way through the clouds, right into the face of day. These super-men who ride fearlessly amongst the stars must be the very pick of humanity, revelling in the sensations of supreme danger, glorying in the knowledge that in a few seconds an assailant may emerge from yonder cloud with whom he must come into death grapples, and well aware that the vanquished will crash down thousands of feet to earth. Youth: youth has been poured out with a lavish hand on the smoking, bloody altar of the war. Youth: there is no incense more precious to the gods. Alas! a monstrous sort of selection is exercised. The young are mowed down by Death with the scythe, leaving the least adventurous, the timid and calculating—those who are sure eventually to die of a cold in the head—to live on.