Then, without abruptness, with a certain sickening majesty, the aeroplane stood on its head and swooped down onto the surface of the white sea below us. As it swallowed us we began to spiral rapidly around as though we were tobogganing down a giant corkscrew. As we went on down through this white nothingness I became very dizzy. The propellers had slowed 'way down and I thought the engines had failed, and that we were either falling 10,000 feet or making a forced descent. But the pilot sat still back above me, so I did likewise. Suddenly we spiralled violently down through the bottom of the cloud into sight of the earth again. Instantaneously the engines broke into their old roar and the aeroplane stopped pointing straight down and assumed a steep slant. If any one ever heaved a sigh of relief I did it then. I felt the rapping behind me. Looking round, I saw the pilot pointing down at the earth, ahead and to our right. I shook my head. Then, as we careened downward, he stopped his motors for a fraction of a second, and in the sudden deafening silence he shouted out, "The front!" Here, if my hopes had materialized, I should be able to give a most striking picture of a battle as seen from an aeroplane. But honesty compels me to say that any one who wants to get a good clear view of the front had much better go there on the surface of the earth, and not through the air. In the first place, it takes quite a little time and trouble to discern the lines of opposing trenches even when you stand on a quiet observation post with a General painstakingly pointing and explaining, by the help of landmarks, just where they run. Here, though we were now only 1,000 metres (about 3,300 feet) up, we were racing along the front at 80 miles an hour, and all my friend the pilot could do was to point here and there frantically. So among the maze of white lines I saw running below me through the hazy atmosphere, some which I took for trenches were undoubtedly roads; some which I took for roads were equally undoubtedly trenches, while only a few, by their zigzagging, could I unhesitatingly have guaranteed to have been trenches. In the next place the roar of the engines totally drowned out all the reports of the guns which were going off below us, and the explosions of the shells, which are such a striking feature of the front.