The last test of the preliminary school is a thirty mile flight with three landings. After he has done that the student goes to Pau for his test in acrobatics. The chief stunt set for him here is a vrille. The student is required to put his machine into a spin at a height of about 8500 feet and bring it out again. The trick is not particularly difficult if the man keeps his head, but the tendency is to turn on the power which only accelerates the fall and some are killed at Pau. My friend caught malaria as soon as he got there and was allowed to take things easily for a week. Finally his test was set for Wednesday. On Monday morning the man who slept in the cot to his left went out for his test and was killed and on Tuesday the man from the right hand cot was killed. Death came very close to the young American. He and a French student arrived at the training ground at about the same time. Two machines were ready. The instructor hesitated a second and then assigned the American to the machine at the right. A few minutes later the Frenchman was killed when a wing came off his machine as soon as he began his vrille. Fortunately Parker did not know that until after he had passed his own test. He saw one other man killed before he left Pau and that horrified him more than the accident on the morning of his trial. "The judge who decided whether you passed your test was a little Frenchman with a monocle," he said. "He sat in a rocking chair at the edge of the field and you had to do the vrille straight in front of him or it didn't count. He simply wouldn't turn to look at a flyer. I was standing beside him when one fellow got rattled in the middle of a vrille and put his power on. Even at that he almost lifted his machine out but she came down too fast for him. There was a big smash-up and people came running out to the wreck. They sent for a doctor and then for a priest, but the terrible little man never moved from his chair. 'You see,' he cried to me, 'he was stupid! stupid!' This flying test had come to seem nothing more than an examination bluebook to him. A fellow passed or he flunked and that was all there was to it." Luck plays its biggest part in a flier's early days at the front. He has a lot to learn after he gets there, but the French do not nurse him along much. He has to take his chances. It may be that he will get in some very tight place before he has learned the fine points and a future star will be lost at the outset of his career. On the other hand he may come up against German fliers as green as himself and gradually gain a technique before he is called upon to face an enemy ace or a superior combination of planes. At the front as in the schools the French pay keen attention to the mental state of the fliers.