Having toured France quite recently, an expert thus describes the activities at the French flying schools. "Those who are not directly in touch with the various Government departments cannot estimate how many airmen there are at work. Flying schools seem to be springing up everywhere. Depots are being established all over the country. Officers are flying from place to place every day. To see a military machine, carrying a pilot and observer, passing swiftly overhead, is now quite a common sight. Orders are being received almost daily at the military camps, instructing a machine to set forth upon a reconnoitring flight, or to carry a dispatch from one camp to another. "It is the thoroughness, and the business-like way in which this work is done, that are so impressive. An order for a reconnoitring flight is received. Promptly the officer and his observer prepare themselves. The aeroplane, properly tuned up, is all ready, and is quickly wheeled from its shed. They mount to their places, and are away. "Directly afterwards, perhaps, another machine is ordered out. In the early days of flying, one was prepared for a delay of several hours when an airman set out upon anything like a long flight. His engine had to be tuned up with laborious care; there were a hundred and one details that had been forgotten, and had to be put right after the machine had been brought out of its shed. Now, contrast this wearisome delay with the promptitude of the French officer-airmen. There is no feverish rush and bustle at the commencement of a flight. The propeller is turned; the motor fires at once; and the machine takes the air. "This, of course, is the direct fruit of training. This familiarity with machines, and with the routine of flying, is the reward which France is already gaining for her devotion to military aviation, and her unsparing efforts to make her service thoroughly efficient. "The way in which the aeroplanes are kept in trim, and the cool, alert manner in which they are handled, come as revelations to a man who has only seen the machinery of flight as it is in operation at an ordinary flying school. Particularly is one impressed by the skill, and good organisation, among the engineer-mechanics at the military stations. "The use of the aeroplane, for purposes of war, necessitates a vast amount of training for every unit engaged in the aerial work, and, without such training, nothing in the nature of real success can be attained." This tribute provides an indication of the practicability of the military training now proceeding in France. Efficiency is, indeed, the constant watchword. Operating with a war weapon that is new and strange, the French military authorities have already worked wonders; and their success is due to the organisation they have been able to introduce at their flying schools.