[7] “No enterprise, perhaps,” says a French military publication, “is as purely French as the conquest of the air. The first free balloon, the first dirigible, the first aeroplane all rose from our soil.” However, “the war surprised our aviation in an almost complete state of destitution. Our 200 pilots, almost all sportsmen, possessed between them a total of two machine-guns. A few squadrillas, without clearly-defined functions, sought their places on the front.” Aerial artillery ranging, photography, and observation had been envisaged, and, more generally, chasing and bombardment; but there was hardly a beginning of preparation. France had at the beginning of the war 24 squadrillas, each of five or six machines, all scouts, of a speed from 50 to 70 miles an hour. M. Engerand says that “Germany entered the campaign with 1500 aeroplanes; we had on the front only 129.” Captive balloons had been abandoned as incapable of following the armies in the war of movement then almost exclusively contemplated. “Events proved our mistake,” says the official publication already quoted. “Enemy balloons followed the rapid advance of the armies of invasion. Ascending immediately behind the lines, they rendered the adversary indubitable services at the battle of the Marne. Then we hurriedly constituted balloon companies; and in 1915 we followed the German model of ‘sausage’ balloons.” _Mons and the Retreat_, by Captain G. S. Gordon, a British Staff officer (London: Constable. 1918), contains some information of the Royal Flying Corps in August and September 1914. The Corps was founded in April 1912. At the beginning of the war, it included six squadrons, only four of which could be immediately mobilised, with a complement of 109 officers and 66 aeroplanes. These, however, did excellent work from the beginning. The writer says: “If we were better scouts and fighters, the Germans were better observers for the guns. The perfect understanding between the Taubes and the German gunners was one of the first surprises of the war.” DE BLOCH’S PROPHECY AND FRENCH’S CONFESSION [8] De Bloch, who had been a large railway contractor in the Russo-Turkish War, and a leading Polish banker, published the results of his experiences and researches, in six volumes, under the general title _La Guerre_, during the last years of the nineteenth century, and afterwards established a “Museum of War and Peace” at Lucerne to illustrate the subject. His chief thesis was that, owing to the technical development of military instruments and other factors, an aggressive war between States of nearly equal resources could not now give the results aimed at; and there is no longer any doubt that he foresaw the main track of military development as few soldiers did. The following sentences from a sketch of the writings and conversations of de Bloch, published by the present writer in 1902, will serve to show that he anticipated some of the governing characteristics of the Great War: