Early in 1914 there had been various schemes in being with the object of crossing the Atlantic by aeroplane under the terms of a prize offered by a London print. Two alone of these were in any way practicable, one by an English retired naval officer on an aeroplane provided at the expense of an American millionaire, and the other by the late Mr. Gustav Hamel, who was to have flown from Newfoundland on an English aeroplane, and who would have been financed by English money. Mr. Hamel was drowned in the English Channel on May 23, when the arrangements for the great flight were in a very advanced stage. A few weeks later Mr. H. S. Keating came forward and made private arrangements to take over part of the organisation which had been brought together earlier in the year. He intended himself to make the proposed attempt to fly from Newfoundland to Ireland at his own expense. This personal assumption of the burden of the entire cost made the attempt one of pure sport without any hope of gain, as the expenditure must of necessity very greatly exceed the amount of the prize offered. Harry Sheehy Keating, an Irishman by birth, a one-time subaltern in the Grenadier Guards, had spent a year or two in the United States and in Mexico, during which period he had become an aviator. Of an adventurous disposition, he welcomed any form of sport or daring that would relieve the monotony of existence—before the war. The selection of an aeroplane on which to make the Atlantic flight was a matter of no little difficulty. We heard that on July 10 Herr Boehm had flown at Johannisthal on an Albatross biplane for twenty-four hours twelve minutes without once alighting. We decided therefore that we would go to Berlin and see what the Albatross Company could do for us. As we had neither of us travelled in Holland or Germany we determined to motor from the Hook of Holland to Berlin and back. The threat of war which by now filled all the London news sheets we did not believe. ‘Wolf’ had been cried so often. The Sarajevo murder and its immediate results would drift into history in company with Fashoda and Agadir and no blood at all would be spilt. An accident detained us on the way to Harwich, so that we missed Saturday and Sunday’s boats, and only landed at the Hook in the very early morning of Tuesday, July 27, and at once entered into a fog of mystery which did not lift entirely until we reached the Hague on our return journey on August 5. We neither of us knew a word of the language of either country which we were to visit, and the daily papers contained what were to us merely cabalistic symbols. We crossed the German frontier a mile or two beyond Oldenzaal and by dinner time we had reached Rheine. Here the weather changed. The sun disappeared and a depressing soft rain began to fall. We dined uncomfortably and wondered a little irritably why the German people should be so excited. We knew no reason.