The single-seaters may be divided into two classes: the first does escort work about half the time, the second does nothing but parade up and down the lines, hunting for trouble. The last are the élite among airmen. Unfortunately I am not one of them, as they are recruited only from tried and skillful pilots. As to fighting, there is a good deal of popular misconception. One imagines picturesque duels to the death, between A (the great French or English ace) and X (his German competitor)--the multitude of straining, upturned eyes, the distant rattle of shots, the flaming spin of the loser. As a matter of fact, a duel between two monoplaces, handled by pilots of anything like equal skill, who are _aware of each other's presence_, is not unlikely to end without bloodshed. Bear in mind that they can shoot only forward, that the gun must be aimed by aiming the whole machine (to which it is fixed immovably), and that a twisting, climbing, banking aeroplane, traveling at over one hundred miles per hour, is no joke to hit in its small vitals, and you can see that this must be so. The truth is, that the vast majority of fights which end in a victory are between scouts and two-seaters, and that it needs two scouts to attack one biplace with anything like even chances of winning. Think a moment. The two-seater is nearly as fast and handy as you are; he can therefore avoid you and shoot forward almost as well, and in addition, he has a man astern who can shoot up, sideways, and backwards with most superior accuracy. This disconcerting individual, it is true, cannot shoot straight down when the wings are horizontal, but to enable him to do so, the pilot has only to tilt the machine to the necessary angle.