After that we took photographs _ad lib._, and McCutcheon had a trip with Ingold, a great aviator, in a biplane, which the Germans call a double-decker, as distinguished from the _Taube_ or monoplane, with its birdlike wings and curved tail rudder-piece. Just as they came down, after a circular spin over the lines, a strange machine, presumably hostile, appeared far up and far away, but circled off to the south out of target reach before the balloon gunman could get the range of her and the aim. On the heels of this a biplane from another aviation field somewhere down the left wing dropped in quite informally bearing two grease-stained men to pass the time of day and borrow some gasoline. The occasion appeared to demand a drink. We all repaired, therefore, to one of the great canvas houses where the air birds nest nighttimes and where the airmen sleep. There we had noggins of white wine all round, and a pointer dog, which was chained to an officer's trunk, begged me in plain pointer language to cast off his leash so he might go and stalk the covey of pheasants that were taking a dust-bath in the open road not fifty yards away. The temptation was strong, but our guides said if we meant to get to the battlefront before lunch it was time, and past time, we got started. Being thus warned we did get started. Of a battle there is this to be said--that the closer you get to it the less do you see of it. Always in my experiences in Belgium and my more recent experiences in France I found this to be true. Take, for example, the present instance. I knew that we were approximately in the middle sworl of the twisting scroll formed by the German center, and that we were at this moment entering the very tip of the enormous inverted V made by the frontmost German defenses. I knew that stretching away to the southeast of us and to the northwest was a line some two hundred miles long, measuring it from tip to tip, where sundry millions of men in English khaki and French fustian and German shoddy-wools were fighting the biggest fight and the most prolonged fight and the most stubborn fight that historians probably will write down as having been fought in this war or any lesser war. I knew this fight had been going on for weeks now back and forth upon the River Aisne and would certainly go on for weeks and perhaps months more to come. I knew these things because I had been told them; but I shouldn't have known if I hadn't been told. I shouldn't even have guessed it.