Until 1911 Germany had pinned her faith almost wholly to the Zeppelin as the unit for the aerial fleet which she had hoped to build up, and she had confidently expected it to prove its superiority to the heavier-than-air machine in the event of war. No funds had been spared to rush the work of designing and constructing these huge air monsters. Carefully and quietly the perfecting and standardizing of the Zeppelin under government supervision had moved forward, and German engineers had not been behindhand in designing engines particularly suitable to aircraft. While France was amusing herself with the clever little monoplanes and biplanes of the pioneer days--machines which could fly but a few yards at low altitude, Germany, possibly with the dream of world conquest tucked away in her mind, was sparing no expense to get ready her fleet of lighter-than-air craft. Imagine her chagrin when the feeble winged birds of 1908 and 1909 became the soaring eaglets of 1911, swiftly circling the sky, swooping, climbing and performing aerial tricks which made the larger and clumsier Zeppelin appear as agile as a waddling duck. Whatever the feelings of the German military authorities were on the subject, they wasted no time in crying over spilt milk, but at once began a policy of construction by which they hoped soon to outstrip their brainier French neighbors. As in everything German, _method_ was the characterizing feature of the airplane program they instituted. France had sought to encourage makers of all types of planes, and thus obtain a diversity of machines of wide capabilities. The plan did not appeal to Germany. From the very beginning she aimed at reducing everything to a fixed standard and then turning out airplanes in large numbers. When the War broke out it seemed for a time that she had been right, but it was not long before she looked with sorrow upon the sad lack of versatility of her fleet of standardized biplanes. They were hopelessly outdistanced and outmaneuvered by the small, fast fighting machines of the French, while they were by no means so strong as the heavy service planes the French could put into the air. Italy, Austria, Russia, America and Japan began also to make plans for the building of aerial fleets about 1911. The Italian Government relied at first on machines secured from France, or on those copied from French designs. Soon her own clever engineers began to be heard from and she was responsible for developing several of the powerful modern types. Russia would scarcely seem a country where aerial progress might be expected, yet she has given a good account of herself in aviation, and one of her machines, the giant _Sikorsky_ did splendid work on the several fronts during the war.