France had a motley array of airplanes of every size, shape and make when the war broke out. They had varying systems of control, so that a pilot who flew one with ease was nothing more than a novice when he stepped into another. He did not know how its new set of levers operated, nor how the plane would behave in the air. Moreover, the parts for these French airplanes and for their engines had been specially designed by each maker, and were quite unsuitable for any other type of machine. The result was that when a machine had to be repaired at the front, it was "laid up" for a long time, while the special part it required was being ordered and made for it. When finally it arrived, very often there had been some mistake, and so there was another long period of uselessness. France had prided herself on her versatility in airship design. She now had cause to regret it as she viewed the almost helpless confusion it had caused in her air service. Her machines, moreover, were much inferior to the German in armament, speed and climbing gauges, cameras, and all the hundreds of accessories which gave the German machines their initial advantage. But experience is the best teacher, and no sooner had she seen wherein she fell short than dauntless France mustered all her resources to correcting past mistakes. Order was brought out of confusion, and it was only a very little while before the German war lords had need to look to their laurels, for the Frenchmen were far outstripping them in the air. There was one "accessory" which the airplane of the Hun lacked, and which all his mechanical skill and ingenuity were not able to provide: _a pilot with the dash and daring of the French!_ Even in those first dark days when the French planes were the equals of their adversaries neither in numbers nor in capabilities,--a continuous stream of gallant French pilots took to the air and proved that they could surprise and outmaneuver their slower-thinking opponents. While they held the line in their inferior craft, French manufacturers were rushing newer and better equipped machines to reenforce them. Great Britain was far behindhand in aircraft production when the trumpet of war sounded,--in fact, her air force was considered a negligible quantity by friend and foe alike. By dint of persevering search she managed to scrape up a small group of planes of many makes and for the most part antiquated. She sent them--along with her "contemptible little army "--to France, and there they succeeded in holding their own during the first great German push. When the Stories of heroic fighting against hopeless odds, of British airmen flinging their lives in challenge against the foe in the great air struggle, began to reach home, the British lion repented his tardiness and a program of aircraft construction on a large scale was instituted without delay.