The few air raids are rather an anticlimax after the days that have just passed, especially as nothing falls near enough to cause us any annoyance. At Bar-le-Duc the Boche playfully drops a dozen bombs into the German prison camp, much to every one’s amusement; a mile from us he destroys a camp of Bulgarian prisoners, and we wonder at his hard-headedness and laugh. But the next night we hear bombs crashing in the distance, and in the morning learn from some men in another section passing through that it was Vadlaincourt, where the Huns flew so near the ground that soldiers in the streets shot at them with rifles. At that height the aeroplanes could not mistake their targets, and they retired only when the hospital was a mass of flaming ruins. There are no smiles at this. Another night the purring motors reveal outlined high against the stars a fleet of Zeppelins, bound we know not where, but, we do know, on a mission of death to the innocent. * * * * * THE enemy aeroplane comes over us often. We have wondered why, but we now realize that while the Allies can get control of the air when they want it, to keep continual control would be too expensive in both men and machines. The anti-aircraft gun theoretically solves the problem. When an enemy machine appears, a battery of _contre-avions_ is notified and essays the destruction of the adventurer. It is pretty sport. A little white machine, sometimes catching the glint of the sun, dashes towards us at a great height. It is sighted, and then the high-pitched boom-booms of the _contre-avions_ start in, and the shrapnel breaks at varying distances around the machine like powder-puffs, which float along for some minutes. After a little of this harmless sport the Boche gets out of range, the guns cease, and the machine, having in the meanwhile disposed of some bombs or taken some photographs, dashes off, to be followed shortly by one or two Frenchmen. The practical value of the anti-aircraft guns is to keep the machines so high in the air that they can accomplish little, as the guns rarely score. At M——, where every day they have been shooting two or three hundred rounds at the machines which fly over the city, they are quite proud of their record, for once in one day they shot down three machines—two of their own and one German. They have been resting on their laurels ever since. It was a few examples like this which taught the French airmen to keep out of the sky while the _contre-avions_ were busy. * * * * *