The captain of the Imperial Camel Corps, with which the aviators were co-operating, formed the opinion that Lieutenant Ridley shot himself in the hope of saving the mechanic, the water they had being insufficient to last the two of them till help arrived. The Commanding Officer of the R. F. C. states: "There is no doubt in my mind that he performed this act of self-sacrifice in the hope of saving the other man." The history of the R. F. C. is a short one, but it is already full of glorious deeds. HOW SWEENY, OF THE FOREIGN LEGION, GOT HIS "HOT DOGS" _Told by Private John Joseph Casey of the Foreign Legion_ I--STORY OF AN AMERICAN "WEST-POINTER" Lieut. Charles Sweeny, of the French Foreign Legion, returned to New York to recover from a wound received during the French offensive in Champagne. Sweeny is an American, a graduate of West Point, and the son of a former president of the Federal Smelting and Refining Co., of Spokane, Wash. The following story, of a most unusual "Dutch treat," was told by Lieut. Sweeny to Private Casey, a New York artist, also fighting in the Foreign Legion, to the _New York World_. You have read of the cordial exchanges of tobacco and tidbits between the men of the North and the South, who were facing each other as deadly foes in the rifle pits during the Civil War. These exchanges (the amicable ones, of course) were quaint and peculiar enough between those avowed enemies, even though both were of the same blood and spoke the same tongue. But the one which now interests us took place during the present war, between Lieut. Charlie Sweeny of the French Foreign Legion, and the Germans in the adjacent trenches; by which exchange the Germans got nothing, and Sweeny got a feast of "hot dogs!" Sweeny, as you may infer from his name, is not a Frenchmen, even though he happens to be in the army service of France. I am also in the same service and my name is Casey. We are both Americans. Sweeny is a West Point graduate, and a native of Spokane, Wash. After his graduation from West Point he married a Belgian girl and settled down in Paris. His wife and two small children are living in that vicinity at the present time. When the war broke out Sweeny enlisted in the French Foreign Legion. He was promoted for gallantry in action; and last September, after leading us into the Boche lines during the Champagne offensive, he was decorated with the Legion of Honor. Lieut. Sweeny is the first American in fifty years who has held a commission in the French army. But how Sweeny won his "hot dogs" is a different story. One day when we were in the front trenches Sweeny handed me a cigarette. It looked like a Turkish cigarette and I duly remarked it. "No," said he, and he indicated a large tin box filled with the same sort, which he had with him, "these are a present from our friends, the enemy. They were given to me by the Germans." "Must have been sent over to you inside a 'Jack Johnson' shell," said I.