I have rarely been as much impressed as when I first saw the flying school at Pau. It is situated eight miles beyond the town on the hard meadow-lands granted in the sixteenth century to the villages of Osseau by Henri IV. The grant is still in effect, and the fields now in use are only rented by the government. They make a perfect aviation-ground. Four separate camps and a repair-station lie about a mile from one another and are named—Centre, Blériot, etc. At Centre I saw the low, gray hangars that house the aeroplanes, the tall wireless mast over which the communiqués from Paris are daily received, the office-building for the captain and monitors of the school, and the little café across the road where every one goes when off duty. Beyond were the Boche prisoners working on the road, building fences, or cutting wood, under direction of their non-commissioned officers and decrepit old territorials—grim reminders that this flying business is not all play. It was early morning—the mists were slowly lifting—when the "élèves pilotes" gathered for their daily work. Mechanics ran the machines out on the field in long lines, and the motors woke to motion with startling roars. One by one the pilots stepped in, and one by one the little biplanes moved swiftly across the field, rose, dipped slightly, rose again, and then mounted higher and higher into the gray sky. In the distance the snowy peaks of the Pyrenees formed an impressive background. At almost any time during training hours one can see from ten to twenty machines in the air. There are over three hundred men training. The repair-shops are like a large manufacturing plant. Five hundred mechanics are continually employed there. Among these are little Indo-Chinese, or "Anamites," as the French call them, who have come from distant Asia to help France in her struggle for liberty. As French citizens they are mobilized and wear the military uniform, but their tasks are usually of the monotonous, routine variety. [Illustration: "Mechanics ran the machines out on the field in long lines."] The repair-shops are continually working under pressure, as accidents occur daily.