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GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR

battle-planes, capable of mounting two thousand feet a minute and attaining a speed of two hundred kilometres. Of these last they are building scores a week at a certain factory I visited just outside Paris, and this factory is but one of many. But the men (or rather, youths) who fly these aerial marvels — it is of these rather than the machines that I would tell, since of the machines I can describe little even if I would; but I have watched them hovering unconcernedly (and quite contemptuous of the barking attention of "Archie") above white shrapnel bursts — fleecy, innocent-seeming puffs of smoke that go by the name of "woolly bears." I have seen them turn and hover and swoop, swift and graceful as great eagles. I have watched master pilots of both armies, English and French, perform soul-shaking gyrations high in air, feats quite impossible hitherto and never attempted until lately. There is now a course of aerial gymnastics which every flier must pass successfully before he may call himself a "chasing" pilot; and, from

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