The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1917-01-26
BY LORD NORTHCLIFFE.
Copyright 1917 by the United Press-)
,r-,,.-;,I,+ad in Great britain

Copyright 1917 by the United Press-)
(Copyrighted in Great Brittany
Headquarters of the Canadian
Army in France, Jan. 26.-There is lit
tie bitterness against the enemy
among the Canadian, American and
mass fighting and for his machine
like discipline but they have no use for
him in the kind of warfare now go
ing on.
you will find the Canadians and
Americans a thinking. Independent
remarked a distinguished Brit
ish general who had given me permits
sion to spend this very interesting day
and so 1 found them to be- They
had brought to the stock of vitality
and knowledge embraced in the Won
derful citizen armies of France and
England the qualities inherited by
generations which have spanned the
North American continent with its
railroads, chained Niagara. linked up
the worlds cities and armies by the
telephone, lit dugouts with incandes-
cent lamps. cheered them with
canned music" and brought a thou
sand other mechanical ideas to perfec-
ton.
Every U. S. City Represented.
If you take map of the United
States and go up and down the Amer
lean lines in France, you will find no
city, great or small, which has not
sent flying man, a bomber. an artil-
leryman, sniper. or dispatch rider
to help destroy PrusSian despotism.
heard mere of the spectacular part of
the American work-that which en-
thralls the whole world-the new art
of fighting in the skies.
I confess. indeed, that altho l have
spent many weeks at war. the spec
tacle of winged fighters high in the
sunlight is one that holds my atten-
ton as nothing in the world ever has
in peace times. When one was
younger one has been thrilled by a
close baseball or football match-but
when sheltered, perhaps in a trench
one sees two speckS approaching each
other and with pair of strong glasses
gradually realizes that one of the
specks is an American, who has given
up verything-home, prosperity and
probably life-to throw himself into a
foreign army, and that the other is a
brave German, doing what he con-
ceives to be his duty-one realizes that
mere are two combatants worth watch
ing.
Art of Flying Perfected in Years.
Very rarely do the Germans ven
ture over our lines and one has to be
very far forward NOWADAYS to get a
good view of fight between the allies
and the enemy in the air. I have had
hat good fortune several times. The
lir fighting of 1914 bears as much
resemblance to the air fighting of
1917 as an old steam automobile 10
the six cylinder of today. There is a
perpetual match in speeding I'D be-
tween the enemy and the allies Four
or five miles an hour extra pace
means everything. It's not an in
crease of engine power to over 200
horsepower that brought about the
change so much as the wonderful
and it is just here that the Anglo
Saxon and the Frenchlnan beat the
slower minded German. It is inst
this reason why German soldiers let
ters are now so full of complaint
about over-cautious German aviators.
When Pegoud invented looping the
loop the people asked, why? What's
the use of it?' Pegoud was a very
considerable inventor as well as a
flyer. is the answer. Looping the loon
is useful maneuver and it has been
succeeded by that extraordinary de-
velopment, the nose dive in which
an airman seems to fall like a stone
for IL thousand feet till the spectators
hair rises from his head in horror
then suddenly the machine flattens
out and scoots away and you find it
only a trick after all
Falls 5000 Feet and Lives.
l talked with one of our wounded
boys--he was just nineteen-who had
fallen 5000 feet owing to his rudder
wire connection being shot thru. BY
a miracle, his machine Strengthened
itself out automatically within a hun
dred yards of the ground and the
boy is alive and will fly again. 1 ask
ed him his sensations. He is prob
ably the first man in the world who
has fallen 5000 feet-more than ten
times the height of the Woolworth
building.
He said that for long time-what
seemed like hours-he knew he was
falling at a tremendous speed and
hen he lost consciousness. AS in a
1ream he found himself being picked
up out of the wreck of his machine
by people who thought he was dead.
At the beginning of an air fight
here is maneuvering for positions and
ieinting as in boxing. There are. as
-ule, two men in each machine,
pilot and an observer. except in the
smaller types, in which the wings are
slipped down to nothing to get extra
speed and climbing power. Knowl-
edge of the engine and plane power,
thickness of decision and accuracy of
'entiaI to the pilot. His observer is
provided with some form of pistol
md often with bombs.
To Finish in Pistol Duel.
Rival planes, like giant hawks, how
IT around above or below each other
ill one more expert or more daring
han the other. .naneuvers his oppo-
lent into a position from which he has
either got to fight n flee. The knock
1ut blow is usually a sudden descent
IN the enemy, accompanied by ac-
curate machine gun fire. Sometimes