“P. S.--Please don’t go talking about this business to all the old dowagers of your acquaintance.”
Officer R---- M---- was on a bomb-dropping and reconnaissance expedition in the neighborhood of Y---- in the late summer of 1915. When twenty miles from our lines he was hit by shrapnel and mortally wounded in the thigh, but making up his mind not to be taken prisoner, he kept bravely on, crossed the lines, and disdaining to take advantage of the cover thus afforded and land in the first available spot, kept resolutely on to the aerodrome from which he had set out, though losing blood rapidly and knowing he had not long to live. There he made a beautiful landing, handed in his report, and fell unconscious, never to come round again.
Early in the present year an air raid was organized to bomb a town not far from Constantinople. The raid was duly carried out, but on the journey home one of our aeroplanes was hit by a shell and forced to come to earth in marsh lands beside a small river. Immediately a party of Turkish infantry rushed up to take charge of the craft, but before they could reach it another of our machines swooped down on the scene and landed close by. The pilot jumped out, ran across a field swept by Turkish rifle fire, picked up the wounded pilot, and placing him on his back, staggered across to his own machine. Still subjected to a violent fusillade, he unthrottled his engine, and with the wounded man carried before him, bravely flew off and made his own base again.
The airship is the aristocrat of the air. In jealousy and scorn the aeroplane may refer to her as “gasbag,” “sausage”; may poke fun at her by reason of her unwieldy size, and laugh at her lack of speed; she still looks down on that craft with as much haughty disdain as a duchess of royal blood would bestow on a _nouveau riche_. Has she not a pedigree as long as may be forgotten?
She may trace her genealogy back to the Greek mythology and may number among her progenitors such men as Leonardo da Vinci, Cyrano de Bergerac, Francisco de Lana, Joseph Montgolfier, Blanchard, Santos Dumont and Count Zeppelin. The aeroplane is but an invention of the Twentieth Century!
Italy was the birthplace of the lighter-than-air craft; throughout the interesting history of the airship the names of famous Italian scientists predominate, and particularly those of the monastic order. Perhaps it was that convent life was inducive to study; untrammeled by the cares of the outside world, men turned their attention to the sciences and developed their imaginations. Be that as it may, we find that to-day the Italian airships are the finest in the world.