Evidently the anti-aircraft guns, though rather terrifying, do very little damage.  Airmen have had shells burst all round them for a long time without being hurt.  Of course they are careful to fly at a high altitude.  When struck by shrapnel, however, an aeroplane (one witness says) “just crumples up like a broken egg.”  On the other hand, bombs dropped from aeroplanes do great damage, if properly directed.  A petrol bomb was dropped by an English airman at night into a German bivouac with alarming results, and another thrown at a cavalry column struck an ammunition wagon and killed fifteen men.  A French airman wiped out a cavalry troop with a bomb, and the effect of the steel arrows used by French aviators is known to be damaging.  The German bombs thrown by Zeppelins and Taube aeroplanes on Antwerp and Paris do not appear to have much disturbed either the property or equanimity of the inhabitants.  So far as aerial excursions are concerned the most brilliant exploit is undoubtedly that of Flight-Lieutenant C.H.  Collet, of the Naval Wing of the British Flying Corps, who, with a fleet of five aeroplanes swept across the German frontier and, hovering over Duesseldorf, dropped three bombs with unerring effect upon the Zeppelin sheds.

Bomb-dropping, however, has not been indulged in to any great extent by either of the combatants, and the chief use to which air machines have been put is that of scouting.  The Germans use them largely for range finding, and they seem to prove a very accurate guide to the gunners.  “We were advancing on the German right and doing splendidly,” writes Private Boardman (Bradford) “when we saw an aeroplane hover right over our heads, and by some signaling give the German artillery the range.  The aviator had hardly gone when we were riddled with shot and shell.”  A sergeant of the 21st Lancers says the signaling is done by dropping a kind of silver ball or disc from the aeroplanes, and the Germans watch for this and locate our position to a nicety at once.

As scouts—­and that, meantime, is the real practical purpose of aeroplanes in war—­the British aviators have done wonders.  Their machines are lighter and faster than those of the Germans, and as they make a daily average of nine reconnaissance flights of over 100 miles each it will be understood that they keep the Intelligence Department well supplied with accurate information of the enemy’s movements.

French airmen are particularly daring both in reconnaissance and in flight, and the well-known M. Vedrines, whose achievements are familiar to English people, has already brought down three German aeroplanes.  In one encounter he fought in a Bleriot machine carrying a mitrailleuse, and the enemy dropped, riddled with bullets.  So completely have some of the aeroplanes been perforated, without mishap, says the Daily Telegraph’s war correspondent, that the pilots have found a new game.  Each evening after their flights they count the number of bullet holes in their machine, marking each with a circle in red chalk, so that none may be included in the next day’s total.  The record appears to be thirty-seven holes in one day, and the pilot in question claims to be the “record man du monde.”