Let us hope that after this war for liberty and freedom has ended in the subjugation of militarism, his further prophecy in regard to "the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world" may also come true.
When airmen fly over their opponent's lines, they are first met by shells from anti-aircraft guns and bullets from machine-guns, and between the two they are often forced to return to their own side of the lines. It is a beautiful picture, on a clear day, to see these machines, swerving this way and that, diving, ascending, out of the path of this rain of shot and shell that greets them, though it rarely brings them down. The swaying machine, cutting its way through the hundreds of white and black puffy balls, caused by the bursting shells, is a sight for gods and men; and the men, at least, never tire of watching it.
A very amusing incident, in this connection, is told by the officers of a certain Canadian battalion of infantry. Their original Lieutenant Colonel, now a General, came of a well-known and able, though rather egotistical and bombastic Canadian family. When in the trenches this Lieutenant Colonel always insisted on being accompanied by his batman or a special runner whose duty it was to carry a Ross rifle ready loaded. When he saw a German plane soaring over No Man's Land toward him, anywhere from ten thousand to fifteen thousand feet in the air, he would cry:--
"Quick, give me that rifle!" and, putting it to his shoulder, he would pump shot after shot in the direction of the distant airman. If the latter chanced to go back from whence he came, the Lieutenant Colonel would turn to those about him with a satisfied and triumphant smile of self-approbation:--
"Ah, I've turned him back," he would say.
When he learned, as he occasionally did, that he had been filling the sky with lead in a mistaken effort to hit one of our own machines, it worried him not at all, for the knowledge he had that he had "turned back" hundreds of Hun planes prevented an occasional slight mistake from damping the ardor of a spirit such as his.
When the war is over he may rest assured, as he no doubt will, that no Canadian, no Britisher, yes, it might even be written, no man, had done more in this great war to accomplish the defeat of the Hun than he!
