Lest We Forget Part 22

America has been called the "crucible" or the "melting pot" of nations, because many peoples of many races and many countries come together here, and in the heat of life and struggle are molded into Americans.

President Wilson said, in a speech at Cincinnati in 1916, "America is not made out of a single stock. Here we have a great melting pot."

As soon as we entered the war against Germany, the question arose in the minds of most people as to how the large number of Germans in the United States would act. Germany had taught them that even though they became naturalized and took the oath of allegiance as American citizens, such action was not binding, but was like "a sc.r.a.p of paper"

to be destroyed and forgotten whenever necessity demanded, and that "once a German" meant "always a German." It seems now that Germany actually expected the Germans, who had left their native land to seek opportunity, freedom, and citizenship under the Stars and Stripes, to fight against their new and adopted home; but events have proved that most German-Americans have higher ideals of right. A leading German-American has written a book ent.i.tled "Right before Peace"; its t.i.tle carries the thought that has guided most of his fellow-countrymen and their children in the United States during the World War.

A few months after the United States had declared that a state of war existed with Germany, many leading men of this country of foreign birth and parentage, signed, with others, a declaration drawn up by Theodore Roosevelt. This declaration, somewhat abbreviated but not altered in thought, is as follows. It makes very clear what America should mean to her adopted children.

We Americans are the children of the crucible. We have boasted that out of the crucible, the melting pot of life, in this free land, all the men and all the women who have come here from all the nations come forth as Americans, and as nothing else, like all other Americans, equal to them, and holding no allegiance to any other land or nation. We hold it then to be our duty, as it is of every American, always to stand together for the honor and interest of America, even if such a stand brings us into conflict with our fatherland. If an American does not so act, he is false to the teachings and the lives of Washington and Lincoln; he has no right in our country, and he should be sent out of it; for he has shown that the crucible has failed to do its work. The crucible must melt all who are cast into it, and it must turn them out in one American mold, the mold shaped one hundred and forty years ago by the men who, under Washington, founded this as a free nation, separate from all others. Even at that time, these true Americans were of different races; Paul Revere and Charles Carroll, Marion, Herkimer, Sullivan, Schuyler, and Muhlenberg were equals in service and respect with Lighthorse Harry Lee and Israel Putnam. Most of them, however, were of English blood, but they did not hesitate to fight Great Britain when she was in the wrong. They stood for liberty and for the eternal rule of right and justice, and they stood as Americans and as nothing else.

So must all Americans of whatever race act to-day; otherwise they are traitors to America. This applies, especially to-day, to all Americans of German blood who, in any manner, support Germany against the United States and her Allies.

Many pacifists have during the last three years proved themselves the evil enemies of their country. They now seek an inconclusive peace. In so doing they show themselves to be the spiritual heirs of the Tories, who, in the name of peace, opposed Washington, and of the Copperheads, who, in the name of peace, opposed Lincoln. We look upon them as traitors to the Republic and to the great cause of justice and humanity. This war is a war for the vital interests of America. When we fight for America abroad, we save our children from fighting for America at home beside their own ruined hearthstones. To accept any peace, except one based on the complete overthrow of Germany as she is under the ideals of Prussia and the Hohenzollerns, we believe would be an act of baseness and cowardice, and a betrayal of this country and of mankind.

The test of an American to-day is service against Germany. We should put forth as speedily as possible every particle of our vast, lazy strength to win the triumph over Germany. The government should at once deal with the greatest severity with traitors at home.

We must have but one flag. We must also have but one language.

This must be the language of the Declaration of Independence, of Washington's Farewell Address, and of Lincoln's Gettysburg Speech.

Of us who sign, some are Protestants, some are Catholics, some are Jews. Most of us were born in this country of parents born in various countries of the Old World--in Germany, France, England, Ireland, Italy, the Slavonic and the Scandinavian lands; some of us were born abroad; some of us are of Revolutionary stock. All of us are Americans, and nothing but Americans.

THE AMERICAN'S CREED[8]

I believe in the United States of America as a government of the people, by the people, for the people, whose just powers are derived from the consent of the governed; a democracy in a republic; a sovereign Nation of many sovereign States; a perfect Union, one and inseparable, established upon those principles of freedom, equality, justice, and humanity for which American patriots sacrificed their lives and fortunes.

I therefore believe it is my duty to my country to love it; to support its Const.i.tution; to obey its laws; to respect its flag; and to defend it against all enemies.

FOOTNOTES:

[8] COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY E.J. WYATT, BALTIMORE.

BIRDMEN

Although I am an American, I am still in the French aviation corps, in which I enlisted when the war broke out. I am too old for service under the Stars and Stripes, but not too old to risk my life under the French flag for the freedom of the world.

I was trained in a French aviation school. Flyers were needed immediately; and so I did not go through "a ground school," or any teaching like that given for eight weeks in the American ground schools. I was sent directly to the flying field and given a machine at once. I did not, as they do at American flying fields, go up first with an instructor who might be tempted to "scare me to death" by "looping the loop" or doing "tail spins." I took my own machine at the very start and, after being given the simplest directions, away I went in it; but I did not break any records for alt.i.tude.

It was a small monoplane with a 20-horse-power motor, and its wings had been clipped; so all it could do was to roll along the ground. It was, however, some time before I could guide it in a straight line. I was discouraged at first, but felt better when I learned that it was very difficult even for an experienced flyer.

Such machines are called "penguins" and have a trick of turning suddenly in a short half circle and smashing the end of a wing against the ground. The queer antics of beginners in them furnish fun for every one on the flying fields.

After I had mastered this machine, I was given one with a motor of greater horse power, and in this I could fly along the ground at nearly sixty miles an hour; but I could not rise into the air, for the wings were clipped and did not have sufficient sustaining power to hold the machine in the air.

Then at last I was given a plane with full-sized wings; but, as its motor generated only about 25-horse power, I could get only from three to six feet above the ground, and went skimming along now on the ground and now a few feet in the air.

In these machines, we learned only how to manage the tail of the machine. As we skimmed along the ground, we tipped the tail at an angle slightly above a straight line. In a few moments we were off the ground, and the roar of the motor sounded softer and smoother. It seemed as if we were very far from the earth, and that something might break and dash us to our death--in reality, we had not risen six feet.

To get back to earth, we must push the lever that lowers the tail--but this must be done very slightly and very carefully. A little push too much, and the machine will suddenly dive into the ground.

After my experience with the first two machines, I found it easy to handle this one, and was soon given one that would take me up about fifty feet and give me a chance to learn the "feel of the air." All my flying was still in straight lines, or as nearly straight as I could make it. We were not yet allowed to try to turn.

In the next machine I could rise two or three hundred feet and began to learn to turn, although most of the flying was still in straight lines.

I was beginning to make good landings, which is the hardest part of the game. We have to let the ship down on two wheels and let the tail skid at a speed of thirty-five miles an hour and not break the landing gear.

The machines often bound three or four times when landing and that is hard on the landing gear. My last landing was so soft that I was not sure when I touched the ground. To take off is quite easy. The ship is controlled by an upright stick which is between one's knees and just right for the left hand. The rudder is controlled by the feet, and the throttle is on the right side. To take off, we get up a speed of about forty-six miles per hour and raise the tail up until the ship is level, and then when she starts to rise, lift the nose just a little and climb slowly.

On turns, the ship has to be banked, tipped up with the inside wing low, and turned with the rudder. It is quite a hard thing to do when it is rough, as just about the time we bank, we get a puff of wind which will hit one wing and she will roll and rock so that we have to get her straightened out. It is a fight all the time until you get about 3000 feet up, when the air gets steady.

To land, we slow the engine down to idling speed and come down in a steep glide until five or six feet from the ground, then level off and glide along until she begins to settle, then jerk the tail down until she stops. We always have to take off and come down against the wind.

I was obliged to follow the directions of my instructor, much against my own wishes. It seemed to me that I could now do anything in the air and that there was not the slightest danger. This too early feeling of mastery is the cause of many beginners' being injured or killed, by trying "stunts" too difficult for them.

I did not spend much time in flying at first, after I had learned how to handle the airplane. It is not difficult to stay in the air and to fly, but it is difficult to land safely without breaking the machine.

So I was kept practicing landing.

To secure my license I was required to fly 50 miles in a straight line to a named place, and then back; then to fly 200 miles in a triangle, pa.s.sing through two named places; and last of all to stay one hour in the air at an alt.i.tude higher than 7000 feet.

Now the French schools require only a 30-mile flight with three successful landings, before sending the flyer to the finishing school, where he learns to do all the "stunts" that a fighter must be able to do in order to succeed. I learned the tail wing slip, the tail spin and dive, the _vrille_, to loop the loop, and many other fancy flying tricks. They have saved my life more than once.

I was interested in reading the other day James Norman Hall's funny description of how he learned at last to master the penguin. He felt triumphant, but he says, "But no one had seen my splendid sortie. Now that I had arrived, no one paid the least attention to me. All eyes were turned upward, and following them with my own, I saw an airplane outlined against a heaped-up pile of snow-white cloud. It was moving at tremendous speed, when suddenly it darted straight upward, wavered for a second or two, turned slowly on one wing, and fell, nose-down, turning round and round as it fell, like a sc.r.a.p of paper. It was the _vrille_, the prettiest piece of aerial acrobatics that one could wish to see. It was a wonderful, an incredible sight.

"Some one was counting the turns of the _vrille_. Six, seven, eight; then the airman came out of it on an even keel, and, nosing down to gather speed, looped twice in quick succession. Afterward he did the _retournement_, turning completely over in the air and going back in the opposite direction; then spiraled down and pa.s.sed over our heads at about fifty meters, landing at the opposite side of the field so beautifully that it was impossible to know when the machine touched the ground."

There is nothing in all the experiences of life like what one feels in flying through the air, especially at a great height and with no other machines in sight. There is a loneliness, unlike any other kind of loneliness; there is a feeling of smallness and weakness; a sense of the immensity of things and of the presence and nearness of G.o.d. It is surprising that in doing that in which man has shown his greatest power over the forces of Nature, he feels most his littleness and how easily he could be destroyed by the very forces he has conquered.

Lieutenant Roberts, an American flying in France, described not long ago an experience that came just after his first flight. He was up in the air, higher than anybody had ever been before, when the machine suddenly broke into little pieces, which, as he was tumbling down through the air, he vainly tried to catch. Just as he hit the ground and broke every bone in his body, he woke up on the floor beside his bunk.

The Englishmen are the most daring of all the flyers, take the most risks, and do the most dangerous "stunts." Not so much is heard of them because their exploits and their scores are not announced by the British army. Bishop, who has just been ordered from the flying field to safer work, is said to have brought down nearly eighty German planes, and on the day he learned of his recall, went up and brought down two.

The Americans are daredevils, too. I took one of them one night as a "guest," when I went over Metz on a bombing expedition. One of the bombs stuck. He thought it might cause us trouble when we landed, possibly explode and kill us, so he crawled out over the fusilage and released it. He certainly earned his pa.s.sage.

With several other Americans we formed what we called the American Escadrille; but as the United States was neutral at that time, we were obliged to change the name to the Lafayette Escadrille.

Since joining the squadron, I have used all sorts of machines, and there are many of them, from the heavy bombing machine to the swift little swallow-like scouts.

My first important work was reconnoissance, in which I carried an observer. I managed the machine, and he did the reconnoitering. We went out twice a day and flew over into German territory, sometimes as far in as fifty miles, observing all that was going on, the movements of troops and supplies, and the building of railroads and defensive works.

We also took photographs of the country over which we flew.

Reconnoissance is dangerous work, and is constantly growing more so, as anti-aircraft guns are improved. These guns are mounted on a revolving table, upon which is a mirror in which the airplane shows as soon as it comes within range of the gun. With an instrument designed for the purpose, the crew get the flyer's alt.i.tude; and with another, the rate at which he is traveling. They aim the gun for the proper alt.i.tude, make the correct allowance for the time it will take the sh.e.l.l to reach him, and as they have an effective range of over 30,000 feet, there is reason to worry. Yet by zig-zagging and other devices, the aviators are rarely brought down by anti-aircraft guns. The small scout machines with a wing spread of not more than thirty feet are not visible to the naked eye when at an alt.i.tude of over 10,000 feet, and are therefore safe from these guns at this height.

But reconnoissance, to be effective, must be done at a much lower alt.i.tude, and sometimes the machine must remain under fire for a considerable period of time. Poiret, the French aviator, fighting with the Russians, with a captain of the General Staff for an observer, was under rifle and sh.e.l.l fire for about twenty minutes. His machine was up about 4000 feet. Ten bullets and two pieces of sh.e.l.l hit his airplane, but he never lost control. The captain was shot through the heel, the bullet coming out of his calf; but he continued taking notes.

They returned in safety to their lines.