On October 16th the Germans began the evacuation of
the Belgian coast region and each day increased the number of Belgian
towns once more in Allied control.
CHAPTER XLVIII
BATTLES IN THE AIR
He who conquers the fear of death is master of his fate. Upon this
philosophy fifty thousand young men of the warring nations went forth to
do battle among the clouds. The story of these battles is the real
romance of the World War. In 1914 no one had ever known and history had
never recorded a struggle to the death in the air. When the war ended a
new literature of adventure had been created, a literature emblazoned
with superb heroisms, with God-like daring, and with such utter disdain
of death that they were raised out of the olden ranks of mere
earth-crawling mankind and became supermen of the air.
Some of these heroic names became household words during the war. These
were the aces of the French, American and German air-forces. The British
adopted a policy in news concerning their airmen similar to that
governing their publication of submarine sinkings. They argued that the
naming of British, Canadian and Australian aces would direct the attacks
of German aviators against the most useful men in the British forces.
They also felt that publicity would tend toward the swagger which in
English slang was "swank" and toward a deterioration in discipline.
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