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Aviation History
1916
1916 - 1084.PDF
(fiJCHTl DECEMEER 7, 1916. IF itfwere notjthat I know this weather brings dis comfort to those who are fighting for our liberty on land and sea, I could welcome the present cold snap. With Christmas but three weeks ahead, it is seasonable to see the hoar frost on the bushes and trees, turning familiar,spots into scenes upon which one may gaze as though on a new land. This morning the air was clear and brisk. The golden light from the rising sun was reflected from the rime on every twig until the whole was a-glitter. It was the sort of morning when one has a distinct inclination to curtail the early splash, or even not to splash at all, but to compromise with [a. jug of water drawn from the tap that has direct communication with the kitchen boiler. The breakfast room is cosy with its hour-old fire, the toast is cooling in the rack, and from somewhere which is prohibited area to the king of the castle comes the appetising smell of frizzling bacon. All very nice and comfortable and comforting and enervating to the man in the early forties, who may soon have to get into training to follow on the heels of those who have already crossed the silver streak into a land of hardship. For England is getting ready to start fighting, and none may tell to what extent the age limit may be extended, even if there be a limit fixed that shall be mentioned in figures. It is possible that the limit may be one of bodily fitness, with age hardly considered. Soon some of us ma ' have other reasons to know that England is at war, besides the grumblings from the kitchen about the scarcity of sugar. This morning the aeroplanes were sailing overhead. Mornings have passed, misty, foggy mornings, when flying was an impossibility, and this morning the machines were roaring around, frisking in the early sunshine, their pilots putting them through all the evolutions at command as though it were a treat to be alive and get away up into the clear air for a kick and a gambol. And I wondered whether the pilots were cold. Whether up there in the frosty morning air, through which they were being whisked at 80 miles or more an hour, it was not eating into their very bones, and freezing them stiff. It is cold, doubtlessly, but I have seen^pilots descend from these jaunts into the upper air, and spring from their machines with rosy feces and smiling lips. It is cold without a doubt. Should you ask one of these flyers, he will tell you so, probably with a suitable adjective attached, but he will rub his hands and stamp his feet, and then peel off his greatcoat and tuck it under his arm. I doubt whether any one of those far above my house this morning was anything like as cold as I was during the few moments I stood in my garden to watch them, and I wondered why, with a fairly good guess at the answer. Talking the matter over in the train, from the windows of which we could still see some machines circling above, my usual travelling companion admitted that pilots did not feel the cold as we did because they were used to it, but could not be brought to see that it would be a great deal better for many more of us if we could get used to it, or in other words, become more healthy. Fact of the matter is, there is too much indolence. Too much of standing astride the hearthrug. Too much rushing from warm rooms into warm trains, and from warm trains into warm offices. I have known people, although you may not believe it, who every winter have- pasted strips of paper round the window frames, yet those nearly dead with consump tion can sleep out on the open verandas of hospitals. Of course all this must lead up to a yarn. I knew a man who was always getting bitten by the microbe responsible for new ideas. Ordinarily, he was a respectable citizen of normal habits, but when the germ of any new crank idea got into his brain, he would go for it hot-foot. The first symptoms of his lapse from the path of sanity were heralded by his suddenly found conviction that a hat was an absurd innovation 6i human foolishness. Winter put a time limit on his idea that nature sent us into this world exactly as we were intended to dress, and he argued that in any other country but this it would have been all right, but that here we must take artificial means to protect ourselves. This period embraced double underclothing, bodybelts, knitted waistcoats, over shoes, and somebody's malted extract of oil taken three times a day At times he was a vegetarian. His family had a lovely time, for like all converts to anything new, he must take all along with him. Finally he got the idea that they should all sleep in tents in the garden. One night was sufficient for his wife to present her ultimatum so far as she and the children were concerned, but he stuck to it for nearly a week, and would probably have continued right through the winter except for the fact that he was in his proper bed when the doctor came, and by the time he got well enough to think of anything in particular, he was off on a new stunt. I knew another man who before the war filled himself half full of medicine every winter morning, and wore clothing enough for three. Joining the G.R.s early after their creation, he has passed two years of hard training, including sentry go half the nights in the week, bucked up by trench digging every Sunday. I saw him yesterday looking the picture of health. He has put on weight, never wears a topcoat except his uniform one when on duty. He works -from 10 to 12 hours every day in the city, and when I saw him outside the Royal Exchange he laughed at me for saying it was cold. And of course all this should lead up to a moral, but as it might not adorn a tale I will not point it —unless I have already done so. 076
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