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Raymond Commanding Escadrille 3. The other letter came from Major Brocard: My dear Comrade: I am profoundly moved to hear of the thought you have had of giving the highest consecration to Guynemer's memory by a ceremony at the Panthéon. It had occurred to all of us that only the lofty dome of the Panthéon was large enough for such wings.

As he rises into the upper regions of the air he feels a soothing influence and an increase of power: the dead man himself pilots his machine, wields the controls, and helps him higher, ever higher up in divine intoxication. In the same way the warlike power of Guynemer's companions is not diminished.

But one fellow standing on the rick says: "Napoleon dead! psha! it's plain those people don't know him!" The journalist added that he heard a speech of the same kind in the bush-region of Aveyron. A passenger on the motor-bus read in a newspaper the news of Guynemer's death; everybody seemed dismayed. The chauffeur alone smiled skeptically as he examined the spark plugs of his engine.

Thus the immoderate Guynemer had for his first friend a comrade who knew exactly his own limits. Guynemer could save Jean Krebs from his excess of literal honesty by showing him the enchantment of his own ecstasies, but Jean Krebs furnished the motor for Guynemer's ambitious young wings.

Altogether they were divided into two groups, one under the command of Major Féquant, the other under that of Captain Brocard, appointed chief of battalion. It becomes impossible to enumerate all Guynemer's victories, and we can merely emphasize the days on which he surpassed himself.

Guynemer's only answer was to wave towards the sky then freeing itself from its veils of fog as he himself was shaking off his hesitancy, and his friend felt that he must not be urgent. Everybody of late had noticed his nervousness, and Guynemer knew it and resented it; tact was more necessary than ever with him.

One officer, Raymond, I think, said in a careless manner: "Guynemer's fate will be ours, of course." Somebody protested: "The country needs men like you." To which Deullin answered: "Why does it? There will be others after us, and the life we lead...." But Captain d'Harcourt broke in gaily: "Come on; dinner's ready and with this bright moon and clear sky we are sure to get bombed."

Guynemer's life falls naturally into the legendary rhythm, and the simple and exact truth resembles a fairy tale. The writers of antiquity have mourned in touching accents the loss of young men cut down in the flower of their youth. "The city," sighs Pericles, "has lost its light, the year has lost its spring."

He ascended and never came back, that is all. Perhaps our descendants will say: "He flew so high that he could not come down again." I remember a strange line read in some Miscellany in my youth and never forgotten, though the rest of the poem has vanished from memory: Un jet d'eau qui montait n'est pas redescendu. Does this not embody the upspringing force of Guynemer's brilliant youth?

Finally, on July 19 memorable date his journal records Guynemer's first victory: "Started with Guerder after a Boche reported at Couvres and caught up with him over Pierrefonds. Shot one belt, machine-gun jammed, then unjammed. The Boche fled and landed in the direction of Laon. At Coucy we turned back and saw an Aviatik going toward Soissons at about 3200 meters up.