Another American aviator, also a Harvard man, who met death in the air, was Victor Chapman of New York, a youth of unusual charm, high ideals, and indomitable courage. At the very outbreak of the war he enlisted in the French Foreign Legion--a rough entourage for a college-bred man. Into the Foreign Legion drifted everything that was doubtful, and many that were criminal. No questions were asked of those who sought its hospitable ranks, and readers of Ouida's novel Under Two Flags will recall that it enveloped in its convenient obscurity British lordlings and the lowest of Catalonian thieves. But in time of actual war its personnel was less mixed, and Chapman's letters showed him serving there contentedly as pointer of a mitrailleuse. But not for long. Most of the spirited young Americans who entered the French Army aspired to serve in the aviation corps, and Chapman soon was transferred to that field. There he developed into a most daring flyer. On one occasion, with a bad scalp wound, after a brush with four German machines, he made his landing with his machine so badly wrecked that he had to hold together the broken ends of a severed control with one hand, while he steered with the other. Instead of laying up for the day he had his mechanician repair his machine while a surgeon repaired him, then, patched up together, man and machine took the air again in search for the Boches.
In June, 1916, though still suffering from a wound in the head, he started in his machine to carry some oranges to a comrade lying desperately wounded in a hospital some miles away. On the way he saw in the distance behind the German lines two French airmen set upon by an overwhelming force of Germans. Instantly he was off to the assistance of his friends, plunging into so unequal a fight that even his coming left the other Americans outnumbered. But he had scarce a chance to strike a blow. Some chance shot from a German gun put him out of action. All that the other two Americans, Lufbery and Prince, knew was that they saw a French machine come flying to their aid, and suddenly tip and fall away to earth. Until nightfall came and Chapman failed to return none was sure that he was the victim.
The part played by young Americans as volunteers for France before the United States entered upon the war was gallant and stimulating to national pride. It showed to the world--and to our own countrymen who needed the lesson as much as any--that we had among our youth scores who, moved by high ideals, stood ready to risk their lives for a sentiment--stood ready to brave the myriad discomforts of the trenches, the bursting shrapnel, the mutilating liquid fire, the torturing gas that German autocracy should be balked of its purpose of dominating the world.
And the service of these boys aided far more than they knew. The fact that our countrymen in numbers were flying for France kept ever before the American people the vision of that war in the air of which poets and philosophers had dreamed for ages. It brought home to our people the importance of aviation before our statesmen could begin to see it. It set our boys to reading of aircraft, building model planes, haunting the few aviation fields which at the time our country possessed. And it finally so filled the consciousness of our people with conviction of the supreme importance of aviation as an arm of the national armed service that long before the declaration of war the government was embarrassed by the flood of volunteers seeking to be enrolled in the flying forces of the nation.
THE UNITED STATES AT WAR
The entrance of the United States upon the war was the signal for a most active agitation of the question of overwhelming the enemy with illimitable fleets of aircraft. Though the agitation was most vociferous in this country whence it was hoped the enormous new fleets of aircraft would come, it was fomented and earnestly pressed by our Allies. France sent a deputation of her leading flyers over to supervise the instruction of our new pilots. England contributed experts to advise as to the construction of our machines. The most comprehensive plans were urged upon Congress and the Administration for the creation of a navy of the air. A bill for an initial appropriation of $640,000,000, for aircraft purposes alone, was passed and one for a Department of Aeronautics to be established, co-ordinate with those of War and the Navy, its secretary holding a seat in the cabinet, was introduced in Congress. Many of the most eminent retired officers of the navy joined in their support. Retired officers only because officers in active service were estopped from political agitation.
