Nearly all officers carried strong glasses in
this war, and yet even to the keenest eyes the hosts of the air were
visible only in part.
John now and then saw telephone wires running through the clumps of
forest and across the fields. There was a perfect web of them, reaching
all the way from Alsace and the Forest of Argonne to the sea. Generals
talked to one another over them, and over these wires the signal
officers sent messages to the men in the batteries telling them how to
fire their guns.
The telegraph, too, was at work. The wires were clicking everywhere, and
the air was filled also with messages which went on no wires at all,
but which took invisible wings unto themselves. The wireless, despite
its constant use, remained a mystery and wonder to John. One of his most
vivid memories was that night on the roof of the chateau, when Wharton
talked through space to the German generals, and learned their plans.
He looked up now and his eyes were shut, but he almost fancied that he
could see the words passing in clouds over his head, written on nothing,
but there, nevertheless, the most mysterious and, in some ways, the most
powerful part of the hosts of the air, the hosts that within a
generation had changed the ways of armies and battles. He opened his
eyes and found himself searching for aeroplanes, the most tangible
portion of those hosts of the air, with which man had to fight.
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