Their new machine, the Spad, was a first-rate instrument, superior in
strength, speed, and ease of control to the best Albatros, and the
Germans knew that this inferiority must be obviated. All modern battles
are thus preceded by technical rivalry. The preparation in factories,
week after week, and month after month, ultimately results in living
machinery which the staff uses as it pleases.
Living machinery it is, but it is in appearance only that it seems to be
independent of man. A battle is a collective work, to which each
participant, from the General-in-chief to the road-mender behind the
lines, brings his contribution. Colossal though the whole seems, perfect
as the enormous machine seems to be, it would not work if there were not
behind it a weak man made of poor flesh. A humble gunner, the anonymous
defenders of a trench, a pilot who purges the air of the hostile
presence, an observer who secures information in good time, some poor
soldier who has no idea that his individual action was connected with
the great drama, has occasionally brought about wonderful results--as a
stone falling into a pool makes its presence felt to the remotest banks.
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