16 WALLACE CLEMENT WARE SABINE— HALL fMEMOIKS l vo A L.xxi; 



The few remaining weeks will be full ones. In two or three days I shall go to Toulon, the Mediterranean 

 base of the French fleet, for some direct experience of the submarine problem — then to Italy and the Italian 

 front — back to Paris and three days later to England — back to the English front, then to the French front, 

 again back to Paris for a few days to report, and then home. This programme is sufficiently active. 



In the air service I can not say that I have become a pilot, but I have become a good passenger, and this, 

 the pilots say, is a very good thing to have along. I can also ride in a Paris taxicab without the slightest anxiety, 

 but the other day I was taken by an American officer in a little Ford machine and my heart was in my mouth 

 all the time. 



The fact is that his sincerity, scientific acumen, and energy so won the confidence of those 

 high in authority that he became an unofficial liaison agent between the French, the English, 

 and the Italians in matters of great military importance. He told me that he found these 

 allies were not exchanging information concerning airplane practice freely, and I believe he 

 said that he personally brought to pass the first official communication between the English 

 and the Italians on this matter. 



September 2, 1917, he wrote to his mother: 



This summer has been wonderful. It is a pleasure to be wanted by the French, British, and Italian Gov- 

 ernments as well as by our own. It is a pleasure to be of service. And along with it have come some wonder- 

 fully interesting experiences. I was in the last great Italian offensive on the Isonzo — the Carso — with the shells 

 flying overhead in both directions. In a great bombarding aeroplane I was down over the Adriatic and 

 Trieste and later up over and into the Alps. Tomorrow I go out over the Mediterranean in a dirigible, Tues- 

 day from Genoa in a hydro-aeroplane and Wednesday from Toulon in a submarine. Everything has been 

 opened to me. 



I venture the opinion that, when he reached America in the fall of 1917, he knew as much 

 about the varied phases of airplane warfare as any other one man of that time. 



Fortunately he did not have to wait long for a hearing in Washington. The authorities 

 there saw the value of the information he had brought home and placed him at once in the 

 innermost circles 16 having to do with airplane production and use. It is a great satisfaction 

 to record that, during all the anxious and impatient months that followed, he spoke with 

 enthusiasm of the devotion and ability of those with whom he was thus brought into the closest 

 relations; and, when some of them were afterward virtually placed on trial for misconduct, 

 he stoutly affirmed their merits, anticipating the verdict which the public has now reached 

 regarding them. 



Trying to carry at once his work of teaching in Cambridge and his duties as general adviser, 

 information expert, and adjuster of personal relations in Washington, he was constantly taxed 

 beyond the safety limit of his strength. Weekly, while the college year lasted, he would come 

 to Harvard for two or three days, and weekly he would be summoned back to Washington by 

 telegram. During the whole summer of 1918 he made only one or two visits, and these very 

 brief, to his family. 



When the college year 1918-19 opened, he saw in the existence of the Students' Army 

 Training Corps at Harvard conditions which appealed to his imagination with such force that 

 he broke away from his regular Washington engagements. Into the work of teaching, teaching 

 for war, he plunged with a crusading 19 enthusiasm, quite prepared to give his life, if need be, 

 in the effort. I tried, as his wife tried, to make him see that failure to meet a class or to take a 

 train for Washington, when he had, let us say, a temperature of 102°, was not quite so base 

 conduct as deserting the front in the crisis of a battle, but such remonstrances made little im- 



» The following is an extract from a letter written February 8, 1919, to Professor Sabine's mother by Col. Edward A. Deeds, from the office 

 of the Director of Military Aeronautics in Washington: "During my first conference with him I was so impressed that I immediately made him 

 one of my staff, giving him a desk in an adjoining office. All cablegrams regarding apparatus passed over his desk. He kept our Allies informed 

 of our progress and in turn interpreted their development to us. His judgment was considered so good that within a few months he was made 

 the final authority to select from the samples sent from overseas, of instruments to be put in production." 



" In addition to his obvious engagements, he had in mind, as I know from a hint he let fall, some desperate enterprise which I took to be an 

 airplane expedition on a great scale, for dropping immense quantities of high explosives in a place where they would be most likely to end the war. 

 In 1922 1 told his mother of this surmise of mine, and she appeared almost shocked, saying gently, "I should think he would have wanted to prevent 

 that." A few days later she said to me in the same gentle way, "I would have opened the earth and let the Germans down." Verily, the militant 

 Quaker is a formidable figure. 



