| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The War in the Air by H. G. Wells: down any stray cruisers that threatened your ports of commerce.
But to blockade and watch a coastline is one thing, to blockade
and watch the whole surface of a country is another, and cruisers
and privateers are things that take long to make, that cannot be
packed up and hidden and carried unostentatiously from point to
point. In aerial war the stronger side, even supposing it
destroyed the main battle fleet of the weaker, had then either to
patrol and watch or destroy every possible point at which he
might produce another and perhaps a novel and more deadly form of
flyer. It meant darkening his air with airships. It meant
building them by the thousand and making aeronauts by the.hundred
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Juana by Honore de Balzac: was that the 6th of the line was the regiment to enter Tarragona, and
why the disorder and confusion, natural enough in a city taken by
storm, degenerated for a time into a slight pillage.
This regiment possessed two officers, not at all remarkable among
these men of iron, who played, nevertheless, in the history we shall
now relate, a somewhat important part.
The first, a captain in the quartermaster's department, an officer
half civil, half military, was considered, in soldier phrase, to be
fighting his own battle. He pretended bravery, boasted loudly of
belonging to the 6th of the line, twirled his moustache with the air
of a man who was ready to demolish everything; but his brother
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