| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from War and the Future by H. G. Wells: novel development of the modern offensive. Of course neither the
Tanks nor their very obvious next developments going to wrest the
decisive pre-eminence from the aeroplane. The aeroplane remains
now more than ever the instrument of victory upon the western
front. Aerial ascendancy, properly utilised, is victory. But
the mobile armoured big gun and the Tank as a machine-gun
silencer must enormously facilitate an advance against the
blinded enemy. Neither of them can advance against properly
aimed big gun fire. That has to be disposed of before they make
their entrance. It remains the function of the aeroplane to
locate the hostile big guns and to direct the /tir de
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Passion in the Desert by Honore de Balzac: sky, not a breath in the air, not a flaw on the bosom of the sand,
ever moving in diminutive waves; the horizon ended as at sea on a
clear day, with one line of light, definite as the cut of a sword.
The Provencal threw his arms round the trunk of one of the palm trees,
as though it were the body of a friend, and then, in the shelter of
the thin, straight shadow that the palm cast upon the granite, he
wept. Then sitting down he remained as he was, contemplating with
profound sadness the implacable scene, which was all he had to look
upon. He cried aloud, to measure the solitude. His voice, lost in the
hollows of the hill, sounded faintly, and aroused no echo--the echo
was in his own heart. The Provencal was twenty-two years old:--he
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