Bellefonte, Pa., August 15, 1919. CHEERING SOMEONE UP. Don’t you mind about the triumphs, Don’t you worry after fame; Don’t you grieve about succeeding, Let the future guard your name. All the best in life’s the simplest, Love will last when wealth is gone; Just be glad that you are living, And keep cheering someone on. Let your neighbers have the blossoms, Let your comrades wear the crown; Never mind the little setbacks Nor the blows that knock you down. You'll be there when they're forgotten, You'll be glad with youth and dawn, If you just forget your troubles, And keep cheering someone on. There's a lot of sorrow round you, Lots of lonesomeness and tears; Lots of heartaches and of worry Through the shadows of the years. And the world needs more than triumphs— More than all the swords we've drawn— It is hungering for the fellow Who keeps cheering others on. —Baltimore Sun. QUENTIN ROOSEVELT FLEW TO DEATH. No taunt of cowardice as some ru- mors have reported, sent Quentin Roosevelt out, handicapped by poor eye-sight, on his last night, to find a grave among his foes. Another un- worthy rumor, reporting that the young flyer’s associates had deserted him and left him to fall a prey to su- perior enemy forces, is equally false. On the authority of a friend of young Roosevelt’s, Capt. Alexander H. Mec- Lanahan, who was a member of the American squadron that fought with a Fokker group on the day when Quentin failed to return, these re- ports are so baseless that, with re- spect to the one charging desertion, at least, “it almost looks as if malice had prompted so despicable a charge.” Captain McLanahan is credited with the first complete story of the battle that resulted in the death of the youngest of Col. Theodore Roosevelt’s children. The Captain’s narrative is introduced, in the Philadelphia Pub- lic Ledger, by an account of an ex- perience which Quentin had in Eu- rope, some years ago. “Was it chance or a portent of the fate that awaited him ?” asks The Ledger, and describes the incident as follows: When he was twelve years old, in 1909, he was in Europe with his mother, his brother Archie, and his sister Ethel, who is now Mrs. Derby, and, writing from France to a friend in America, he described an airplane race which he had witnessed at Rheims. And it was near Rheims that he met his death eight years lat- er in another kind of airplane contest, wherein the price for which the noble spirited youth fought was world-lib- eration from autocracy. The letter was written to the Rev. Ambler M. Blackford, who had been Quentin’s teacher at the Episcopal High school, near Alexandria, Va., and afterward rector of St. Helena’s Church, at Beaufort, S. C. In part the letter was as follows: We were at Rheims and saw all the airplanes flying, and saw Curtis, who won the Gordon-Bennet cup for swift- est flight. You don’t know how pret- ty it was to see all the airplanes fly- ing at a time. At one time there were four airplanes in the air. It was the prettiest thing I ever saw. The prettiest one of them was a mono- plane called the Antoinette, which looks like a big bird in the air. It does not wiggle at all and goes very fast. It is awfully pretty turning.” The name of the leading aviator to whom he alluded in his letter—Curtis —is, by a strange coincidence, the same as that of the aviator who, on July 14, 1918, led the squadron of American airplanes into the fight which resulted in the death of Quen- tin. Recently there was talk about Quentin’s having been taunted by his associates and thus driven to go out in his machine to sure death while un- der the handicap of defective eye- sight. From the same source of ru- mor came a statement to the effect that, in the thick of the fight, Quen- tin’s associates deserted him, leaving him a prey to the vastly superior number of the enemy. “These statements are not only un- just, but absurd on their very face,” said Captain McLanahan.. “Who could have thought of uttering a taunt of cowardice to so brave a fight- er as Quentin. Only three days be- fore the battle in which he lost his life he had bagged an enemy airplane and under circumstances which stamped him a sure-enough hero and brought him recognition in the form of a. Croix de Guerre. “And in regard to abandoning him to his fate, it almost looks as if mal- ice had prompted so despicable a charge.” In proof whereof Captain McLanahan gave so great a wealth of detail of the work of the Ninety-fifth American aero squadron, first Pursuit Group, of which he and Lieutenant Quentin were members, as to furnish one of the most intensely interesting stories of the war. “Qur airdrome. was north of Ver- dun, about twenty miles back of the American front line. Quentin had joined us June 1. He had been instruc- tor at the aviation school at Issoudun, and I had formed his acquaintance there. I left Issoudun for patrol work at the front about two months before Quentin was allowed to join us. They liked his work at the aviation school so well that he had a hard time to ob- tain leave to get into the more peril- ous work at the front, for which he was always longing. “Qur regular occupation in the pa- trol service consisted of two flights a day, each lasting from an hour and a half to two hours. As this involved the necessity of going over the ene- my lines, it was, of course, extremely trying upon the nerves. I doubt whether anybody, except the most foolhardy, ever performed this sort of work without feeling greatly exhaust- ed after.a few hours of so tense a strain. Nevertheless, we were often required, when circumstances de- manded it, to go aloft four or even more times in the course of a day. HOW ee This was of rare occurrence and only when the enemy showed extreme ac-: tivity and every resource at our com- | mand had to be called into service in | opposition. | “Usually a patrol consisted of! three squads of from six to eight planes, one squad going to a height of 20,000 feet, the second 12,000, and the third 4,000 feet, They would fly in Vv formation, the leader about a hundred feet below the level of the next two, these 100 feet lower than those next after them, and so on to the last ones of the squad, who were always the highest.” : July 14 was an exceptionally fine day for the sort of work the squad- ron was doing. — “We went up at eleven o’clock in the forenoon,” says Captain McLan- ahan, and describes the flight and the fatal fight that followed: “There were eight of us, all, at that time, lieutenants—Curtis, of Roches- ter, N. Y.; Sewall, of Bath, Me.; Mitchell, of Manchester, Mass.; Bud- ford, of Nashville, Tenn.; Rossevelt, Hamilton, Montague, and I. As was customary, we chatted together be- fore we went up, and of course, plan- ned what we were going to do. It was arranged that Lieutenant Hamil- ton was to lead, and in case of any hitch to his motor Lieutenant Curtis was to take his place in the van. There was a rather stiff wind blow- ing in the direction of the German lines, and when we reached an alti- tude of about 10,000 feet we began to be carried with great rapidity toward them. We had not yet sighted any enemy airplanes after we had been aloft an hour. Hamilton’s motor went wrong about that time and he had to glide back home. In a few minutes he was followed by Montague, whose motor also had gone back on him. “Half an hour after this when we were five miles inside the German lines, we saw six of their Fokker planes coming toward us. They had been concealed until then by clouds between them and us, they flying on the under side of the clouds. Our planes were of the Nieuport type, of the lightest pursuing kind, and in al- most every respect like the type the Germans approaching us were using. The chief difference was that they carried stationary motors while ours were rotary ones, which gave us a trifle the advantage in turning. But this was more than neutralized by the very much greater inflammable ma- terial in our machines. When we got to within 500 feet of each other both sides began firing. The weapons on each side were virtu- ally identical, each Nieuport and each Fokker carrying two machine guns. As each plane had but one occupant, upon whom, of course, devolved the work not only of steering his craft but firing the guns, there was an ar- rangement by which these two duties could be executed with, so to speak, one movement. The steering-gear and the firing and aiming devices were adjusted to a stick in front of the avi- ator, in such a manner that lis hand could clutch all three levers at once and work each by a slight pressure. “Each of the machine guns carried about 250 rounds of ammunition, and unless it got jammed it was capable of firing the entire lot in half a min- ute. In order to determine whether the aim is accurate some of the bul- lets are so constructed that thev emit smoke and can thus be seen. These are called tracers. Without them it would be well-nigh impossible to guage one’s range so far up in the air, remote from anything by which com- parisons could be made to rectify the judgment in aiming. “From the moment that I singled out the enemy whom I was to engage in duel I naturally lost sight of every- thing else and kept my eyes pretty well glued upon him alone. Now and then, of course, I would, when I got a chance, look backward, too. For one can never tell but that another enemy plane, having disposed of its oppo- nent, may pay his respects to another one. “But if anybody imagines that an aviator engaged in the battle with an active opponent gets a chance to help along an associate, or even to pay at- tention to what is happening to any of the others, he is mistaken. One has to be on the alert for every move the enemy makes, and even do a lot of correct guessing as to what would be the most logical next move for him to make. For it is upon that next move that the entire fortunes of the war for those particular two aviators may hinge. After I had fired every round of ammunition, which seemed to be about the same time as my adversary discovered himself to be in the same plight, we drew away from each other and flew toward our respective bases. During our duel my airplane had be- come separated from the others of our unit and I could see no trace of them. I assumed, however, that they were either still fighting or had also finished and were on their way back home. Somehow I did not think of the third alternative, namely, that anything serious had happened to any of them. “Indeed, one’s thoughts are so com- pletely directed toward the business in hand, especially during a fight, that there is not a moment’s time that can be devoted to other matters, even those of the dearest, tenderest, or most sacred nature. To divert the mind even for an instant from the grim business of battle itself would be scarcely short of suicidal. And the home-bound journey after the battle is enlivened by so continuous a gaunt- let of bursting enemy anti-aircraft shells that . they suffice to keep the mind engaged in ways and means of dodging them until the home base is finally reached. During an air-battle, of course, the anti-aircraft guns are silent, for their shells would be equal- ly dangerous for friend and foe. “Liuetenant Bufard and McLana- han arrived after all of the others, except Lieutenant Roosevelt, who had returned to the field. They were not worried about him at the time, but when hours went by and he failed to return, they knew that something had gone wrong. Still, they did not think he had been killed. As Captain McLanahan explained: “We were encouraged to hope for the best by the fact that Quentin had remained out a considerable time longer than the rest of us three days before. On that occasion he had be- come separated from the squad, I don’t just know in what way, and — when “we saw him again he jumped out of his airplane in great excite- | ment and so radiant with elation and so broad a smile that his teeth showed | exactly in the same famous way as his father’s used to do. He never re- minded us so much of his father as on that occasion. ] He told us that after losing track of us he sighted a group of airplanes which he beileved to be ours and head- ed his airplane toward them. He was too cautious, however, to take any- thing for granted, and so in steering | toward the group he kept himself in the rear of them, and when he got closer he discovered that they had the cross of the Germans painted on them. His first impulse was to get away . ossible; but then the hero | as fast as 3 in him spoke up and he decided to avail himself of the chances to reduce the number of our enemies by at least one. And so, flying quite close to the last one of the airplanes, he fired quickly and with such good aim that the plane immediately went down, spinning around, with its nose point- ed to the ground. . «] guess I got that one all right,” he said but he did not wait to see what the final outcome might be, for aviators are full of tricks, and by feigning disaster to their own ma- chine often succeeded in drawing an over-confident enemy to destruction. Quentin knew this; and moreover, he had another big contract on his hands, namely, to get away from the associ- ates of the man whom he had attack- ed. They all turned upon him. firing from a dozen machine guns but in fir- ing his gun he had wheeled about at the same instant, and in that way he had a big handicap over the pursuers. He kept far enough in advance of them to get back within the American lines before they were able to lessen the distance sufficiently to make their shells effective. The rate of speed, by the way, was 140 miles an hour. “Despite his excitement and the re- ally exceptional achievement, Quentin modestly refrained from declaring positively that he had bagged his man. It was only afterward when we learned through an artillery observa- tion-ballean that the airplane brought down by Quentin had been seen to strike the earth with a crash, that he himself felt satisfied that he was en- titled to be regarded the victor. This was the occasion which brought him the Croix de Guerre. “When the day passed and Quentin failed to return, his associates still re- mained hopeful that he had landed in the enemy lines, and had been taken prisoner. But there was further news, bad news, as Captain McLana- han relates: “Even this forlorn hope was dispel- led the following day, when news was received that an observation-balloon’s crew had seen a Nieuport machine fall at Chamery, east of Fere-en-Tarden- ois, the place where Quentin had gone into the battle. A few days after that German avi- ators flying over the American lines dropped notes announcing that Quen- tin had been killed by two bullet wounds in the head and had been bur- ied with military honors by the Ger- mans. After the armistice was signed we saw the aviator who had killed Quen- tin. He was a non-commissioned offi- cer and one of the most expert flyers in the enemy’s air-service. After the armistice he was acting as an inspec- tor in the surrender of German air- planes to the Allies. This man said that when he learn- ed that the officer whom he had brought down belonged to so promi- nent 2 family in America he felt sor- y. “He was identified by a metal iden- tification-plate fa