CHAPTER IV

THE BEGINNINGS OF THE AIR FORCE

Those who fear, or pretend to fear, that England may witness a revolution like the French Revolution of the eighteenth century or the Russian Revolution of the twentieth century would be well advised to compose their minds by the study of English history. That history, in all its parts, shows the passion of the English people for continuity of development. The first care of the practical Englishman who desires change is to find some precedent, which may serve to give to change the authority of ancient usage. Our laws have always been administered in this spirit; we are willing to accept, and even to hasten, change, if we can show that the change is no real change, but is only a reversion to an older practice, or a development of an established law. It was a saying of King Alphonso of Aragon that among the many things which in this life men possess or desire all the rest are baubles compared with old wood to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to converse with, and old books to read. The English people are of a like mind; what they most care for is old customs to cherish. The very rebels of England are careful to find an honourable pedigree for their rebellion, and to invoke the support of their forefathers. A revolution based only on theory, a system warranted only by thought, will never come home to Englishmen.

The national love for continuity of development is well seen in the history of the genesis of the national air force. The whole of that force, aeroplanes, airships, kite balloons, and the rest, must be affiliated to a certain small balloon detachment of the Royal Engineers at Chatham. Little by little, very slowly and gradually at first, while only the balloon was in question, with amazing rapidity later, when the aeroplane and the airship came into being and were needed for the war, that single experimental unit of the Royal Engineers grew and transformed itself into a vast independent organization. Names and uniforms, constitutions and regulations, were altered so often that the whole change might seem to be an orgy of official frivolity if it were not remembered that the powers brought within reach of man by the new science were increasing at an even greater speed. But there was no breach of continuity; the process was a process of growth; the new was added, and the old was not abolished.

From the days of the Montgolfiers for more than a century the value of the balloon in war was a matter of debate and question and experiment. At the battle of Fleurus, in 1794, the triumphant French republican army used a captive balloon, chiefly, perhaps, as a symbol and token of the new era of science and liberty. Balloons were used in the Peninsular Campaign, but Napoleon's greatest achievements owed nothing to observation from the air. Even in the American Civil War, where the Federals certainly derived some advantage from their use, balloons were criticized and ridiculed more than they were feared. In Great Britain military experiments with balloons began at Woolwich Arsenal in 1878. In the following year Captain R. P. Lee, of the Royal Engineers, reporting on the work done at the arsenal, stated that they had a thoroughly sound and reliable fleet of five balloons, and a few trained officers and men, competent to undertake their management. One of these balloons accompanied the troops on manoeuvre at the Easter Volunteer Review at Brighton. Captain H. Elsdale, of the Royal Engineers, who was in charge of the party, took part in the final march past; he was in the car of the balloon at a height of two hundred and fifty feet, while Captain J. L. B. Templer, a militia officer, managed the transport on the ground. A balloon section was present at the Aldershot manoeuvres both in 1880 and in 1882; it was judged a success, and instructions were issued in the autumn of 1882 that the Balloon Equipment Store, as the establishment at Woolwich was called, should be removed to the School of Military Engineering at Chatham, where a small balloon factory, depot, and school of instruction was established in 1883. The practice with the balloons was under the charge of Major Lee, and in that year Major Templer came to Chatham to carry out certain experiments in the manufacture of balloons. He brought with him a family of the name of Weinling, to construct balloons on a system devised by himself. The fabric of the balloons was the internal membrane of the lower intestine of the ox, sometimes called gold-beater's skin. The Weinling family had a secret, or what they believed to be a secret, for the secure joining together of the pieces of this skin. As they held for some time an unchallenged monopoly in the manufacture of aircraft for the British Empire, they have earned the right to a niche in the temple of Fame. They were five in number--Mrs. Weinling and her elder son Fred, who were the first to arrive at Chatham, her two daughters, Mary Anne and Eugene, and a younger son Willie, who was about eighteen years old and was subject to fits. Their work was carried on not without interruption. In November 1883 Major Templer wrote a letter to the president of the Royal Engineer Committee, stating that he was delayed in the completion of the skin balloon by the principal workman having been sentenced to three months' imprisonment for an assault on the police. As the Weinling family were the only persons who had ever worked in skin-balloon manufacture, and as he himself was the only other person acquainted with the art, Major Templer asked and obtained leave to have two sappers trained to the work. But this new departure led before long to further troubles. The family were very jealous of their secret, and when the balloon factory began to be enlarged it was only with the greatest difficulty that the members of the family could be induced to give instruction to other workers.

Nevertheless, in the course of a year, several balloons were made, of three sizes, the largest size having ten thousand cubic feet of capacity, and the smaller sizes seven thousand and four thousand five hundred cubic feet. When, in the autumn of 1884, an expedition was sent to Bechuanaland under Sir Charles Warren, to expel the filibusters who had raided the territory, to pacificate the country, and to reinstate the natives, a balloon detachment under Major Elsdale and Captain F. C. Trollope, of the Grenadier Guards, attached to the Royal Engineers, was included in the expedition. They took with them in the detachment three balloons, and a staff consisting of fifteen non-commissioned officers and men. There was no fighting. At Mafeking, which was then a native village, it was found that owing to the elevation above sea-level neither of the two smaller balloons had lift enough to raise a man into the air, and that the largest balloon could take up only one observer. A native chief, Montsiou by name, went up a short distance in the balloon. The remark that he made serves to show the value of aircraft in impressing primitive peoples. 'If the first white men', he said, 'who came into this country had brought a thing like that, and having gone up in it before our eyes, had then come down and demanded that we should worship and serve them, we would have done so. The English have indeed great power.' The chief was right. For any nation to which is entrusted the policing and administration of large tracts of uncivilized country, an air force, civil and military, is an instrument of great power.

Balloons were used again on active service in the following year, 1885, in the Soudan. A small detachment, under Major Templer with Lieutenant R. J. H. L. MacKenzie, of the Royal Engineers, and nine non-commissioned officers and sappers, accompanied the expeditionary force. The best of the material had been sent to Bechuanaland, so the equipment was very imperfect, but ascents made in a balloon of one of the smaller types, at El Teb and Tamai, and elsewhere, proved useful for reconnaissance.

On the return of these two expeditions no attempt was made to keep up a regular balloon section. What was done must for the most part be credited to the energy of those few officers who believed in the future of balloons. Majors Elsdale and Templer ran the factory for building balloons and making hydrogen, and a few non-commissioned officers, trained in balloon work, were held on the strength of depot companies. Most of the practice, in observation of gunfire and the like, was carried out with captive balloons; the few trips adventured in free balloons were undertaken only when the gas had so deteriorated that the balloon had not lift enough for captive work. Major Elsdale did what he could to improve equipment, and urged that two or three officers should be appointed to give their whole time to balloons and to form the nucleus of a balloon corps. He is himself remembered for his pioneer experiments in aerial photography; he sent up cameras attached to small free balloons, with a clockwork apparatus which exposed the plates at regular intervals and which finally ripped the balloon to bring it to earth again. Major Templer, for his part, took a house at Lidsing, about four miles from Chatham and the same distance from Maidstone, and, in 1887, started a small summer training camp for balloon work in one of the fields adjoining his house. Lieutenants G. E. Phillips and C. F. Close, of the Royal Engineers, attended this camp, which was held again in the following years. In 1889 Lieutenants B. R. Ward and H. B. Jones, also of the Royal Engineers, joined it, and the authorities were soon faced with the necessity of coming to a decision whether balloons should be introduced as a definite part of the service. In that year Lieutenant-General Sir Evelyn Wood was in command of the Aldershot Division; he arranged for a balloon detachment, consisting of Lieutenants Ward and Jones, Sergeant-Major Wise, and some thirty non-commissioned officers and men, to be sent to Aldershot early in the summer to take part in the annual manoeuvres. The experiment was a success. The balloons operated with a force which marched out from Aldershot against a flying column of the enemy encamped near the Frensham ponds. A fortunate piece of observation work is believed to have won Sir Evelyn Wood's favour for the new arm. The balloons were asked to answer the question, 'Has the enemy any outposts in rear of his camp?' Lieutenant Ward made an ascent, and though it was getting dusk and the country was not very open, he was able to see the enemy placing pickets round his camp on the nearer side, but could detect no movement beyond the camp. He reported that there were no outposts in rear of the camp; and a night attack sent out from Aldershot was a complete success.

The German Emperor was present at these same manoeuvres, and a march past on the Fox Hills was organized for his benefit. The balloon detachment was ordered to take part in it. Balloons, being an unrecognized part of the army, were not hampered by any of those regulations which prescribe the etiquette to be observed on formal occasions. Lieutenant Ward, who was in command of the detachment, resolved that he would march past in the air, at an altitude of about three hundred feet, in a balloon attached to the balloon wagon. The weather was fine and calm, and the balloon sailed by in state, with the result that the spectators all gazed upwards and had not a glance to spare for the horse artillery, the cavalry, or any other arm of the service.

Sir Evelyn Wood reported favourably on the use of balloons, and in 1890 a balloon section was introduced into the British army as a unit of the Royal Engineers. The question of a site for the depot caused some delay. Opinion favoured Aldershot, but the General Officer Commanding objected that Aldershot should be reserved for military training. Major Templer was in favour of Lidsing, where for several years he had carried on at his own costs. In the result the depot moved to Aldershot, and having taken over a piece of very soft ground at South Farnborough, near the canal, began to erect sheds. The contractor for a balloon shed was nearly ruined by the expense of making foundations. So things fluctuated; the factory remained at Chatham, and the depot and section, after a summer spent at Aldershot, collected at Chatham again for the winter of 1890-1. In 1892 a definite move was made to Aldershot, which continued thereafter to be the centre for balloon work. In 1894 the balloon factory, under the superintendence of Colonel Templer, was fully established at South Farnborough. Finally, in 1905, a new and better site was found for it in the same neighbourhood, and by successive additions to the sheds and workshops then erected the present Royal Aircraft Establishment came into being. Some difficulty is presented to the historian by the chameleon changes of official nomenclature, which disguise a real identity and continuity. The Balloon Equipment Store at Woolwich became the untitled factory at Chatham, which in its turn became the balloon factory at South Farnborough. In 1908 it was decorated, and became His Majesty's Balloon Factory; a little later it was named the Army Aircraft Factory; and, later again, in 1912, the Royal Aircraft Factory. So it continued until far through the war, when, its initials being required for the newly-welded Royal Air Force, it was renamed yet again, and was called the Royal Aircraft Establishment. These changes in nomenclature were, of course, office-made, and have none of the significance that attaches to the history of popular names. But the Royal Aircraft Establishment itself was a natural growth, and derives, without break, from the unofficial establishment of balloons at Woolwich.

In 1899 the South African War began. Four balloon sections took an

## active part in the campaign. The first section, commanded by Captain H.

B. Jones, operated with the troops under Lord Methuen, and proved its value at the battle of Magersfontein. The second section, commanded by Major G. M. Heath, was with Sir George White throughout the siege of Ladysmith. An improvised section, commanded by Captain G. E. Phillips, was raised at Cape Town, and joined Sir Redvers Buller's force at Frere Camp, for the relief of Ladysmith. The regular third section, commanded by Lieutenant R. D. B. Blakeney, embarked for South Africa early in 1900, and joined the Tenth Division at Kimberley. It is not easy to make a just estimate of the value of the balloons in this war. Some commanding officers were prejudiced against them, and the difficulties and miscarriages which are inevitable in the use of a new instrument did nothing to remove the prejudice. The steel tubes in which the hydrogen was compressed were cumbrous and heavy to transport. The artillery were not trained to make the fullest use of the balloons; the system of signalling by flags was very imperfect; and the signallers in the air often failed to attract the attention of those with the guns. For all that, the balloons proved their value. The Ladysmith balloon did good service in directing fire during the battle of Lombard's Kop, and, more generally, in reporting on the Boer positions. Later on in the siege it was impossible to get gas, and the balloons fell out of use. At Magersfontein it was by observation from the air that the howitzer batteries got the range of the enemy's ponies concealed in a gully, and accounted for more than two hundred of them. On the 26th of February 1900 an officer in a balloon reported on General Cronje's main position at Paardeberg, and the report was of value in directing the attack on the position.

These operations put a heavy strain on the factory. Its normal output of one balloon a month was increased during the war to two balloons a month, and new buildings at a cost of more than four thousand pounds were proposed in 1900, and approved by the Aldershot Command. Even during the South African War there were other calls on the factory. In the summer of 1900 a balloon section, under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel J. R. Macdonald, was embarked for China; in the following year the factory supplied two balloons and stores for the Antarctic Expedition of Captain Scott. These demands interfered with experimental activities, which when the war was ended, and especially when the new factory was built in 1905, were renewed with great zest. As early as January 1902 Colonel Templer, having visited Paris to report on the doings of M. Santos Dumont, recommended that experiments with dirigible balloons should be carried out at once, but received from the War Office the reply that the estimates for the year, which, apart from these experiments, amounted to L12,000, must be cut down to half that sum. Nevertheless from time to time grants were obtained for the construction of elongated balloons, for a complete wireless telegraphy equipment, and, in 1903, for a dirigible balloon. The factory was a small place, but it was full of energy. In 1904 experiments were carried out with man-lifting kites, with photography from the air, with signalling devices, with mechanical apparatus for hauling down the balloons, and finally with petrol motors. It must always stand to the credit of those who were in charge of the factory that when the new era came, revolutionizing all the conditions, and when, not many years later, the Great War made its sudden and enormous demands, they rose to the occasion. Up to May 1906 Colonel Templer was superintendent of the balloon factory. He was succeeded by Colonel J. E. Capper, who held the position till October 1909. During these early years the balloon factory and balloon school, though nominally separate, were under the same control. The chief point of difference was that the factory employed some civilians, whereas the school was wholly in the hands of the military. Mr. Haldane decided to separate them, and in 1909 appointed Mr. Mervyn O'Gorman superintendent of the balloon factory, while Colonel Capper, who was succeeded within a year by Major Sir Alexander Bannerman, Bart., took over the command of the balloon school. Colonel Capper was a firm believer in the future of the aeroplane, and a true prophet. In a lecture on military ballooning, delivered at the Royal United Service Institution in 1906, just before he was appointed superintendent of the balloon factory, he concluded with a forecast. 'There is another and far more important phase of aerial locomotion,' he said, 'which in the near future may probably have to be reckoned with.... In a few years we may expect to see men moving swiftly through the air on simple surfaces, just as a gliding bird moves.... Such machines will move very rapidly, probably never less than twenty and up to a hundred miles per hour; nothing but the heaviest storms will stop them. They will be small and difficult to hit, and very difficult to damage, and their range of operations will be very large.' Colonel Capper acted on this belief, and during his time at the factory did what he could with meagre funds to encourage aviation. The policy which, in the spring of 1908, he recommended to the War Office was to buy any practicable machines that offered themselves in the market, and at the same time not to relax effort at the factory. The attempts of Lieutenant Dunne and Mr. Cody to construct an efficient aeroplane seemed hopeful, and the factory took them under its wing. Lieutenant Dunne worked at Blair Atholl from 1907 onward, and Mr. Cody, in the winter of 1907-8, began to construct his machine at Farnborough. In the autumn of 1908 the Hon. C. S. Rolls offered to bring to Farnborough a biplane of the Farman-Delagrange type, and to experiment with it on behalf of the Government, in return for the necessary shed accommodation. The acceptance of this proposal had been authorized when an accident to Mr. Cody, caused by want of space, discredited the fitness of the factory ground for aeroplane work, and the arrangement with Mr. Rolls was deferred. He renewed his proposal in the spring of 1909, this time with the offer of a Wright machine, and he had established himself at Farnborough, when his death, at the Bournemouth meeting of 1910, cut short a career of brilliant promise, for Mr. Rolls was not only one of the best of practical aviators, but was alert in all that concerned the science of his craft. At the factory the experiments of Mr. Cody and Lieutenant Dunne were supported and continued, but progress was slow and uncertain, and when, early in 1909, the two machines between them had involved an expense of something like L2,500, further experiments with them were abandoned for a time. Their performance did not seem to warrant a large national outlay, and the bulk of Colonel Capper's work was devoted to what seemed the more promising task of supplying airships for the army. The earliest of these had been designed by Colonel Templer, and two envelopes of gold-beater's skin were ready by 1904, but the cost of making them had been so great that further progress on the ship was arrested until 1907. In September of that year the first British army airship, the _Nulli Secundus_, sausage-shaped, about a hundred and twenty feet long and less than thirty feet in diameter, took the air and passed successfully through its trials. It was driven by an Antoinette engine of from forty to fifty horse-power, and attained a speed of about sixteen miles an hour.

On the 5th of October the ship flew from Farnborough to London, circled round St. Paul's Cathedral, manoeuvred over the grounds at Buckingham Palace, and, on her return journey, as she could make no headway against the wind, descended in the centre of the cycle-track at the Crystal Palace, having been in the air for three and a half hours. Five days later, to avoid damage by a squall, the ship was deflated, packed up, and returned to Farnborough by road. Colonel Capper, influenced doubtless by the success of the _Lebaudy_ airship in France, decided to rebuild _Nulli Secundus_ as a semi-rigid, but funds were short, and work could not be commenced on her until the following year. In the reconstruction every possible portion of the original ship was ingeniously utilized. The reconstructed ship was taken out for her first trial in the air on the 24th of July 1908. During this flight of four miles, lasting eighteen minutes, she suffered various mishaps. After two more short flights she was deflated at the end of August, and the career of the _Nulli Secundus_ was ended. Another smaller and fish-shaped airship, nicknamed the _Baby_, was put in hand during the autumn of 1908, but was not completed until the following spring. To enable her to carry a more powerful engine the _Baby_ was enlarged by cutting the envelope in half and introducing a wide belt of gold-beater's skin in the middle. Rechristened the _Beta_, she was ready for flight at the end of May, and on the 3rd of June 1910 made a successful night-flight from Farnborough to London and back, covering a distance of about seventy miles in just over four hours.

The output of the factory was small, almost insignificant, compared with the efforts being made by foreign nations. Colonel Capper preferred not to attempt the construction of rigid airships till more was known of them. The Zeppelins were the only reputed success, and no Zeppelin, at that time, had succeeded in making a forced landing without damage to the ship. But the output of the factory is no true measure of the progress made. The officers in charge worked with an eye to the future. Early in 1906 a proposal was put forward by Brevet Colonel J. D. Fullerton, Royal Engineers, and was warmly supported by Colonel Templer, for the appointment of a committee consisting of military officers, aeronauts, mechanical engineers, and naval representatives, to investigate the whole question of aeronautics. A modified form of this proposal was put forward three years later, in 1909, by Mr. Haldane, then Secretary of State for War. He invited Lord Rayleigh and Dr. Richard Glazebrook, the chairman and the director of the National Physical Laboratory, to confer with him, and asked them to prepare for his consideration a scheme which should secure the co-operation of the laboratory with the services, thus providing scientific inquiry with opportunities for full-scale experiment. A scheme was drafted; it was discussed and approved at a conference held in the room of the First Lord of the Admiralty, and was submitted to the Prime Minister, Mr. Asquith, who took action on it, and appointed 'The Advisory Committee for 'Aeronautics', under the presidency of Lord Rayleigh. Seven of its ten members were Fellows of the Royal Society. The chairman was Dr. Glazebrook. The Army was represented by Major-General Sir Charles Hadden, the Navy by Captain R. H. S. Bacon, the Meteorological Office by Dr. W. N. Shaw. The other members were Mr. Horace Darwin, Sir George Greenhill, Mr. F. W. Lanchester, Mr. H. R. A. Mallock, and Professor J. E. Petavel. To these, soon after, were added Mr. Mervyn O'Gorman, when he took over the charge of the balloon factory, and Captain Murray F. Sueter, R.N., who deserves not a little credit for his early and persistent efforts to foster aeronautics in the navy. The great value of this committee was that it brought together the various bodies concerned with aeronautics, and combined their efforts. In particular, it gave to the new science the highly skilled services of the National Physical Laboratory, which organized at Teddington a new department, with elaborate plant, for the investigation of aeronautical questions. From this time onward the National Physical Laboratory worked in the closest co-operation with the balloon factory. Mathematical and physical investigations were continuously carried on at the laboratory, and improvements suggested by these researches were put to the practical test at the factory. Questions of air resistance, of the stresses and strains on materials, of the best shape for the wing of an aeroplane and the best fabric for the envelope of an airship--these and scores of other problems were systematically and patiently attacked. There were no theatrically quick results, but the work done laid a firm and broad base for all subsequent success. Hasty popular criticism is apt to measure the value of scientific advice by the tale of things done, and to overlook the credit that belongs to it for things prevented. The science of aeronautics in the year 1909 was in a very difficult and uncertain stage of its early development; any mistakes in laying the foundations of a national air force would not only have involved the nation in much useless expense, but would have imperilled the whole structure. Delay and caution are seldom popular, but they are often wise. Those who are stung by the accusation of sloth are likely to do something foolish in a hurry. Nothing is more remarkable in the history of our aeronautical development than its comparative freedom from costly mistakes. This freedom was attained by a happy conjunction of theory and practice, of the laboratory and the factory. The speculative conclusions of the merely theoretical man had to undergo the test of action in the rain and the wind. The notions and fancies of the merely practical man were subjected to the criticism of those who could tell him why he was wrong. The rapid growth in power and efficiency of the British air force owed much to the labours of those who befriended it before it was born, and who, when it was confronted with the organized science of all the German universities, endowed it with the means of rising to a position of vantage.

The same sort of credit belongs to the conduct of the balloon factory under Mr. Mervyn O'Gorman, who had charge of it during that very crucial period from the autumn of 1909 to the summer of 1916. When he took over the factory he found at Farnborough one small machine shop, one shed for making balloons, and one airship shed. The workers were about a hundred in number, fifty men and fifty women. Seven years later, when Lieutenant-Colonel O'Gorman was appointed to the Air Board as consulting engineer to the Director-General of Military Aeronautics, the hundred had swollen to four thousand six hundred, and the buildings situated on the forest land of Farnborough had increased and multiplied out of all recognition. This development was made necessary by the war, but it would have been impossible but for the foresight which directed the operations of the period before the war. The factory, working in close co-operation with the Advisory Committee and the National Physical Laboratory, very early became the chief centre for experimental aviation with full-sized machines. Systematic and rapid advance was hardly to be hoped for from unaided private initiative. Many private makers of machines were zealous and public-spirited, but there was no considerable private demand for aeroplanes, and a firm of manufacturers cannot carry on at a loss. Poor though it was in resources, and very meagrely supported by Government grants, the factory was what the country had to depend on; and it rose to its opportunities.

Aviation, in its early stages, was cramped and harassed by engine failure. The improvement of the light engine, in design and construction, was the most pressing of needs; but no sufficiently rapid improvement could be hoped for except by the encouragement of private enterprise. For some years the factory refrained from producing any official engine design, and the superintendent attempted to encourage the efforts of private firms. In order to specify the conditions which makers must observe, and to apply proper tests to the engines supplied, it was thought desirable to build an engine laboratory. Accordingly an engine test plant was devised and installed. It was set in a wind-tunnel, where by steeply tilting the engine both sideways and lengthways, in varying currents of air, the actual flying conditions could be imitated, and the performance of the engine measured. This plant for the testing of engines might have been used with valuable results, but for one hindrance--the makers of engines were unwilling to send them to the factory to be tested, and the plant remained idle. There was a misunderstanding, which after a time became acute, between the factory and the private makers of aircraft. The factory, zealous for the public interest, believed that it could best serve their interest by encouraging, supervising, and co-ordinating the efforts of the makers. The makers, jealous of supervision and control, did not accept that view. A wise judgement will be slow to blame either. The officials of the factory were strong in the knowledge that their work was disinterested and aimed only at the public good. The makers, remembering that progress in aviation had come chiefly by way of private enterprise, feared the paralysing effect of official control, and the habitual tendency of officials, especially of competent officials, to extend their ambitions and their powers. The makers, in short, dreaded a Government monopoly. A difference of this kind, even when it is gently and considerately handled, always furnishes a happy hunting-ground for the political agitator and the grievance-monger. The thing came to a head during the war, when the success of the Fokkers, which reached its height during the early months of 1916, made the public uneasy. The Fokkers late in 1915 had been fitted with guns which fired through the airscrew. This was the secret of their success, which was short-lived, but was made the occasion, in Parliament and elsewhere, for a long array of charges against the administration and command of the Royal Flying Corps. A parliamentary committee, under the chairmanship of Mr. Justice Bailhache, was appointed to investigate these charges. Their report vindicated the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Aircraft Factory, and expressed admiration for the work done by both under the stress and strain of war. The charges, it should be added, were not supported by the private makers, or 'the trade', as they are called; none of them made any complaint, and some of them went out of their way to record their gratitude for the help they had received from the factory.

Nevertheless, the uncertainty of its relations with the trade caused the factory, in its early days, to undertake a great diversity of business. The designing of aircraft was plainly a matter of the first importance, and for this designing it was necessary to collect a trained staff. The difficulty here was that there were no professional designers; the aeronautical world was a strange ferment of inventors, amateurs, enthusiasts, heretics of all sorts, wedded to their own notions, and mutually hostile. The factory decided to employ only those designers who had had a solid course of training in engineering shops. By degrees engineers trained in shipyards and officers skilled in motor-car design were added to the staff of the drawing office until, by 1916, it had increased from some half-dozen to two hundred and seventy-five.

When the war came this drawing office proved its value. An immense number of aeroplanes was required, and many firms had to be employed to make them. Some of these firms were well staffed, others not so well. The factory made elaborate detailed dimensioned drawings, marked with every permitted kind and degree of variation--as many as four hundred drawings to a single aeroplane. With the help of these drawings all kinds of firms--organ-builders, makers of furniture, or pianos, or gramophones, or motor-cars--could be turned on to aeroplane manufacture. In the course of two years half a million drawings were issued to various firms; and those firms to whom the whole business of engineering was strange were successfully initiated in one of its most delicate and difficult branches. Here, too, the outcry was raised, in the newspapers and in Parliament, that the factory was attempting to make a Government monopoly of aircraft design and air-engine design. The accusation was disproved; it would probably never have been made but for the admirable efficiency of the factory in rising to meet a national crisis. National defence, it is agreed, cannot safely be left wholly to private enterprise, even in England. The factory carried out an immense number of experiments in connexion with aeroplanes and airships. The quest for stability, longitudinal and lateral, in aeroplanes was the chief preoccupation of these early years. Powerful engines are useless in a ship which cannot be trusted to keep afloat. It was this quest, as much as anything, which drew the factory into designing aeroplanes. The various types of aeroplane designed at the factory bear names which consist of a pair of initial letters, with a number affixed. The letters indicate the type of the machine; the number indicates its place in the series of continually improving variants of the same type. Three of these types were gradually being evolved at the factory in the course of the year 1911. The earliest to attain to practical success was the B.E. type of machine. Every pilot who had his training in the early days of the war was familiar with this machine, though not every pilot knew that the initials are a monument to Louis Bleriot, who first flew the Channel. His achievement gave a great vogue to his monoplane, which was imitated by many designers; and when the factory produced a biplane fitted, like all monoplanes, with a tractor airscrew, in front of the machine, the biplane was called the Bleriot Experimental. The F.E. type is the Farman Experimental, a pusher biplane, which for a long time held its own by virtue of two advantages. The observer, being seated in the very prow of the machine, could fire a gun forward without being obstructed by the airscrew. This advantage disappeared after 1915, when, by the invention of synchronizing gears, which timed the bullets to pass between the revolving blades of the screw, tractor machines were enabled to fire directly ahead. But another advantage persisted. In night-flying, when the eyes are strained to pick up dim shapes in the dark, a clear field of vision is all-important, and the F.E. type of machine continued to be used in night raids throughout the war. The third type was the S.E., or Scouting Experimental. The fifth variant of this type, the S.E. 5, gained an enormous reputation in the war as a fighting machine, and indeed was preferred by some pilots to the best scout machines of private makers.

A fourth factory machine, produced just before the war, and no less famous than the other three, was called the R.E., or Reconnaissance Experimental. It was the first almost completely stable machine. Stability is not of the first importance to a fighting scout, whose attention is concentrated on his own manoeuvres, but where a machine is used for observation, and the pilot must needs pay heed to all that is visible on the earth beneath, stability is essential. A perfectly stable machine maintains an even keel in varying gusts of wind. If it is tilted, it rights itself. If it is nose-dived, the pilot has only to let go of the control, and after a descent of some hundreds of feet it comes out of the dive and resumes its horizontal flight. The perfecting of this type of machine was achieved at the factory, and was the work of many minds. On the mathematical side the theory of stability was investigated by Mr. F. W. Lanchester, an authority on the theory of flight, and by Professor G. H. Bryan, a great pioneer, who in 1911 produced his book on _Stability in Aviation_. He had long been interested in the subject; his work, which is recognized as epoch-making, laid a sound mathematical basis for the theory of flight, and directed the work of others along the lines of fruitful experiment. The theoretical conclusions of Professor Bryan were reduced to a practical form by Mr. Leonard Bairstow and the members of the staff of the National Physical Laboratory, who put the doctrine to the proof of experiment, at first with models, and then with full-scale machines. The dangerous work of trying conclusions with the air fell to the young men of the factory. A brilliant young Cambridge man, Mr. E. T. Busk, of King's College, who had been trained in the laboratory of Professor Bertram Hopkinson, joined the staff of the factory in the summer of 1912, having previously spent a month at the National Physical Laboratory, to acquaint himself with the work there. He understood the theoretical basis of aeroplane design, and he was a daring and skilful pilot. The R.E. machine was designed by the staff of the factory; Mr. Busk, in collaboration with Mr. Bairstow, worked at the problem of giving it stability. He cheerfully took all risks in trying the full-sized machines in the air. When the R.E. 1 had been theoretically warranted, by experiments with models, to right herself after a nose-dive, he tested the theory by flying the machine to a great height, turning her nose down and letting go the controls. As he expected, she righted. To test the machine he flew her in all weathers, hurling her against the wind storms. For the purposes of these practical tests he invented an instrument of his own called the Ripograph, which recorded on a single strip all the pilot's movements in warping and steering, as well as the speed, inclination, and roll of the machine. This machine, when the rudder was turned right or left, automatically banked itself; and when the engine was cut off, took the angle of gliding flight. It was a later variant of the same machine, an R.E. 8 belonging to the Australian Flying Corps, of which it is told that, when the pilot and observer had both been shot dead, in December 1917, the machine continued to fly in wide left-hand circles, and ultimately, when the fuel was exhausted and the engine stopped, fell near St.-Pol, some thirty miles from the scene of combat, without completely wrecking itself. When the war broke out Mr. Busk was more than ever needed at the factory. On the 5th of November 1914 he mounted in an experimental B.E. 2c machine to a height of about eight hundred feet. Exactly what happened will never be known; the petrol vapour must have been ignited by a spark; the machine burst into flames, and after drifting aimlessly for a time, fell on Laffan's Plain. The death of such men as Charles Rolls and Edward Busk was a part of the heavy price that had to be paid for victory; before victory was in sight. There was no other way; the work that they did could not be spared, and could never have been even attempted except by the quiet of absolute courage.

The business undertaken by the factory, apart from its main business of research and experiment, was almost bewildering in its diversity. From the first the officials of the factory insisted on maintaining a high standard of workmanship, which spells safety in the air. This question of workmanship became doubly important during the war, when, in order to improve the performance of machines, all avoidable weight had to be sacrificed, and the factor of safety, as it is called, reduced to the lowest permissible limit. The breaking of a spar or a wire, the failure of a bolt or a nut, may mean a fatal accident. Further, the factory did what it could to standardize the component parts of an aeroplane, so as to facilitate repair; and this, before the war came, had been largely achieved. It designed and fitted up the instruments necessary for the pilot's use, which record for him his speed through the air, the consumption of his fuel, the rate of revolutions of his airscrew, the height attained, and other essentials. The average pilot, it is well known, is supplied with more instruments than he uses, but it is true nevertheless that familiarity with the use of instruments has often staved off disasters. At first the factory had refrained from initiating engine designs, but when competition and trial had shown that there was no immediate prospect of obtaining a thoroughly satisfactory engine from English makers, it asked permission of the War Office, and in 1913 designed its own engine. Among its notable devices one or two may be mentioned. The mooring-mast for airships, to which they can be tethered in the open, was invented at the factory, and developed independently for naval work, by the Admiralty. The fair-shaped wires and struts, to decrease air resistance, were a great improvement. These parts of an aeroplane offer so considerable a resistance to its passage through the air, that when their transverse section, instead of being round, is streamlined, the speed of the machine is increased by several miles an hour. In short, during those early years the factory, which directly or indirectly had to supply most of the requirements of the balloon school, the Air Battalion, and the Royal Flying Corps, combined in itself all the functions of what later on were highly organized separate Government departments--inspection, stores, repairs, the testing of inventions, and the like.

From what has been said it will be seen that the factory continued, as it began, in close relations with the army. It had been founded, under army auspices, at an important inland military centre, and it was not so well adapted, by its history or situation, to serve the navy. The results obtained by research at the National Physical Laboratory, and by experiment at the factory, furthered the science of aviation, and were open to all. But when flight began, a united national air force was not thought of by any one, or was thought of only in dreams. Meantime the new invention offered to the navy, no less than to the army, new opportunities of increasing the power of its own weapon. The problems of the navy were not the problems of the army, and a certain self-protective jealousy made the two forces keep apart, so that each might develop unhampered by alien control. The navy trusted more to private firms, and less to the factory. It was a difference of tendency rather than a clean-cut difference of policy. Both army and navy made use of the results obtained at the laboratory and the factory. The army employed many private makers for the supply of machines and engines, and the navy, in the course of the war, ordered a very large number of that most famous of factory machines--the B.E. 2c. But the navy stood as far aloof from the factory as possible, and looked mainly to private firms not only for the supply of machines and engines, but for much of its experimental work. Several of the firms who devoted themselves to the needs of naval aviation did excellent service as pioneers. The most distinguished of these was the firm of the Short brothers--that is, of Messrs. Oswald, Eustace, and Horace Short. The impulse of their work was scientific, not commercial. As early as 1897 Mr. Eustace Short was an amateur balloonist, and his younger brother Oswald, at the age of fifteen, began to accompany him on his voyages. In a public library they came across that celebrated record of balloon voyages, _Travels in the Air_, by James Glaisher, and made up their minds to construct a balloon of their own. Success led them on step by step; in 1905 they contracted to supply captive war balloons for the Government of India, and in 1906 they became the club engineers of the newly formed Royal Aero Club. The reported successes of the Wright brothers in America shifted the interest of the club, and of the club engineers, from balloons to flying machines; in 1908 they built their first glider--a complete miniature Wright machine, without the power plant--for the Hon. C. S. Rolls. At about this time they were joined by the eldest of the three brothers, Mr. Horace Short, an accomplished man of science and a lover of adventure; from this time onward the firm of the Short brothers never looked back. From sketches made by Mr. Horace Short, they built six biplanes to the order of the Wrights. They constructed, in 1909, the aeroplane on which Mr. J. T. C. Moore-Brabazon won the prize offered by the _Daily Mail_ for the first all-British machine which should fly a circular mile. They made the outer cover, gas-bags, valves, pressure-gauges, and controlling rudders for the first rigid airship constructed to the order of the Admiralty. Their early work was done at Shellness, the flying centre for members of the Royal Aero Club, but in 1909 they moved their sheds to Eastchurch in the Isle of Sheppey, which thereafter became the flying centre of the navy. It was here that the first four naval aviators were taught to fly. The tale of the successes of the various Short machines would make something not unlike a complete history of early naval aviation. The first landing on the water by an aeroplane fitted with airbags, the first flight from the deck of a ship, the first flight up the Thames, not to mention many other incidents in the progress of record-making, must all be credited to the Short factory. The brothers held that the right way to advance aviation was to strengthen the resources of the aeroplane-designing firms, so that they might carry out their ideas without being dependent on Government demands, and the extraordinary success of the Short designs for aeroplanes and seaplanes did much to promote that creed.

At the factory the work with airships was continued, though it languished somewhat as interest in aviation grew. England had shown the way in the use of gold-beater's skin, which is greatly superior in endurance and impermeability to any other fabric, but the knowledge leaked through to Germany, and when the price of the skin, always high, suddenly rose higher from heavy German buying, England fell back on rubbered cotton. The _Baby_, altered and enlarged, was rechristened the _Beta_, and a new ship, called the _Gamma_, made of rubbered fabric, was added in 1910. The _Gamma_, though twice reconstructed and altered, was never satisfactory. In 1912 _Beta_ No. 2, built in streamline shape, about a hundred feet long, stiffened at the nose with ribs like umbrella-ribs, and driven by a forty-five horse-power Clerget engine, was more of a success. Other airships, the _Delta_ and _Epsilon_, of increased size and engine-power, were designed between 1911 and 1913. In this latter year the Air Committee, a body appointed in 1912 by the Committee of Imperial Defence, advised that the navy, that is to say, the Naval Wing of the newly-formed Royal Flying Corps, should take over the development of all lighter-than-air craft. This advice, which was carried into effect by the end of the year, put an end to military experiments with airships, and supplied the navy with the nucleus of that airship force which during the war did so much good service, in convoy, in scouting for submarines, and in patrolling the coast and the English Channel.

The earliest experiments undertaken by the Admiralty with craft lighter than air had been ambitious and unfortunate. It was always recognized by those who gave thought to aeronautics that for naval purposes the airship has some advantages over the aeroplane. It can remain longer in the air, so that its range of action is greater; it can easily carry wireless apparatus both for transmitting and for receiving; it can take up a stationary point of vantage where the aeroplane must needs keep moving; it can lift a greater weight; and (not least important) it can enormously add to the efficiency of the observer by supplying him with comfortable and habitable quarters. These things did not escape the attention of the small and enthusiastic band of naval officers who from the first were believers in the air. Their ideas took shape in proposals which were submitted by the Director of Naval Ordnance (Captain Bacon) to the First Sea Lord (Lord Fisher) on the 21st of July 1908. What was proposed, in effect, was that Messrs. Vickers, Son & Maxim, who had been so successful in the design and manufacture of submarines, should be asked to undertake the construction of a large rigid airship of the Zeppelin type. After many meetings of the Committee of Imperial Defence, at which Captain Bacon propounded his views with great vigour, the committee recommended that the sum of L35,000 should be placed in the Navy Estimates for 1909-10, for the construction of an airship to be designed and built under Admiralty supervision. The Treasury agreed, and Messrs. Vickers's tender for the airship was accepted on the 7th of May 1909. The huge Cavendish Dock at Barrow-in-Furness was appropriated to the work, and the greatest possible secrecy was observed in all the preparations. A special section was formed to assist in the construction of the ship--Captain Murray F. Sueter, R.N., and, with him, Lieutenant Neville Usborne, Lieutenant C. P. Talbot, and Chief Artificer Engineer A. Sharpe. For two years public curiosity was kept alive on a diet of conjecture. A good part of this time was taken up in improvements and modifications of the design of the ship. When at last in May 1911 the shed was opened and the huge airship was brought out to her mooring-mast in the dock, those who had expected a larger and better Zeppelin seemed justified in their belief. The ship was 512 feet long and 48 feet in diameter, with a blunt bow and a pointed stern. Her capacity was approximately 700,000 cubic feet. The framework was made of a new alloy called 'duralumin', nearly as strong in tension as mild steel and not much heavier than aluminium. It was covered with 46,000 square yards of water-tight silk fabric, so treated with aluminium dust and rubber that the upper surface of the hull, which had to resist the rays of the sun, showed the silver sheen of a fish, while the lower surface, which had to resist the damp vapours of the water, was of a dull yellowish colour. The hydrogen was contained in seventeen gas-bags of rubbered fabric. The ship was fitted with two Wolseley motors of one hundred and eighty horse-power each, and with a whole series of vertical and horizontal rudders. She was popularly called the _Mayfly_--a name which, both in and out of Parliament, suggested to bright wits an ill-omened pun.

She never flew. For four days she remained tethered to the mooring-mast in the centre of the Cavendish Dock, and successfully completed her mooring trials. During this time the wind was rough, reaching in gusts a velocity of forty-five miles an hour. This wind, being a severer test than any previous airship had successfully encountered when moored in the open, proved the strength of the ship. But her very strength, and the completeness of her fittings, told against her in another way; the lift of an airship, consisting as it does of a small excess of buoyancy over weight, is always a matter of the most delicate and difficult calculation, and her lift proved to be insufficient. She was taken back into her shed, without mishap, and alterations were at once put in hand. On the 24th of September 1911 she was again drawn out of her shed to be transferred to the mooring-post; in the process she broke her back, and became a total wreck. The ensuing court of inquiry pronounced that the accident was due to structural weakness; the naval officers and men were exonerated from all blame.

This accident had a far-reaching effect. It disappointed public hopes and strengthened the case of objectors. There are always critics who take a certain mild pleasure in failure, not because they prefer it to success, but because they have predicted it. The pioneers of aeronautics could not afford to lose friends; they had none too many. The men in high authority at the Admiralty were not convinced that airships were a desirable and practicable addition to naval resources. They would all have died to save England, but they held that she was to be saved in the old way, on the sea. One gallant and distinguished admiral, when he first saw the _Mayfly_, said, 'It is the work of a lunatic'. The consequences of the failure were soon apparent. The president of the court of inquiry recommended to the First Sea Lord (Sir A. K. Wilson) that the policy of naval airship construction should, for the time, be abandoned. At a conference held on the 25th of January 1912, in the First Sea Lord's room at the Admiralty, it was decided, in accordance with this recommendation, that the airship experiments should be discontinued. Moreover, the special section, the nucleus of a naval air service, was, by the decision of the Admiralty, broken up, and Captain Sueter and his officers were returned to general service. When the construction of rigid airships was at last taken up again early in 1914, they were too late for the market; the heavy demands of the war delayed their completion, and no British rigid airship was in use at the time of the battle of Jutland.

It is to the credit of the pioneers of the Naval Air Service that when they were faced with this disaster, after years of fruitless effort, they did not lose heart or hope, but held on their course. Time was on their side. In the later autumn of 1911 the Committee of Imperial Defence, as shall be explained in the next chapter, appointed a technical sub-committee to give advice on the measures which should be taken to secure for the country an efficient aerial service. On the 5th of February 1912 Captain Sueter gave evidence to this body of experts, and sketched in broad outline his ideas for the development of a naval air service. Airships and aeroplanes, he said, were both required, and neither of them should be developed at the expense of the other. An airship had the great advantage that she could carry long-distance wireless apparatus, and could send or receive a message over a space of three hundred miles. She could stop her engines and drift over suspected places, for the detection of submarines and mines. The seaplane, he maintained, should also be developed, and he saw no insuperable difficulties in devising a machine that should be able to alight on either water or land and to rise again into the air from either. 'I think you have got a certain amount of intellect', he said, 'in the Navy to do it, and I think you have got a certain amount of intellect in the Army to do it. The two together, with the Advisory Committee--there are talented people there--and the manufacturers in the country; between us all we could devise something. We did not have great difficulty with the submarine boats; and that was all new at first.' The problem of the air, he held, was vital for the Navy; and when he was asked whether we must try to command the air as well as the sea, he replied, 'I think it will come to that. I do not say that we wish to do so, but I think we will be forced to do so.' In a memorandum submitted to the same sub-committee by Captain Bertram Dickson the meaning of the command of the air is more fully explained. 'In the case of a European war', he writes, between two countries, both sides would be equipped with large corps of aeroplanes, each trying to obtain information of the other, and to hide its own movements. The efforts which each would exert in order to hinder or prevent the enemy from obtaining information ... would lead to the inevitable result of a war in the air, for the supremacy of the air, by armed aeroplanes against each other. _This fight for the supremacy of the air in future wars will be of the first and greatest importance_, and when it has been won the land and sea forces of the loser will be at such a disadvantage that the war will certainly have to terminate at a much smaller loss in men and money to both sides.'

The whole matter is clearly stated in these passages. The people of Great Britain live in an island. They do not desire--they have never desired--to dominate the world, or to dictate to other peoples how they shall live. They do desire to be free of the world, and to take their luck in it, passing to and fro without hindrance. This freedom of theirs has repeatedly been imperilled by foreign powers, who have always desired a greater degree of uniformity and control than is tolerable to Britain. In order to keep their doors open the people of this island have been compelled to fight at sea, and have attained a measure of naval power which is sometimes called the mastery of the seas, but which, in essence, is no more than the obstinate and resolute assertion of their right to be the masters of themselves. They have been adventurers and pirates; they have never been tyrants. They fight desperately because they know that even on distant seas they are fighting for their lives, and for all that makes their lives worth living. Their many victories, under which they groan, have compelled them to learn the imperial art, an art which they practise not without skill, but reluctantly, and without zest. With the conquest of the air their task of self-defence has been doubled. It is not to be wondered at that those who were responsible for keeping open the gates of the sea should turn their eyes away from the new duty. But the new duty--command of the air, so to call it--was plainly visible to those who once looked at it. We must keep the highways open, or our freedom is gone. We must command the air. 'I do not say that we wish to do so,' said Captain Sueter, 'but I think we shall be forced to do so.' The whole of our naval history is summed up in that sentence; and the whole of our air policy is foretold.

The force that was to compel us was already in being. The science of aeronautics had passed from the experimental to the practical stage, and foreign powers were rapidly building up very formidable air forces. Of these foreign forces we naturally knew most of the French, for France was both our neighbour and our friend. In October 1911 a very full and illuminative report was supplied to the Government by Lieutenant Ralph Glyn, an officer attached to the newly-formed Air Battalion. It described, with reasoned comments, the aeronautical exercises carried out by the French air corps at the Camp de Chalons during the previous August. At that time the French War Ministry had at its disposal, so far as could be ascertained, something between two hundred and two hundred and twenty aeroplanes. The biplanes were all Farmans. The monoplanes, which were on the whole preferred by expert opinion to the biplanes, were of many types, all famous for achievement--Nieuports, Bleriots, Deperdussins, R.E.P.'s, Antoinettes, and others. The methods of training were elaborate and complete, and the air corps were continually practised in co-operation with all other arms--infantry, cavalry, and artillery. 'There is no doubt at all', says the writer, 'but that the Germans have suddenly realized that the French Army since the general employment of aeroplanes with troops has improved its fighting efficiency by at least twenty per cent.... For the last five years the Germans have concentrated their whole attention upon the building, manoeuvring, and employment with troops, of dirigibles. They have gained a slight advance over France, in fact, in this branch of aeronautics; but they have quite dropped behind in the question of heavier-than-air machines. France now after an equal period has just, and only just, formed a really efficient fighting aerial corps; and this lead of five years she is determined to maintain.'

This is not an over-statement. From the first the French, who had thought out the whole business, laid great stress on reconnaissance and control of artillery fire as the main uses of aircraft. For reconnaissance the aeroplanes were practised to co-operate with cavalry. For fire control official maps, divided into geometrical squares, so that a pair of numbers will identify a position within a score or so of yards, were supplied in duplicate to the pilots of the aeroplanes and to the commanding officers of batteries. The system of signalling employed was mostly primitive, but already in 1911 the French were experimenting with captive balloons which received the messages from the aeroplane, and by wireless, or some kind of visible signal, transmitted them to the guns. 'Practice', says Lieutenant Glyn, 'has made almost perfect a remarkable system which renders the efficient French artillery more formidable than ever.' Further, infantry were trained to co-operate with aircraft, so as to learn to take advantage of the new arm; and aerial photography was practised, under strict conditions of secrecy, with a surprising degree of success. In short, almost all the uses which later became the commonplaces of the war were exemplified in the French manoeuvres of 1911. Battle in the air and the use of aircraft as a weapon of direct offence were later developments.

In October and November of the same year Captain F. H. Sykes, of the General Staff, and Captain J. D. B. Fulton, of the Air Battalion, visited many of the French military and civil aerodromes, and were present at the military aeroplane competition at Rheims. 'The trials held at Rheims', says Captain Sykes, 'are considerably in advance of anything yet attempted.' The machines were flown by the best available pilots, and were under the personal supervision of the makers and designers. Aerodromes were better and more numerous than in England; many of them were situated in wide plains, so that the learner could make his first cross-country flights over good even landing ground. Captain Sykes, in his report, suggests that aeroplane sheds should be erected and flying schools started at stations not very far apart from one another in England, so that cross-country training may be facilitated. 'These stations should be as near as possible', he adds, 'to where troops are quartered, so as to afford an opportunity for aeroplanes to work with troops on field days. The cost would, I think, be inconsiderable in comparison to the value gained.' This suggestion was carried out, but not until the war had compelled an immense expansion of the air force.

The French, then, were ahead of us, and were showing us the way. Of German preparations less was known, and estimates of the German air force, even when made by experts, were largely guesswork. The Zeppelin airships enjoyed a world-wide fame, and there is good reason to think that the German Government practised a certain measure of frankness with regard to their airship establishment in order the more effectively to shroud the very resolute effort they were making to overtake the French in the production of aeroplanes. If ever they thought that the airship alone would do their business, that dream soon passed away. A good deal of valuable information concerning the German air force was obtained in the summer of 1912, just after the formation of the Royal Flying Corps. In June of that year the Technical Sub-committee of the Committee of Imperial Defence (a body whose cumbrous name does no justice to its swift decisions) dispatched two of its members, Captain Sueter and Mr. O'Gorman, to France, Austria, and Germany, to report, primarily, on the whole airship question. In Germany these delegates took occasion to visit five aeroplane factories--the Rumpler, Etrich, Albatross, Harland, and Fokker, besides inspecting various flying grounds and wireless stations. Their report is full of interest. 'No year passes', they remark, 'in which orders equal to our total equipment are not placed by Germany, France, and Italy.' In Germany they found there were thirty airships available, and a large Government factory for rigids 'only thinly pretending to be a private speculation'. They append a list of no fewer than twenty-eight military flying grounds at which there were flying camps. They were deeply impressed by the evidence of large expenditure, direct and indirect, on aerial preparation, and the systematic manner of that expenditure. 'The position of Germany', they say, 'appeared to us to be widely different from what it is described in the English press ... and far more active.' During their trip in the Zeppelin airship _Viktoria Luise_ they were struck with the fervour of popular enthusiasm. 'On passing over villages, isolated farms, &c., everybody turned out and cheered and waved.' This popular enthusiasm was further demonstrated by the substantial evidence of large subscriptions from municipal bodies and private persons. Everywhere they found reason to suspect a certain amount of concealed Government support and subsidy underlying ostensibly private ventures.

This report was presented in July 1912. The technical sub-committee, at a later date, drew some further lessons from it. 'The report', they say, 'shows that German airships have, by repeated voyages, proved their ability to reconnoitre the whole of the German coastline on the North Sea. In any future war with Germany, except in foggy or stormy weather, it is probable that no British war vessels or torpedo craft will be able to approach within many miles of the German coast without their presence being discovered and reported to the enemy. Unless we had obtained command of the air, any idea that our torpedo craft could seek shelter among the Frisian Islands and remain there undetected must be abandoned.... The report also shows that German airships have covered a distance equal to the distance from Germany to the British coast without replenishing fuel.... In favourable weather the German airships can already be employed for reconnaissance over vast areas of the North Sea, and one airship, owing to the extended view from high altitudes under favourable weather conditions, is able to accomplish the work of a large number of scouting cruisers. It is difficult to exaggerate the value of this advantage to Germany. By a systematic and regular patrol of the approaches to the coast, it will be possible in fair weather for German airships to discover the approach of an enemy and to give timely warning of attack, and if the approaches are reported free from the enemy the defenders of the ports and the crews of ships in these ports will be relieved for many hours from the intense and harassing strain caused by uncertainty as to the probability of attack.' Further, the sub-committee point out that the great continental airships, which can easily carry thirty persons, can certainly carry a sufficient weight of bombs to destroy torpedo-craft, dock gates, power stations, magazines, and the like; and that they are far less dependent on favourable weather than is generally supposed. 'In short, every one of the strategical and tactical advantages which the Committee of Imperial Defence anticipated in 1909 when recommending the construction of a rigid airship for the Navy, has been, or is in a fair way of being, realized by the German airships. These results have only been attained by perseverance under the most discouraging conditions of disaster and loss.'

The total air force possessed by Great Britain, to set over against these great foreign organizations, consisted of two small army airships, named _Beta_ and _Gamma_, and a very small number of aeroplanes.

The report of Captain Sueter and Mr. O'Gorman put the whole matter in a new light, and showed the need for action. In regard to aeroplanes, this

## action had already been taken. In the winter of 1911-12 the

sub-committee had recommended the formation of a corps of aviators; and this recommendation, as shall be told in the next chapter, had been promptly carried into effect. As for airships, which chiefly concerned the navy, the question was now not whether the Admiralty were willing to take up experimental work with a newfangled invention, but whether they could afford to neglect a weapon of certain value, which might prove to be a determining factor in war. Airships of the largest size and power must be provided, said the sub-committee, in the near future. But to build these airships at once, they were agreed, would be to court disaster. A large airship is of little use to men who have had no training in the handling and navigation of airships. Such experience as was available was to be found at the Royal Aircraft Factory, which had produced and flown airships for military purposes. The Admiralty responded at once; in September 1912 the naval airship section, which had been disbanded earlier in the year, was reconstituted, and Commander E. A. D. Masterman, Lieutenants N. F. Usborne, F. L. M. Boothby, and H. L. Woodcock, and a small number of ratings were attached to the airship squadron of the Military Wing at Farnborough, to gain experience of work with airships. The airships themselves were to be supplied from various sources. The factory was to build a new airship of the _Gamma_ type. A small Willows airship, which happened to be on the market, though it had no military value, was held to be worth its cost for training purposes. The sub-committee also recommended the purchase of two foreign airships. Here there were difficulties. The best airships of Germany were the rigid Zeppelin and the semi-rigid Parseval. The Zeppelin Company was forbidden by the German Government to sell its ships to foreigners; but negotiations for the purchase of a Parseval airship were successful. An Astra-Torres non-rigid airship of about 400,000 cubic feet of capacity was acquired from France in the course of the year 1913. In July of the same year Mr. Winston Churchill, the then First Lord of the Admiralty, who regularly gave his strong support to naval aeronautics, approved of the construction of two rigid airships and six non-rigid airships. Treasury sanction was obtained for this programme. The rigid airships were to be built by Messrs. Vickers at Barrow-in-Furness. Of the six non-rigids, three were to be of the Parseval type, and three of the Forlanini type. One of the Parsevals was to be built in Germany, and two by Messrs. Vickers, who had succeeded in obtaining a licence for the construction of this type of ship; one of the Forlaninis was to be built in Italy, and two by Messrs. Armstrong Whitworth. When the war broke out, the Parseval airship completing in Germany was confiscated by the German Government; and the Forlanini airship, under process of construction in Italy, was retained by the Italian Government. The building of one of the rigid airships had just begun, and work on it was for a time abandoned. It is necessary thus to anticipate later events, in order to show how it came about that no airships of the larger type, suitable for distant reconnaissance with the fleet, were in the service of Great Britain during the war.

The building and manoeuvring of airships is not a pastime within the reach of a private purse. The British Government had taken advantage of the enterprise and rivalry of private makers of aeroplanes, whom it wisely permitted to run the risks and show the way. No such policy was possible in the manufacture of airships, which is essentially a Government business. There was therefore, it is perhaps not fanciful to say, something agreeable to the German temper, and disagreeable to the English temper, in the airship as a weapon of war. The Germans put an absolute trust in their Government. Yet, after all, it is the spirit of a people that matters; the most magnificent and exclusive of Government organizations will fail through weakness if it is not ultimately based on the voluntary efforts and ingrained habits of the people who stand behind the Government and support it. The German navy was a powerful and splendid growth, fostered by the Government. But it was a forced growth, and the failure of the German operations at sea, regarded broadly, must be credited not to the British navy, but to the whole body of British seamen, naval and civilian. The British navy was at its appointed stations; the temper of a seafaring people, self-reliant, resourceful, and indomitable, was everywhere, and shone like a phosphorescence over thousands of unregarded acts of sacrifice.

The private enterprises of officers and men in the navy are limited by the conditions of the service, but such opportunities as could be found or made were not neglected. While the _Mayfly_ was building at Barrow-in-Furness Commander Oliver Swann purchased an Avro aeroplane and with the help of subscriptions from other officers and officers' wives made many experiments with a view to adapting it for work over the water. He tried different types of floats on the machine, and at last, on the 18th of November 1911, he succeeded in getting off the water for a very short flight. He was the first in England to achieve this feat, and from that time forward the development of seaplanes progressed rapidly. A full account of these experiments was sent by Captain Sueter to Lord Rayleigh's Advisory Committee, and thereafter a valuable series of researches was conducted at the National Physical Laboratory by Mr. G. S. Baker and others. One result of these researches was the development of a boat-shaped type of float, with flared bows, in addition to the toboggan shape.

Experiment was active also at Eastchurch. During the summer of 1911 the four naval officers whom Mr. Cockburn had taught to fly continued to make practice flights on the two machines supplied by Mr. McClean. In October Lieutenant Samson succeeded in persuading the Admiralty to buy the two aeroplanes and to send to Eastchurch twelve naval ratings, as the basis of a naval flying school. The experiments of this little band of pioneers were all directed to adapting the aeroplane to naval work. Lieutenant Longmore and Mr. Oswald Short designed and tested airbags, by the aid of which a machine successfully alighted on the water. Lieutenant Samson designed and got leave to build in Chatham Dockyard a platform with a double trackway for starting aeroplanes from the decks of ships. The idea at this time was that the machine should start from the ship and by the aid of the airbags should alight on the water under the lee of the ship, whence it could be lifted on board. The platform was erected on board H.M.S. _Africa_, and Lieutenant Samson made a successful flight from it in December 1911. Thereafter, with the help of Mr. Horace Short, he worked out a design for a seaplane; the machine was completed in March 1912 and its first flight was made at Portland. On this seaplane Lieutenant Samson flew, first and last, for about a hundred and fifty hours, without breaking a strut or a float, which is a signal testimony to the merits of both the design and the construction. The Royal Aircraft Factory, working for the Air Department of the Admiralty, also produced a seaplane, which was successfully tested on Fleet Pond. Meantime the first flying boat had been designed by Mr. Sopwith, so that all the material requisite for naval aviation was rapidly making its appearance. If the number of aviators was still very small, that was due to lack of opportunity, not to lack of zeal among naval officers. When the original four were taught to fly their names were selected from a list of about two hundred, all of whom had volunteered for the new service.

Scattered incidents and experiments, like those narrated above, are what make up the history of the beginnings of the national air force. In such a story no closely-knit dramatic sequence is possible. The history of the growth of an oak tree from an acorn may perhaps be told in dramatic form, but who can tell the history of the obscure workings of yeast, or of the growth of a field of grass? The earliest aviators were self-willed and diverse. As Captain Bertram Dickson remarked, when he was questioned concerning their enrolment for the national service, 'One man is a rich man; another man is an artist, or he is an actor; another man is a mechanic. They are funny fellows. You will get a certain number if you pay them well, because they are out for making money; you will get others who will do it for sport, and others who will do it for the advertisement.' The problem for the Government and for those who advised the Government was how to make a united body out of these odds and ends; how to reduce these talented, excitable, artistic, highly individual elements to the discipline and purpose of a great service. Two admirable instructors were at hand--the army and the navy. The thing had to be done quickly, and most of those soldiers and sailors who realized the importance of the problem were agreed in thinking that the only right way was to get the army and the navy each of them to develop its air service. Some others, looking at the thing in a broader light, held that the air should have its own service. The laws and habits of the land, they argued, are not the laws and habits of the sea; surely the air differs from both of them as much as they differ from each other. But this opinion could not be acted on at short notice. A great service cannot be built up from the beginning in one year, or even in the lifetime of one generation of men. Time is needed; and time was what was lacking. The only resource for immediate purposes was to engage the sympathies of the army and the navy, who are always willing to co-operate, though never to coalesce, and let each of them build, up its own air service after its own fashion. A certain formal unity, which might by degrees become a real unity, could be given to the two air services by the magic of a uniform and a name.

Meantime, what of the Air Battalion, which was formed in the spring of 1911, and continued in being until it was annulled and superseded by the formation of the Royal Flying Corps in the spring of 1912? The Air Battalion numbered among its officers men distinguished for their achievement, but it was born out of due time. These years, 1911 and 1912, were years of divided counsels and uncertain policy. Rumours and reports of the passenger-carrying flights of the Zeppelin, which by this time had outlived its early misfortunes, and of the formidable development of the French military aeroplane, distracted opinion and paralysed effort. The old debate between heavier than air and lighter than air was reopened. England could not hope to overtake Germany in the construction of airships; could she hope to match France in the production of aeroplanes? And if she could, was there not a chance, after all, that the future, even for military purposes, lay with the airship? The very composition of the Air Battalion reflected these uncertainties. Its headquarters were at Farnborough; the flying camp for aeroplanes was at Larkhill. Sir Alexander Bannerman, who was in command, was a balloon expert, with a distinguished record in the South African and Russo-Japanese wars. At a later date, in April 1912, he qualified as an aviator on a Bristol biplane at Brooklands. His adjutant, Captain P. W. L. Broke-Smith, had been an instructor at the balloon school, and was a skilled military airship pilot. Of the officers attached, Captain J. D. B. Fulton, of the Royal Field Artillery, and Captain C. J. Burke, of the Royal Irish Regiment, have inscribed their names on the history of aviation; Captain A. D. Carden, of the Royal Engineers, and Captain E. M. Maitland, of the Essex Regiment, were apostles of the airship. Captain Carden was an expert in meteorology, and Captain Maitland's name will long be remembered in connexion with the first airship flight across the Atlantic, achieved by the R 34, piloted by Major G. H. Scott, in July 1919. The gradual rise in esteem of aviation is witnessed by the fact that during the last days of the Air Battalion's short career not only Sir Alexander Bannerman but also Captain Broke-Smith and Captain Carden were engaged in qualifying for the aviation certificate of the Royal Aero Club. There is, of course, no inconsistency in the union of the two methods; the Air Battalion took all aeronautics for its province; there need be no falling out between the aeroplane pilot and the airship pilot so long as each recognizes and believes in the other. What most delayed progress was that the higher authorities did not know what to encourage. The most valuable work done for the national air force in the winter of 1911-12 was done in committee at Whitehall, where the whole matter was conscientiously investigated, and the scheme of the Royal Flying Corps was prepared. Meantime the Air Battalion, in view of its probable speedy extinction, received very little support. The number of aeroplanes supplied to the flying camp at Larkhill was almost ludicrously small, and a large proportion of the time spent in training was devoted to theory and observation work.

The difficulties of the position appear in a memorandum sent by the commandant on the 25th of August 1911 to the chief engineer at Aldershot. This memorandum discusses the employment of the battalion during the coming winter, and recommends that No. 2 Company (that is, the aeroplane company) be recalled to Farnborough for a time, 'in order that the men may live in barracks, do a little drill, and be generally smartened up'. But as some new machines will need trying during the winter, a detachment of the company, it is suggested, should be kept on Salisbury Plain, and its members changed from time to time, so as to prevent the discipline of the company from becoming too lax. Further it is urged that extra leave for a period of two months should be granted to officers, so that they may go abroad and see what is being done in foreign countries. In discussing the question of special pay for officers the commandant remarks that there is a tendency to devote attention solely to aeroplanes. 'At present there are, I believe, forty applicants for vacancies with the aeroplanes, and as far as I know none for work with the dirigibles.' If the rates of pay were made less for dirigibles than for aeroplanes, as is done in foreign countries, this difficulty, he says, would be accentuated.

These misgivings were justified by the event. The recommendations of the commandant were, in the main, carried out, but the conditions during the winter made progress almost impossible. There were no proper living quarters at Larkhill, so officers and men lived at Bulford--the officers at the Royal Artillery Mess--and went to and from their work in horsed transport wagons. As they used to go down to Bulford for dinner at midday, the actual work done in the sheds was inconsiderable.

A further very real difficulty was inevitable, and might be compared to the growing pains of any healthy organism. The air forces of Great Britain took their origin, as has been explained, from the Royal Engineers. For a very long time--something over a quarter of a century--the Royal Engineers had the monopoly of the air. When science quickened new growth, this new growth was still attached by habit and tradition to the old body. In March 1912 eight out of fourteen officers of the Air Battalion were members of the Royal Engineers. The remainder, including some of the keenest students of aviation--Captain Fulton, Captain Burke, Captain Maitland, Lieutenant Barrington-Kennett--were, in a regimental sense, interlopers. Those who understand the strength and virtue of regimental society and regimental tradition will easily understand also how in a mixed body the old loyalty and the new pull different ways and impede the smooth working of the machine.

All these difficulties deserve mention if only because they did in fact make the work on Salisbury Plain poor and ineffective during the winter of 1911-12. But they are not the whole of the story. 'The first thing that strikes me', Keats once wrote to a friend, 'on hearing of trouble having befallen another is this--"Well, it cannot be helped, he will have the pleasure of trying the resources of his spirit."' That pleasure was enjoyed by the little band of stalwarts who about the end of April 1911 went into camp at Larkhill as No. 2 Company, Air Battalion. If they received scant encouragement, they got to work without waiting for more. When Mr. Cockburn, after instructing the naval officers at Eastchurch, returned to Larkhill to find his old machine, he found the company in possession on the plain. Captain Fulton was in command. Most of the officers had had some little experience of flying. 'Captain Fulton', says Mr. Cockburn, 'had had some practice on my machine; Lieutenant Conner had had some also, but not nearly so much. Captain Burke had learnt in France, and was about on a par with Captain Fulton. These two were certainly the best pilots at that time. Lieutenant Barrington-Kennett had had a short course on a Bleriot some time before, but had not flown for some months. Lieutenant Cammell was flying a Bleriot of weird and wonderful type, his own property. These were the originals, but Captain Loraine and Lieutenant Hynes joined soon afterwards.' To these names should be added another--Lieutenant H. R. P. Reynolds, of the Royal Engineers.

Having taught the navy to fly, Mr. Cockburn now lent his help to the army. 'The machines', he says, 'with the exception of the Bleriot were either Farmans or Bristol box-kites.... Lieutenant Barrington-Kennett had no experience on these, and Lieutenant Reynolds had no experience on anything. The experience of the remainder was not sufficient to admit of their acting as Instructors, so Captain Fulton got permission for me to carry on and take Barrington-Kennett and Reynolds in hand. This was an easy business compared with Eastchurch--a three miles' straight with good landing all the way made the first flights an easy matter. There were no incidents, except in a joy-ride for Lieutenant Cammell when his cap blew off and back into the propeller, causing a most tremendous noise which scared us badly, me particularly, as I didn't know the cause.... Progress was good; every one was very keen; and the Air Battalion soon developed into quite respectable pilots without any accidents.'

The company had a glorious and adventurous summer. It is strange to compare their doings with the elaborate exercises which were being practised at the same time by the French air corps at the Camp de Chalons. On Salisbury Plain very little effort was made to co-operate with other arms, except spasmodically. The pilots were new to their work, and the triumph was to get into the air at all. The first united effort of the battalion, says Mr. Cockburn, was to fly from Larkhill to Farnborough. 'It was a most exciting event; they went off at intervals, and every one of them got there. It was a very creditable performance both for them and for their mechanics. It must be remembered that the latter were all inexperienced, but what they lacked in experience they made up for in zest, always ready to learn, and as keen as possible to go up. One of them at this time was the eldest of the McCuddens, and many of the others are now (1918) officers holding considerable positions in the Royal Air Force. They were a fine lot of men, and deserve their success as pioneers.'

The higher grade Aero Club certificate was obtainable by the successful performance of a cross-country flight to a destination named a short time before the start. Cross-country flights were much in fashion, so that pilots were away from the battalion for about half their time. They flew in mufti; Lieutenants Barrington-Kennett and Reynolds more than once got into trouble for being away as much as a week at a time. These absences were sometimes due to engine failure, sometimes (it was believed) to the discovery of a well-provided country house and kind hosts.

The army manoeuvres of August 1911, appointed to be held in Cambridgeshire, were the event of the summer; and the Air Battalion was detailed to take part in them. Owing to the shortage of water in that droughty summer the event never came off, but the aeroplane company started from Larkhill, and met with plenty of incident on the way. Air Commodore Brooke-Popham, who was at that time attached to the company from the Staff College, has very kindly set down his memories of the flight. He started from Larkhill with Captain Burke on the old Farman, with the object of making Oxford, but owing to a slight adverse wind and the low speed of the machine, which made only thirty miles an hour in a calm, they had to be content with Wantage, and got to Oxford the next morning. Lieutenant Barrington-Kennett, with a mechanic, made a forced landing in the neighbourhood of Burford, but with the assistance of Captain Brooke-Popham and Lieutenant Hynes, who went to his rescue in the only motor vehicle possessed by the company, he got into the air again, and also reached Oxford. Meantime Lieutenant Conner had had a crash in a fog, without hurting himself, on high ground at West Ilsley, south of Oxford. Maps, in those days, were mostly provided by the officers themselves, and Lieutenant Conner had steered himself successfully by the aid of a map torn out of a Bradshaw Railway Guide. Eventually the mobilized military air force of the British Empire, that is to say, Captains Burke, Brooke-Popham, and Massy, Lieutenants Barrington-Kennett and Reynolds, arrived in Oxford, at the end of the first stage. Here there were no tools available for repair, the few belonging to the company having been dispatched, by orders given at cross-purposes, straight to Cambridge. Nevertheless the little band of enthusiasts bravely started on the last stage of their journey. Captains Burke and Brooke-Popham had engine failure about ten miles out of Oxford, and, landing in a ridge-and-furrow field, broke a tail skid. Most of the day was consumed in getting this skid mended, patchwork fashion, by a coachbuilder in Oxford, to procure whose aid Captain Brooke-Popham returned to Oxford by earth. When the machine flew again it was forced to land at once, this time with serious damage. The other three officers had all been compelled by the bumpy weather to land not many miles away. In the evening they started again. Captain Massy had engine trouble fifty yards from the start, and completely wrecked his machine without hurting himself at all. Lieutenant Reynolds, who was the next to go, ran into a thunder-storm. His famous accident deserves to be recorded in his own words:

'That evening, soon after seven o'clock, I started again, it was warm and fine but rather suggestive of thunder; the air was perfectly still. I scarcely had occasion to move the control lever at all until I got to Bletchley, where it began to get rather bumpy; at first I thought nothing of this, but suddenly it got much worse, and I came to the conclusion it was time to descend. A big black thunder-cloud was coming up on my right front; it did not look reassuring, and there was good landing ground below. At this time I was flying about 1,700 feet altitude by my aneroid, which had been set at Oxford in the morning. I began a glide, but almost directly I had switched off the tail of the machine was suddenly wrenched upwards as if it had been hit from below, and I saw the elevator go down perpendicularly below me. I was not strapped in, and I suppose I caught hold of the uprights at my side, for the next thing I realized was that I was lying in a heap on what ordinarily is the under surface of the top plane. The machine in fact was upside-down. I stood up, held on, and waited. The machine just floated about, gliding from side to side like a piece of paper falling. Then it over-swung itself, so to speak, and went down more or less vertically sideways until it righted itself momentarily the right way up.

'Then it went down tail first, turned over upside-down again, and restarted the old floating motion. We were still some way from the ground, and took what seemed like a long time in reaching it. I looked round somewhat hurriedly; the tail was still there, and I could see nothing wrong. As we got close to the ground the machine was doing long swings from side to side, and I made up my mind that the only thing to do was to try and jump clear of the wreckage before the crash. In the last swing we slid down, I think, about thirty feet, and hit the ground pretty hard. Fortunately I hung on practically to the end, and, according to those who were looking on, I did not jump till about ten feet from the ground.'

Those who were looking on were two men, stark naked, who had been bathing near by. About fifty or sixty people soon collected, and some time passed before it occurred to any one to remark that these two men had no clothes on.

The military air force of the Empire had now been reduced to two serviceable aeroplanes which got to Cambridge, one piloted by Lieutenant Barrington-Kennett, the other by Lieutenant Cammell, who had been delayed at Larkhill for some days but had flown by way of London without mishap. These officers were well received and entertained by the resident members of the University.

Later in the autumn the Government bought some new machines for the battalion. In one of these, a two-seater Nieuport monoplane, with a fifty horse-power Gnome engine, Lieutenant Barrington-Kennett made a record passenger-carrying flight. On the 14th of February 1912 he flew 249-1/2 miles in four hours thirty-two minutes. In a rapidly advancing tide every wave makes a record, which is obliterated by the next wave. But the use of the word 'record', so frequent in the annals of aviation, does convey some sense of the exhilaration of the pioneers. Another of the machines supplied by the Government was a Breguet biplane with a sixty horse-power Renault engine. 'It was a most unwholesome beast,' says Mr. Cockburn, 'with flexible wings, steel spars, and wheel control.' It required enormous strength to steer it, and was perseveringly and valorously flown by Lieutenant Hynes. There was also a Deperdussin two-seater monoplane, which Captain Fulton flew; and the earliest of the B.E. machines from the Aircraft Factory, which fell to the lot of Captain Burke. The battalion was much impressed by the number of instruments fitted to their new machines. In the machines they were accustomed to there was nothing but a revolution counter, and sometimes, though not always, a compass. If the pilot's scientific ambitions went beyond this simple outfit, he carried a watch on his wrist and an aneroid slung round his neck. The risks that these early pilots cheerfully faced at the call of duty were serious enough, and it is surprising that their casualties were so few. The only fatal accident in the Air Battalion was the death of Lieutenant R. A. Cammell, R.E., who was killed while flying a Valkyrie monoplane at Hendon on the 17th of September 1911. The machine was not familiar to him, and it is believed that he forgot to work the forward elevator; at the height of about ninety feet the monoplane tilted to one side, and fell with a crash. Lieutenant Cammell was one of the pioneers of British military aviation. So early as June 1910 he had been sent to France to take over a Bleriot machine. He attended the Rheims meeting of that year and sent home some valuable reports. He was a daring and skilful aviator, and had qualified also as an airship pilot.

The story of Great Britain's apprenticeship in the air has now been brought down to the point at which the Royal Flying Corps, famous on every battle front of the world war, makes its first appearance. So far it has been a story of small things, of interrupted experiments and tentative advances; of the caution of the Government, and the boldness of the private adventurer. There is nothing new in the story; the air was attacked and mastered in the English fashion. When we are confronted with great issues, it is our habit, or so we are fond of saying, to 'muddle through'. Foreign nations, and especially enemy nations, do not so describe our activities. But we are great self-critics, and not free from that kind of inverted self-esteem which makes a man speak of his own achievements with deceitful and extravagant modesty. The business of history is to tell the truth; the truth is that we muddle through with amazing success. This success we affect to regard as an undeserved reward bestowed by Providence on improvidence. But is the law of cause and effect really made void on our behalf? The people of the island, it is true, are slow to make up their minds; their respect for experience and their care for justice make them distrust quick action if it is not instinctive action. They are unimaginative in this sense, that they are not very readily excited by the theatrical exhortations which are addressed to them from day to day. In a much deeper sense they are imaginative; they have a sure instinct for the realities of life. When they are presented with a doubtful novelty, they prefer to wait; and they can afford to wait, for they know that their young will be eager to show the way, and, in the meantime, they are not afraid.

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