Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh

“ These are the permanent conditions, and they give the infantry its supremacy in war. A country that is conquered must be controlled and administered; a city that surrenders must be occupied. Battles can be won in the air or on the sea, and the mark of victory is this, that the patient infantry, military and civil, can then advance, to organize peace. An immense sympathy for the sufferings of the infantry, an immense admiration for their dogged perseverance in their never-ending task, is felt by all those whose business it is to assist them from the air. ”

“ An aeroplane and its engine are judged by the pilot who uses them. Every one who knows the Royal Flying Corps knows how sensitive to rumour (p. 427) and how contagious opinion is among pilots. This is only natural; a pilot trusts his life to his machine, and his machine, if he is to fly and fight confidently, must be, like Caesar's wife, above suspicion. To distrust the machine is to suffer a kind of paralysis in the air. The breath of unfavourable rumour easily takes away the character of a machine, and makes it, in effect, valueless. A pilot has one life, and has to take many risks ”

“ If he is killed, the craft cannot keep the air. But if more depends on the pilot, it is equally true to say that a higher degree of cold-drawn courage is demanded from the observer. He suffers with the pilot for all the pilot's mistakes. For hours together he has nothing to do but to sit still and keep his eyes open. He has not the relief that activity and the sense of control give to strained nerves. He is often an older man than the pilot, and better able to recognize danger. There is no more splendid record of service in the war than the record of the best observers. ”

“ What is said of General Trenchard is said of the Flying Corps. The power which Nature made his own, and which attends him like his shadow, is the power given him by his singleness of purpose and his faith in the men whom he commands. He has never called on them to do anything that he would not do himself, if he were not very unfortunately condemned, as he once told the pilots of a squadron, to go about in a Rolls-Royce car and to sit in a comfortable chair. He has never thought any deed of sacrifice and devotion too great for their powers. ”

“ At a later time in the war some senior officers, skilled in the handling of men, learned to fly, and were at once given the command of squadrons. A man with a talent for command, who can teach and maintain discipline, encourage his subordinates, and organize the work to be done, will have a good squadron, and is free from those insidious temptations which so easily beset commanding officers who have earned distinction as pilots. Yet the instinct of the Royal Air Force is strong—that a commanding officer should know the air, if he is to control aircraft. ”

“ The British army does not fight at home, and this privilege it enjoys by virtue of the constant vigilance of the British navy. The ultimate business of the British navy, though it visits all the seas of the world, is home defence. Yet that defence cannot be effectively carried out at home, and when we are at war our frontiers are the enemy coasts and our best defence is attack. This old established doctrine of naval warfare is the orthodox doctrine also of aerial warfare. A mobile force confined to one place by losing its mobility loses most of its virtue. ”

“ Stability is not of the first importance to a fighting scout, whose attention is concentrated on his own manœuvres, 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ THE ROYAL FLYING CORPS FROM MONS TO YPRES
The German war of the twentieth century, like the German wars of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, was carefully planned and prepared by the military rulers of Prussia. To elucidate its origins and causes will be the work of many long years. Yet enough is known to make it certain that this last and greatest war conforms to the old design. The Prussians have always been proud of their doctrine of war, and have explained it to the world with perfect frankness. War has always been regarded by them as the great engine of national progress. ”

“ Major Burke's squadron was reputed to have the best pilots, while the Netheravon squadrons had had more training in co-operation with other arms, and in the diverse uses of aeroplanes in war. But the unknown dangers which all had to share were a strong bond, and the spirit of comradeship prevailed. The officers and men of the Royal Flying Corps were makers, not inheritors, of that tradition of unity and gallantry which is the soul of a regiment, and which carries it with unbroken spirit through the trials and losses of war. ”

“ Their society must be governed by a high and exacting code, imposed by consent, as the creed of all. The creation, or the tended growth, of such a society, that is to say, of the new air force, was one of the miracles of the war. The recruits of the air were young, some of them no more than boys. Their training lasted only a few months. They put their home life behind them, or kept it only as a fortifying memory, and threw themselves with fervour and abandon into the work to be done. Pride in their squadron became a part of their religion. ”

“ An airship is much more costly than an aeroplane, whether to construct or to work, and when it flies at a moderate height for the purposes of military reconnaissance, it is much more vulnerable. This, no doubt, was the consideration which determined the severance of the airships from the army. Yet the airships, during their brief period of service with the Military Wing, had demonstrated in the most convincing fashion the enormous value of aerial reconnaissance, and, more important still, had put the whole Flying Corps in their debt by adapting wireless telegraphy to the uses of aircraft. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The science of aeronautics is yet in its childhood; its development must not be cramped by tying it too closely to a service which works under narrower conditions. If there should be another great war (and though no one desires it, no one dares to think it impossible) , the fittest man to hold the command of united land and sea forces might well be a Marshal of the Air. But the strongest argument for a single air force is not so much an argument as an instinct. Every kind of warfare develops in men its own type of character. ”

“ CHAPTER II THE AEROPLANE AND THE AIRSHIP
The age of the flying machine had come at last. A power-driven aeroplane had been built, and had been flown under the control of its pilot. What remained to do was to practise with it and test it; to improve it, and perfect it, and put it on the market. The time allowed for all this was not long; in less than eleven years, if only the world had known it, the world would be at war, and would be calling for aeroplanes by the thousand.
Romance, for all that it is inspired by real events, is never quite like real life. ”

“ But the navigation of the air, whether by airship or aeroplane, is now recognized for the more formidable novelty. The progress of the war has proved that within the narrow seas the submarine can be countered, and that the extension of its capabilities on the high seas is beset with difficulties. For aircraft the possibilities are immense. It is not extravagant to say that the 17th of December 1903, when the Wright brothers made the first free flight through the air in a power-driven machine, marks the beginning of a new era in the history of the world. ”

“ Reconnaissance, or observation, can never be superseded; knowledge comes before power; and the air is first of all a place to see from. It is also a place to strike from, but, speaking historically, offensive action in the air, on any large scale, began, as had been anticipated, in the effort of the conflicting forces to deprive each other of the opportunity and means of vision. As the British expeditionary force grew, more squadrons of reconnaissance machines were required to serve the armies, their principal duties being to observe for the artillery and to photograph enemy positions. ”

“ Of those who were competent to handle a machine in the air during the years before the war by far the greater number served with the colours. With the outbreak of war civilian flying, except for training purposes, abruptly ceased. The necessities of war compelled and quickened invention. When a nation is fighting for its life, money and energy are expended without check, and it may be doubted whether in the whole history of mankind any art in its infant stage has been so magnificently supported and advanced by war as the art of flying was supported and advanced by the greatest war of all. ”

“ No one who covets a life of routine, with defined duties and limited liabilities, ever yet took up with aviation as a profession. The men who explored and took possession of the air in the twentieth century are the inheritors of the men who explored and took possession of America in the sixteenth century. It is one of our chief title-deeds as a nation that adventurers are very numerous among us. We were not the first to show the way, in either case, but because we are a breeding-ground of adventurers we are richer than other nations in the required type of character, and we soon outgo them. ”

“ In this perennial debate the man of the world commonly triumphs; he plays for the stakes that are on the table, and does not put faith in deferred gains. For something like two hundred years Sir William Temple's triumph was almost complete. Now things have changed, and Glanvill's rhapsody comes nearer to the truth. Wireless telegraphy, radium, the discoveries of bacteriology, and not least the conquest of the air, have taken the edge off the sallies of the wit, and have verified the dreams of the prophet. ”

“ To condemn them out and out is to prefer the German plan of empire, which depends wholly on central initiative and central control, to the sporadic energy of the British Empire, which can never be killed by a blow aimed at the centre, for its life is in every part. Military theory, based as it is chiefly on the great campaigns of continental conquerors, has so impressed some of its British students that they forget their own nature, renounce their pride, and cheapen their dearest possessions. ”

“ 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 building and manœuvring 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. ”

“ As soon as it became clear that no nation could without extreme peril to itself neglect the new weapon, the Government took up the problem in earnest. Private enterprise might, no doubt, have been trusted to improve and develop aircraft for the various uses of peace, but the question was a question of war. The purposes and ambitions of the German Empire had again and again been freely expressed, in no moderate language, and the German menace lay like a long vague shadow across the peace of Europe. ”

“ Those who had pleased themselves with the fancy that Great Britain is an island were rudely undeceived.
Aircraft had proved their utility, or rather their necessity, in the campaign on the western front; they were not less needed in all these distant theatres. In uncivilized or thinly peopled countries a single squadron of aeroplanes may save the work of whole battalions of infantry. The great problem of the first year of the war was a problem of manufacture and training, the problem, indeed, of the creation of values. ”

“ Machine-guns were difficult to work from an aeroplane; they were the natural weapon of the airship. Photography was a hope worthy of experiment, but even photography was thought to be best suited to the airship, and internal accommodation for a camera was not asked for or provided in an aeroplane. At the back of all this lay the strongest argument of all: the value of reconnaissance to the army was so great, and our military aeroplanes were so few, that it was impossible to spare any of them for less essential work. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The great periods of human history are not the long periods; they are those times of change and crisis when the movements of humanity are quickened and made visible, when the stationary habits and conservative traditions of mankind are broken up, and one phase of civilization gives place to another, as the bud, long and slowly matured, suddenly bursts into flower. ”

“ The senior naval officer who was inexperienced in the air was promoted over the heads of the pioneers of naval aviation who were junior in the navy.
There is no unmixed good on earth. The debate between discipline and progress can never be settled dogmatically one way or the other. Those who have to lead men into battle are agreed that without discipline progress is useless. A crowd of undrilled men of science could not stand the push of a platoon of common soldiers. ”