The highest altitude that had been reached in Great Britain was 14,920 feet; the greatest distance flown 287 miles; and the longest duration 8 hours 23 minutes.
Whether we were prepared for the war is a matter for too extensive a discussion for this little book, but the fact remains that the number of firms engaged in the manufacturing of aeroplanes could be counted on both hands, and that we were without a useful and reliable engine of British construction.
The Air Service is young, very young; it is like an overgrown schoolboy, strong, healthy and full of life, but lacking just that sense of proportion that distinguishes the schoolboy from the man. It is wise, for it is endowed with the wisdom of initiative, courage and resource. Turned loose into an entirely novel and little understood element, it has had to create its own methods of procedure, its own ideals, its own traditions. Reference to the policies and the formulas of past generations are impossible, for there are none!
The main principles of aerial warfare are entirely new; in every combat, and in every raid, some precedent is established, some new form or theory of attack is set up. To the airman every day is alike. In times of peace he risks his neck as much as he does in time of war, save that engaged in the latter he has the additional unpleasantness of shell fire. He willingly gives all, but asks for nothing. He is the knight-errant of the twentieth century.
In days of the past, it was the cavalryman, wounded and galloping across country, with a hundred foemen hard at his heels, who first brought news of the enemy to the general in command. His was a pleasant occupation, that smacked largely of daring and romance. He stood an excellent chance of getting a bullet through his lungs, or of being clapped into an enemy prison. To-day there comes flying across the heavens a resolute young hero, in a few feet of wood and fabric, throwing defiance to shot and shell alike, suspended thousands of feet up between heaven and earth, peering from that swaying aeroplane at the panorama of the earth beneath.
This is the age of science and invention. War on and over the earth, on and under the sea. For many years we have steadily been putting behind us the barbarities of our forbears, we have become more civilized, and, though more civilized, more barbarous. This is no paradox; science has made great and wonderful strides, but science has been more devilishly ingenious than any torture of Spanish Inquisition days.