s fashions do not much preoccupy her mind; she
knows that they will come to her, in due time, from France, to be taken
or rejected. When a change is something more than a fashion, and vital
conditions begin to be affected, her lethargy is broken in a moment and
she is awake and alert. So it was with the fashion of air-travel. The
first aviator's certificate granted by a British authority was issued by
the Royal Aero Club of the United Kingdom to Mr. J. T. C. Moore-Brabazon
in March 1910, when already the exploits of flying men were the theme of
all the world. By the 1st of November in the same year the Royal Aero
Club had issued twenty-two certificates; that is to say, twenty-two
pilots, some of them self-taught, and some trained in France, were
licensed by the sole British authority as competent to handle a machine
in the air. Eight years later, in November 1918, when the armistice put
an end to the active operations of the war, the Royal Air Force was the
largest and strongest of the air forces of the world. We were late in
beginning, but once we had begun we were not slow. We were rich in
engineering skill and in material for the struggle. Best of all, we had
a body of youth fitted by temperament for the work of the air, and
educated, as if by design, to take risks with a light heart--the boys of
the Public Schools of England. As soon as the opportunity came they
offered themselves in thousands for a work which can never be done well
when it is done without zest, and which calls for some of the highest
qualities of character--fearlessness, self-dependence, and swift
decision. The Germans, before the war, used to speak with some contempt,
perhaps with more than they felt, of the English love of sport, which
they liked to think was frivolous and unworthy of a serious nation.
Their forethought and organization, which was intensely, almost
maniacally, serious, was defeated by what they despised; and the love of
sport, or, to give it its noblest name, the chivalry, of their enemies,
which they treated as a foolish relic of romance, proved itself to be
the most practical thing in the world.

The English pioneers of flight, who had learned their flying abroad,
brought back their knowledge, and did what they could to arouse their
country to effort. What their success would have been if the peace of
Europe had continued unbroken and unthreatened it is impossible to say,
but progress would probably have been slow--an affair of