re. 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.

Aviati