ficer cadets or
non-commissioned officer cadets, all the more promising men were given
commissions, so that only men of inferior intelligence were left to
become non-commissioned pilots. It is surely rash to lay stress on vague
class distinctions. A stander-by who happened, during the war, to
witness the management of an Arab camel convoy by a handful of British
private soldiers, remarked that though these soldiers knew no language
but their own, their initiative and tact, their natural assumption of
authority, and their unfailing good temper, which at last got the convoy
under way, showed that they belonged to an imperial race. The question
of the rank of pilots is really a social question, a question, that is
to say, not of individual superiority but of smooth collaboration. If a
whole squadron of the Flying Corps had been staffed, as was at one time
suggested, by men picked from the non-commissioned ranks, there can be
no doubt that it would have made a name for itself among the very best.

The largest question of all in the making of the Flying Corps was the
question whether the air service was to be a new and independent
service, taking rank with the army and the navy, or was to be, for the
most part, divided between the army and the navy, and placed under their
control. This question, it might seem, was settled by the opening words
of the sub-committee's recommendations: 'The British Aeronautical
Service should be regarded as one, and should be designated "The Flying
Corps".' But subsequent developments soon showed that this settlement
was not accepted on all hands. The navy never fully accepted it. The
British navy is a body enormously strong in its corporate feeling,
conscious of its responsibilities, proud of its history, and wedded to
its own ways. Its self-reliant character, which had made it slow to
recognize the importance of the air, made it slow also, when the
importance of the air was proved, to allow a weapon necessary for naval
operations to pass out of its own control. When the active combatant
service of the Royal Flying Corps came into being, it consisted of a
Naval Wing and a Military Wing. The Naval Wing had its headquarters at
Eastchurch, where the Naval Flying School had been established. For
administrative purposes the Naval Flying School was placed under the
orders of the captain of H.M.S. _Actaeon_, and all officers and men were
to be borne on the books of the _Actaeon_. Experiments with seapl