the training
and equipment of every recruit--all these things had to be thought out
in advance. The official text-books, regulations, and standing orders,
which were all complete and ready for issue when the war came, bear
witness to the foresight and initiative of Major Sykes and the small
staff who worked under him at headquarters. The Flying Corps resembles
the navy in this respect, that its daily work in time of peace is not
very much unlike its daily work in time of war, so that if the work is
hard and incessant, at least it is rewarded by the sense of achievement.

One particular achievement was greater than all the rest. When flight
began it attracted men of romantic and adventurous temper, some of whom
were much concerned with their own performances and had a natural liking
for display. If these tendencies had been encouraged, or even permitted,
they would have ruined the corps. The staff, to a man, set their faces
like flint against all such indulgences. Publicity, advertisement, the
rubbish of popular applause, were anathema to them. What they sought to
create was a service temper, and they were so successful that the
typical pilot of the war was as modest and dutiful as a lieutenant of
infantry. The building up of the Flying Corps on these lines, remote
from the public gaze, deprived it of popular support, but it gained for
it what was a thousand times more valuable--a severe code of duty, a
high standard of quiet courage, and an immense corporate pride. To have
kept the infant corps and all its doings in the public eye would have
been as disastrous an experiment as to attempt to educate a child on the
music-hall stage.

A great part of the early work of the Flying Corps was experimental.
Various kinds of experiment were assigned by the corps headquarters to
the several squadrons, and the headquarters staff took care that any
success achieved by one squadron should become the rule for the
betterment of all. An experimental branch of the Military Wing was
formed in March 1913 under Major Herbert Musgrave; it dealt, among other
things, with experimental work in connexion with ballooning, kiting,
wireless telegraphy, photography, meteorology, bomb-dropping, musketry,
and gunnery, and co-operation with artillery. Major Musgrave deserves
more than a passing mention in any military history of the air. After
serving throughout the South African War as a lieutenant in the Royal
Engineers he had passed through the St