ressed with the importance of military aviation for
their country's need. 'It has got to come,' said Captain Patrick
Hamilton, 'and we have got to do it.' Their lives were pledged to their
country, and until their country should call for them, were held in
trust, not to be lightly thrown away. Some were called early, during the
exercises of peace; others during the war. Others again, a minority,
were marked down for a third chance, and were given the duty of carrying
on, through the war and after it. The time of the call, early or late,
made no difference; the work of the corps was not interrupted. When
Captain Eustace Loraine, the first to go, was killed with his passenger,
Staff-Sergeant R. H. V. Wilson, near Stonehenge, on the 5th of July
1912, the order was issued that flying would go on as usual that
evening. An order like this not only creates a tradition, it pays the
right honour to the dead, who died on duty no less than if they had been
brought down by the guns of the enemy. The casualties of the first
summer were not light in proportion to the strength of the corps, and in
one respect were very heavy, for almost all of those who were killed
were creators and founders, whose work and influence would have been
invaluable in building up the corps. They could ill be spared. They left
nothing but their example; yet any one who remembers what the Flying
Corps achieved during the war may well wonder whether that example does
not count for as much as a long life of devoted service.

Captain Eustace Broke Loraine had served with the Grenadier Guards in
the South African War. His great-grandfather was the famous British
admiral, Sir Philip Broke, who in 1813 commanded H.M.S. _Shannon_, and
after a fifteen minutes' battle outside the port of New York compelled
the surrender of the United States frigate _Chesapeake_. That battle, it
has been truly said, was won before it was fought; the _Shannon_ had
been many years cruising at sea; she was in perfect fighting trim, her
men were disciplined and her gunners practised. The men of the
_Chesapeake_ were fresh from the shore, strangers to each other and to
their officers, so that the heavier armament of the _Chesapeake_ was of
no avail. When Captain Loraine joined the Flying Corps he applied his
great-grandfather's methods, and set himself by study, care, discipline,
and skill to prepare the materials of victory. He was a highly skilled
pilot, perhaps overbold. The machine he w