work and
instruction.'

The importance of the main issue was ever present to his mind. In
another entry he records how he reproved a young lieutenant, telling him
that 'he must take his work seriously and make himself older in
character'. Map-reading, signalling, propeller-swinging, car-starting,
military training, technical training, the safety of the public, the
prompt payment of small tradesmen ('which defeats accusation of Army
unbusinesslike methods'); these and a hundred other cares are the matter
of the diary. That they were all subordinate to the main issue appears
in the orders which he gave to some of the pilots of No. 6 Squadron, at
Dover, in the summer of 1914. Any pilot who met a Zeppelin, and failed
to bring it down by firing at it, would be expected, he said, to take
other measures, that is to say, to charge it. Not a few of the early war
pilots were prepared to carry out these instructions.

The work done by the other early squadrons was similar in kind. No. 4
Squadron was formed at Farnborough in the autumn of 1912 under Major G.
H. Raleigh, of the Essex Regiment, who had served with distinction in
the South African War. After completing its establishment it moved to
Netheravon, where it carried on practice in reconnaissance, co-operation
with artillery, cross-country flying, night flying, and all the business
of an active unit. The record of miles flown during 1913 by No. 4
Squadron hardly falls short of the record of the two senior squadrons;
all three flew more than fifty thousand miles. When No. 5 Squadron was
formed under Major Higgins a part of it was stationed for a time at
Dover, and the squadron moved to new quarters at Fort Grange, Gosport,
on the 6th of July, 1914, a month before the war. No. 6 Squadron was
nearly complete when the war came, but No. 7 Squadron was very much
under strength. Thus in August of that year four aeroplane squadrons
were ready for war, another was almost ready, and another was no more
than a nucleus. The rest of the magnificent array which served the
country on the battle fronts was yet to make.

The month of June in 1914 was given up to a Concentration Camp at
Netheravon. The idea of bringing the squadrons together in this camp
seems to have originated with Colonel Sykes, whose arrangements were
admirable in their detailed forethought and completeness. The mornings
were devoted to trials and experiments, the afternoons to lectures and
discussion on those innumera