it must
be carried by an airship. No sufficient weight of bombs could be carried
by an aeroplane; the airship was the predestined bombing machine.
Machine-guns were difficult to work from an aeroplane; they were the
natural weapon of the airship. Photography was a hope worthy of
experiment, but even photography was thought to be best suited to the
airship, and internal accommodation for a camera was not asked for or
provided in an aeroplane. At the back of all this lay the strongest
argument of all: the value of reconnaissance to the army was so great,
and our military aeroplanes were so few, that it was impossible to spare
any of them for less essential work. As the Flying Corps grew in
numbers and skill it found breathing space to look around and to claim
the duties that had been judged to be outside its scope.

As a nation we distrust theory. We learn very quickly from experience,
and are almost obstinately unwilling to learn in any other way.
Experience is a costly school, but it teaches nothing false. A nation
which attends experience could never be hurried into disaster, as the
Germans were hurried by a debauch of political and military theory,
subtly appealing to the national vanity. To insure themselves against so
foolish a fate the British are willing to pay a heavy price. They have
an instinctive dislike, which often seems to be unreasonable in its
strength, for all that is novel and showy. They are ready enough to take
pleasure in a spectacle, but they are prejudiced against taking the
theatre as a guide for life. This is well seen in the disfavour with
which the practical military authorities regarded the more spectacular
developments of aviation, which yet, in the event, were found to have
practical uses. Looping the loop, and other kinds of what are now called
'aerobatics', were habitually disparaged as idle spectacles. Yet the
'Immelmann turn', so called, whereby a machine, after performing half a
loop, falls rapidly away on one wing, was a manoeuvre which, when first
used by the enemy, proved fatal to many of our pilots. The spin, at the
outbreak of the war, was regarded as a fault in an aeroplane, due
chiefly to bad construction; later on Dr. F. A. Lindemann, by his
researches and courageous experiments at the Royal Aircraft Factory,
proved that any aeroplane can spin, and that any pilot who understands
the spin can get out of it if there is height to spare. During the war
the spin was freely used by p