the eighty horse-power Gnome. In
Germany airship engines of two hundred horse-power and more, easily
modified for use in aeroplanes, were available in quantity some time
before the war. For military machines we were satisfied with smaller
engines, which worked well, and enabled our aeroplanes to accomplish all
that at that time seemed likely to be asked of them. If we were wrong we
were content to wait for experience to correct us.

The problems presented to the Naval Wing of the Royal Flying Corps were
widely different from those which engrossed the attention of the
soldiers. The difference, to put it briefly, was the difference between
defence and attack. The British army does not fight at home, and this
privilege it enjoys by virtue of the constant vigilance of the British
navy. The ultimate business of the British navy, though it visits all
the seas of the world, is home defence. Yet that defence cannot be
effectively carried out at home, and when we are at war our frontiers
are the enemy coasts and our best defence is attack. This old
established doctrine of naval warfare is the orthodox doctrine also of
aerial warfare. A mobile force confined to one place by losing its
mobility loses most of its virtue. The fencer who does nothing but parry
can never win a bout, and in the end will fail to parry. The recognition
of this doctrine in relation to aerial warfare was gradual. When the
Royal Flying Corps was established and the question of the defence of
our coasts by aircraft first came under discussion, our available
airships, aeroplanes, and seaplanes, though their development had been
amazingly rapid, were weapons without much power of offence. The main
thing was to give them a chance of proving and increasing their utility.
In October 1912 the Admiralty decided to establish a chain of seaplane
and airship stations on the east coast of Great Britain. The earliest of
these stations, after Eastchurch, was the seaplane station of the Isle
of Grain, commissioned in December 1912, with Lieutenant J. W. Seddon as
officer in command. This was followed, in the first half of 1913, by the
establishment of similar stations at Calshot, Felixstowe, Yarmouth, and
Cromarty. H.M.S. _Hermes_, in succession to H.M.S. _Actaeon_, was
commissioned on the 7th of May 1913 as headquarters of the Naval Wing,
and her commanding officer, Captain G. W. Vivian, R.N., was given charge
of all coastal air stations. For airships a station at Hoo on