ier, and her work as
transport and messenger vessel was taken over by the _Princess
Victoria_.

The whole business of seaplanes was still in the experimental stage, and
during the first twelve months of the war there were many
disappointments. It was found that the seaplanes, when they were loaded
with bombs, could not get off a sea that would hardly distress a picket
boat. Proposals for an aerial raid on Wilhelmshaven and the Kiel canal
were put forward by the Admiralty on the 13th of August, but the
machinery was too imperfect, and the raid did not come off. But on
Christmas Day, 1914, when the weather was propitious, a successful raid
was carried out, as shall be seen, against Cuxhaven. In the meantime
much experimental work was done at high pressure, and a heavy
responsibility fell on the technical staff of the Naval Air Service, who
had to place definite orders, a year ahead, for engines to be developed
and manufactured upon a large scale. In 1915 this policy produced the
225 horse-power Wight tractor, which could fly for seven hours at a
speed of seventy knots, carrying a fair weight of bombs, and the 225
horse-power Short tractor, which could carry five hundredweight of
explosives over a distance of three hundred miles. Both these machines
could face broken water better than the earlier types, though it was not
until the flying boat was perfected that the difficulties presented by a
moderate sea were at last overcome.

It was an acute disappointment to the Naval Air Service that the enemy
fleet at Wilhelmshaven and the enemy dockyards at Kiel should be left so
long unmolested. The tendency to find some one to blame for lost
opportunities is always strong in England. We are a strenuous and moral
people, and we ask for a very formidable blend of virtues in our
leaders. We are proud of the bull-dog breed and the traditions of our
navy, but we demand from the bull-dog all the subtlety of the fox. We
came through the war with credit not chiefly by intelligence but by
character. Perhaps the two are never perfectly combined in one man. We
know what it is to entrust our good name and our safety to men of
stalwart and upright character, whose intelligence may in some points be
open to criticism. Fortunately, we do not so well know what it is to
trust our ultimate welfare to men of quick intelligence whose character
is not above suspicion. The Lords of the Admiralty, like the rest of
that great service, are good fighting