he public eye; but it was
in these places that the nation prepared itself for the decisive
struggle. The New Army, and an air force that ultimately numbered not
hundreds but tens of thousands, emerged from the discipline of
preparation. The process took time; months and even years passed before
its results were apparent. But some account of it must be given at this
point in the story if the events of the later years of the war in the
air are to be made intelligible or credible.

The greatest creation of all, the temper of the new force, was not so
much a creation as a discovery. Good machines and trained men, however
great their number, are not enough to win a war. War is a social affair,
and wars are won by well-knit societies. The community of habits and
ideas which unites civilized mankind is too loose a bond for this
purpose; it has too much in it of mere love of comfort and ease and
diversion. Patriotism will go farther, but for the making of a
first-class fighting force patriotism is not enough. A narrower and
tighter loyalty and a closer companionship are needed, as every regiment
knows, before men will cheerfully go to meet the ultimate realities of
war. They must live together and work together and think together. Their
society must be governed by a high and exacting code, imposed by
consent, as the creed of all. The creation, or the tended growth, of
such a society, that is to say, of the new air force, was one of the
miracles of the war. The recruits of the air were young, some of them no
more than boys. Their training lasted only a few months. They put their
home life behind them, or kept it only as a fortifying memory, and threw
themselves with fervour and abandon into the work to be done. Pride in
their squadron became a part of their religion. The demands made upon
them, which, it might reasonably have been believed, were greater than
human nature can endure, were taken by them as a matter of course; they
fulfilled them, and went beyond. They were not a melancholy company;
they had something of the lightness of the element in which they moved.
Indeed, it would be difficult to find, in the world's history, any body
of fighters who, for sheer gaiety and zest, could hold a candle to them.
They have opened up a new vista for their country and for mankind. Their
story, if it could ever be fully and truly written, is the Epic of
Youth.

CHAPTER VIII

THE EXPANSION OF THE AIR FORCE

When the war bro