n one of those comparisons of the "beginning," with the
"end," of time with time, by which alone some deposit from the stream
of history in which we are all bathed filters into the mind, and--with
good luck: stays there. Here, in Hertfordshire, in the first summer of
the war, how great an event was still the passage of an aeroplane over
these quiet woods! How the accidents of the first two years appalled
us, heart-broken spectators, and the inexorable military comment upon
them: "Accidents or no accidents, we have got to master this thing,
and master the Germans in it." And, accidents or no accidents, the
young men of Britain and France steadily made their way to the
aviation schools, having no illusions at all, in those early days, as
to the special and deadly risks to be run, yet determined to run them,
partly from clear-eyed patriotism, partly from that natural call of
the blood which makes an Englishman or a Frenchman delight in danger
and the untried for their own sakes. Thenceforward, the wonderful tale
ran, mounting to its climax. At the beginning of the war the military
wing of the British Air Service consisted of 1,844 officers and men.
At the conclusion of the war there were, in round numbers, 28,000
officers and 264,000 other ranks employed under the Air Board. From
under 2,000 to nearly 300,000!--and in four years! And the uses to
which this new Army of the Winds was put, grew perpetually with its
growth. Let us remember that, while aeroplane _reconnaissance_ was of
immense service in the earliest actions of the war, _there was no
artillery observation by aeroplane till after the first Battle of the
Marne_. There is the landmark. Artillery observation was used for the
first time at the Battle of the Aisne, in the German retreat from the
Marne. Thenceforward, month by month, the men in the clouds became
increasingly the indispensable guides and allies of the men on the
ground, searching out and signalling the guns of the enemy, while
preventing his fliers from searching out and signalling our own. Next
came the marvellous development of aerial photography, by which the
whole trench world, the artillery positions and _hinterland_ of the
hostile army could be mapped day by day for the information of those
attacking it; the development of the bombing squadrons, which began by
harassing the enemy's communications immediately behind the fighting
line, and developed into those formidable expeditions of the
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