et
" " " (Pilot and 1 Passenger) 12,900 "
" " " (Pilot and 2 Passengers) 10,600 "
World's " " (Pilot and 3 Passengers) 8,400 "

Many of the Sopwith machines used in the European War were built
specially to withstand rough climate and heavy winds, and thus they were
able to work in almost every kind of weather. It was this fact, coupled
with the indomitable spirit of adventure inherent in men of British
race, that made British airmen more than hold their own with both friend
and foe in the war.

CHAPTER XXXVI. Sea-planes for Warfare

"Even in the region of the air, into which with characteristic British
prudence we have moved with some tardiness, the Navy need not fear
comparison with the Navy of any other country. The British sea-plane,
although still in an empirical stage, like everything else in this
sphere of warlike operations, has reached a point of progress in advance
of anything attained elsewhere.

"Our hearts should go out to-night to those brilliant officers,
Commander Samson and his band of brilliant pioneers, to whose
endeavours, to whose enterprise, to whose devotion it is due that in
an incredibly short space of time our naval aeroplane service has been
raised to that primacy from which it must never be cast down.

"It is not only in naval hydroplanes that we must have superiority. The
enduring safety of this country will not be maintained by force of arms
unless over the whole sphere of aerial development we are able to make
ourselves the first nation. That will be a task of long duration. Many
difficulties have to be overcome. Other countries have started sooner.
The native genius of France, the indomitable perseverance of Germany,
have produced results which we at the present time cannot equal."

So said Mr. Winston Churchill at the Lord Mayor's Banquet held in London
in 1913, and I have quoted his speech because such a statement, made at
such a time, clearly shows the attitude of the British Government toward
this new arm of Imperial Defence.

In bygone days the ocean was the great highway which united the various
quarters of the Empire, and, what was even more important from the
standpoint of our country's defence, it was a formidable barrier between
Britain and her Continental neighbours,

"Which serves it in the office of a wall
Or as a moat defensive to a house."

But the ocean is no longer the only highway, f