servants, not the masters, of the conquerors of the air. As a promoter
of flight Mr. Holt Thomas deserves more than a passing mention. He
worked early and late for the progress of the art and for its
recognition by the Government. He was fond of calling attention to
comparative figures, pointing out, for instance, in April 1909, that the
sum already spent by Germany on military aeronautics was about L400,000;
by France about L47,000; and by Great Britain about L5,000. He
befriended and rewarded distinguished aviators. In September 1910 he
attended the military manoeuvres in France, the first in which
aeroplanes were used for reconnaissance, and there, among the experts of
many nations, came across no other Englishman. He also attended the
British manoeuvres of the same year, where Captain Bertram Dickson made
some reconnaissance flights. In 1911 he founded the Aircraft
Manufacturing Company. He foresaw a great future for military aviation
and constantly did battle with the argument, fashionable among some
soldiers, that the British army, being a small army, required only a
small air force. He held, from the first, that a national air force had
many tasks to fulfil other than reconnaissance, and that it should be a
separate organization, distinct from both army and navy. Men like Mr.
Thomas, who, though they had no official standing, devoted study and
effort to the problems of military aviation, were not a little
serviceable to the country; they agitated the question, and kept it
alive in the public mind. When the Royal Flying Corps at last was formed
they might justly claim that they had helped it into existence.

The only other aerodrome which need here be mentioned is the Larkhill
aerodrome, often called the Salisbury Plain aerodrome, or the Bristol
Flying School. Eastchurch saw the beginnings of naval flying; Larkhill
was the earliest centre of military flying. In 1909 Captain J. D. B.
Fulton, of the Royal Field Artillery, was stationed at Bulford camp. M.
Bleriot's cross-Channel flight, in July of that year, excited his
interest, and he set himself to build a monoplane of the Bleriot type.
This proved to be a slow business, so he bought from the Grahame-White
firm a Bleriot machine fitted with a twenty-eight horse-power Anzani
engine, and began to experiment with it on the plain. Captain Fulton was
a highly skilled mechanical engineer; some of his patents for
improvements in field guns had been adopted by the War O