the importance of the problem were agreed in thinking that the
only right way was to get the army and the navy each of them to develop
its air service. Some others, looking at the thing in a broader light,
held that the air should have its own service. The laws and habits of
the land, they argued, are not the laws and habits of the sea; surely
the air differs from both of them as much as they differ from each
other. But this opinion could not be acted on at short notice. A great
service cannot be built up from the beginning in one year, or even in
the lifetime of one generation of men. Time is needed; and time was what
was lacking. The only resource for immediate purposes was to engage the
sympathies of the army and the navy, who are always willing to
co-operate, though never to coalesce, and let each of them build, up its
own air service after its own fashion. A certain formal unity, which
might by degrees become a real unity, could be given to the two air
services by the magic of a uniform and a name.

Meantime, what of the Air Battalion, which was formed in the spring of
1911, and continued in being until it was annulled and superseded by the
formation of the Royal Flying Corps in the spring of 1912? The Air
Battalion numbered among its officers men distinguished for their
achievement, but it was born out of due time. These years, 1911 and
1912, were years of divided counsels and uncertain policy. Rumours and
reports of the passenger-carrying flights of the Zeppelin, which by this
time had outlived its early misfortunes, and of the formidable
development of the French military aeroplane, distracted opinion and
paralysed effort. The old debate between heavier than air and lighter
than air was reopened. England could not hope to overtake Germany in the
construction of airships; could she hope to match France in the
production of aeroplanes? And if she could, was there not a chance,
after all, that the future, even for military purposes, lay with the
airship? The very composition of the Air Battalion reflected these
uncertainties. Its headquarters were at Farnborough; the flying camp for
aeroplanes was at Larkhill. Sir Alexander Bannerman, who was in command,
was a balloon expert, with a distinguished record in the South African
and Russo-Japanese wars. At a later date, in April 1912, he qualified as
an aviator on a Bristol biplane at Brooklands. His adjutant, Captain P.
W. L. Broke-Smith, had been an instructor at the b