d that extra leave for a period of two months should be granted
to officers, so that they may go abroad and see what is being done in
foreign countries. In discussing the question of special pay for
officers the commandant remarks that there is a tendency to devote
attention solely to aeroplanes. 'At present there are, I believe, forty
applicants for vacancies with the aeroplanes, and as far as I know none
for work with the dirigibles.' If the rates of pay were made less for
dirigibles than for aeroplanes, as is done in foreign countries, this
difficulty, he says, would be accentuated.

These misgivings were justified by the event. The recommendations of the
commandant were, in the main, carried out, but the conditions during the
winter made progress almost impossible. There were no proper living
quarters at Larkhill, so officers and men lived at Bulford--the officers
at the Royal Artillery Mess--and went to and from their work in horsed
transport wagons. As they used to go down to Bulford for dinner at
midday, the actual work done in the sheds was inconsiderable.

A further very real difficulty was inevitable, and might be compared to
the growing pains of any healthy organism. The air forces of Great
Britain took their origin, as has been explained, from the Royal
Engineers. For a very long time--something over a quarter of a
century--the Royal Engineers had the monopoly of the air. When science
quickened new growth, this new growth was still attached by habit and
tradition to the old body. In March 1912 eight out of fourteen officers
of the Air Battalion were members of the Royal Engineers. The remainder,
including some of the keenest students of aviation--Captain Fulton,
Captain Burke, Captain Maitland, Lieutenant Barrington-Kennett--were, in
a regimental sense, interlopers. Those who understand the strength and
virtue of regimental society and regimental tradition will easily
understand also how in a mixed body the old loyalty and the new pull
different ways and impede the smooth working of the machine.

All these difficulties deserve mention if only because they did in fact
make the work on Salisbury Plain poor and ineffective during the winter
of 1911-12. But they are not the whole of the story. 'The first thing
that strikes me', Keats once wrote to a friend, 'on hearing of trouble
having befallen another is this--"Well, it cannot be helped, he will
have the pleasure of trying the resources of his spirit."' That