In 1914 we had reached a point where we possessed a small but mobile and efficient flying force, equipped and trained essentially for reconnaissance. Although experiments had been made, little had been achieved in the use of wireless from aircraft, air photography, bomb dropping, armament or the development of air fighting. As with the Army and Navy, war quickened and expanded all the attributes of air operations in a way which could not have been foreseen before the struggle occurred; and, as it would have been impossible for the Army and Navy to build up their war organization without the foundation of the pre-war service, so it was the splendid quality of the original Royal Flying Corps that made this expansion possible. Before the war the Royal Flying Corps was considerably smaller than the air services of either France or Germany, and to attain even the strength with which the Military Wing left England the bulk of the trained officers and men, and almost all the machines fit for service, had to be taken. When I started to raise the Corps, in May, 1912, the War Office estimated that its organization, (of a headquarters and seven aeroplane and one airship squadrons) would take at least four years; instead, there had been little more than two. Even at the risk of leaving insufficient personnel and material behind to form and train new squadrons, I recommended that four complete squadrons (including the wireless machines which had to be thrown in to make up the numbers) should be sent overseas to help the British Expeditionary Force in bearing the brunt of the terrific blow that was to come. It was a very serious matter that so little could be left with which to carry on in England, but we considered it essential to dispatch at once to France every available machine and pilot, because both political and military authorities were of opinion that for economic and financial reasons a war with a great European power could not last more than a few months. Another reason was that those of us who had been at the Staff College during the few years before the war, or who had recently served on the General Staff at the War Office, believed that the weight of the German attack would be made through Belgium, where, owing to the enclosed nature of the country, cavalry would be at a disadvantage, and we realized therefore, and urged, the great effect which the air would have from the commencement of operations--a view which was not widely held, especially among senior officers in the Army. We also felt the necessity of using our maximum air strength from the outset, so as to prove its supreme importance as quickly and practically as possible. It required the Retreat from Mons before even G.H.Q. as a whole would accept the fact, though Colonel Macdonogh, the head of the intelligence section, was our firm ally. The iron of confidence, both to used and user, had to be welded with the first great blows on the anvil of war.