The "Royal Flying Corps" only dates from a few years ago, and we are principally indebted to Major-General--then Lieutenant-Colonel--Sir David Henderson, K.C.B., D.S.O., for its formation. He had no easy job before him when he took the matter in hand, since neither Admiralty nor War Office appeared to be in any hurry to attain a commanding position in the novel arm, in spite of the great efforts being made by France, and more especially by Germany. However, nothing daunted, he made the very best possible of the small beginnings he was able to deal with, and we are now reaping the harvest he sowed. For a time naval and military officers and men worked together, but gradually, as numbers increased, drew rather more apart, and the naval wing had its own flying-schools at Eastchurch, near Sheerness, and at Upavon, near Salisbury, its central air office at Sheerness, an establishment at Hendon, and nine or ten air stations on the coast. At the beginning of the war, confident in their numbers and organization, the German aviators showed considerable boldness, and their skilfulness in picking out our guns and positions, and signalling them by flares, strips of glittering tinsel, circling movements, and other devices to their gunners, rendered the fire of their artillery--which at first greatly outnumbered that of the Allies--very deadly indeed. Our own airmen were by no means such adepts at this particular work to begin with, but, few as they were, they soon proved themselves the better men. They worked on the old principle that so often brought us victory afloat in Nelsonian days. "Directly you see an enemy go for him." This system of fighting enabled Sir John French to report, quite early in the campaign, that "The British Flying Corps has succeeded in establishing an individual ascendancy which is as serviceable to us as it is damaging to the enemy.... Something in the direction of the mastery of the air has already been gained." The fact was that the very qualities of preciseness, method, painstaking, and avoidance of risk which make the German so formidable in some respects do not fit in where such warfare is concerned. The German cavalry was the same. It worked by the book. If it could mass against ours at a strength of three to one, then by all the rules of the game we ought to have retired or waited for their ponderous squadrons to ride us down and overwhelm us by sheer weight of flesh and bone. But when our dashing horsemen whirled into their masses in their shirt-sleeves, and plied sabre and lance in a way that showed they meant business, and then turned round and cut their way home again in the same way, they did not like it. They have never dared to "take on" our cavalrymen on anything approaching equal terms. Brave as we must admit the Germans have shown themselves, they have not the same individual dash and self-reliance as the British races.