_When things are going well, the man in charge can give play to his fears._ _Nothing is ever as good or as bad as it seems._ _If you know what you want, you can do your part, and get others to do theirs. Most people don't know what they want._ But by far the greater number of them deal with aviation and its problems. Here are some worthy of remembrance: _Time in the air is needed to make a pilot._ _In training pilots, no machine should go out without knowing what it is to do, do that and that alone, then land._ _No young pilot should be allowed out in 'bumps' until he has done fifteen hours' piloting._ _An aeroplane will live in any wind and a lifeboat in any sea, but they both want good and experienced men at the tiller._ _When on the ground every one overrates his capacity for air work._ _A squadron commander should want a good squadron, and not to be able to break records._ _Waiting about on an aerodrome has spoilt more pilots than everything else put together._ This last truth will come home to all pilots who have flown on the war front. To have discovered it shows an instinct for command. Flying is a nervous business; there is no wear and tear harder on a war pilot than to be kept in attendance on an aerodrome, with the nerves at a high degree of tension, and perhaps to be dismissed in the end. A skilful and imaginative commander will use all possible devices to avoid or diminish these periods of strain. Any account of Major Burke would be incomplete if it contained no mention of his famous machine, the first B.E. This machine was familiarly known to the officers of the early Flying Corps, most of whom--Sykes, Brancker, Brooke-Popham, Raleigh, Carden, Ashmore, Longcroft, and many others--had occasionally flown it. It was an experimental two-seater tractor biplane, designed as early as 1911 at the factory. At that time no funds were available for constructing aeroplanes of factory design. This difficulty was overcome by an expedient well known to all students of law. There was no money for construction, but there was money for repairs and overhaul. The first B.E. was created by the drastic repair and reconstruction of another machine. A Voisin pusher with a sixty horse-power Wolseley engine had been presented to the army by the Duke of Westminster, and was sent to the factory for repair. When it emerged, like the phoenix, from the process of reconstruction, only the engine remained to testify to its previous existence, and even that was replaced, a little later, by a sixty horse-power Renault engine. It was now the B.E. tractor, and in March 1912, some two months before the formation of the Royal Flying Corps, it was handed over to the Air Battalion, and was assigned to Captain Burke. It had a long and adventurous career, and was often flown at Farnborough for the testing of experimental devices. When at last it was wrecked, beyond hope of repair, in January 1915, it had seen almost