the early days of flying can compare with the Avro. As it was in 1913, so, but for improvements in detail not easy to detect, it remained throughout the war. Its achievements in the field belong to the beginnings of the war; it raided the airship sheds at Friedrichshafen, and, handled by Commander A. W. Bigsworth, it was the first of our machines to attack and damage a Zeppelin in the air. For fighting purposes it has had to give way to newer types, but as a training machine it has never been superseded, and even those aeroplanes which surpass it in fighting quality are most of them its own children. The early history of Mr. A. V. Roe has been here narrated, not to praise him, though he deserves praise, nor to blame the Government, though it is always easy to blame the Government, but to show how things are done in England. His career, though distinguished, is typical; many other pioneers and inventors, whose story will never be written, faced difficulties as he did, and helped to lay the foundations of their country's excellence in the newly-discovered art. It has become almost usual, among those who do nothing but write, to insist that the duty of officials, and other persons publicly appointed, is to save Englishmen the trouble of thinking and acting for themselves. If the nation were converted to this belief, the greatness of England would be nearing its term. But the nation stands in the old ways, and clings to the old adventurous instincts. As it took to the sea in the sixteenth century to defeat the Spanish tyranny, so it took to the air in the twentieth century to defeat the insolence of the Germans. The late Mr. Gladstone once explained, in the freedom of social conversation, that it is the duty of a progressive party leader to test the strength of his movement by leaning back, so that he may be sure that any advance he makes is adequately supported by the pressure of the forces behind him. It is not the most heroic view of the duties of a leader, but it has in it some of the wisdom of an old engineer, whose business compels him to measure forces accurately. Queen Elizabeth, if she never expounded the doctrine in relation to the leadership of a nation, at least acted on it. The English people have always proved themselves equal to the demand thus made upon them; if initiative be lacking in the leaders, there is plenty of it among the rank and file. The leaders themselves, once they are buoyed up and carried forward by the rising tide, often seize their opportunity, and surpass themselves.