SIR WALTER RALEIGH
AND THE AIR HISTORY
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[Illustration: SIR WALTER RALEIGH]
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SIR WALTER RALEIGH
AND THE AIR HISTORY
A PERSONAL RECOLLECTION
BY
H. A. JONES, M.C.
DIRECTOR OF THE HISTORICAL SECTION (AIR BRANCH) OF THE
COMMITTEE OF IMPERIAL DEFENCE
WITH PORTRAIT
LONDON
EDWARD ARNOLD & CO.
1922
[_All rights reserved_]
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_Printed in Great Britain by_
Butler & Tanner, _Frome and London_
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SIR WALTER RALEIGH AND THE AIR HISTORY
I
At a meeting of a sub-committee of the Committee of Imperial Defence
which met in the middle of July, 1918, to consider the question of the
official history of the Air Force, Admiral Slade welcomed Sir Walter
Raleigh as the prospective author of a history which would be both
interesting and unique--unique in the sense that no history of the kind
had ever been written before. “Almost too good a chance,” was the
interjection of Sir Walter.
Sir Walter took up the history with enthusiasm. At Oxford throughout
the war he had been chafing under the inactivity which was imposed on
him by his age. Oxford was empty of men. There was not even a lot of
lecturing to do. The Air History gave him just such an opportunity as
he loved. It was an adventure, and he looked upon life itself as an
adventure. He was possessed of a fine imagination, and the story of the
air had for him a great appeal. He had the heart of a boy. In a fine
passage on the temper of the Air Force he says in his book:
“The recruits of the air were young, some of them no more than
boys. Their training lasted only a few months. They put their
home life behind them, or kept it only as a fortifying memory,
and threw themselves with fervour and abandon into the work to
be done. Pride in their squadron became a part of their
religion. The demands made upon them, which, it might
reasonably have been believed, were greater than human nature
can endure, were taken by them as a matter of course; they
fulfilled them, and went beyond. They were not a melancholy
company; they had something of the lightness of the element in
which they moved. Indeed, it would be difficult to find, in the
world’s history, any body of fighters who, for sheer gaiety and
zest, could hold a candle to them. They have opened up a new
vista for their country and for mankind. Their story, if it
could ever be fully and truly written, is the Epic of Youth.”
Sir Walter had something of the lightness of the element of which he
wrote, otherwise he could never have written such a passage. He had
seen the Air Force at work on active service. His month in France was a
source of inspiration which produced some of the finest passages in his
book. He went to France at a time when the victorious Allied armies
were driving the Germans back towards the Rhine. His journey lasted
from August the 14th to September the 8th, 1918. He spent a great part
of his time at the Royal Air Force Headquarters, but also visited many
squadrons and was taken over the numerous parks which ministered to the
wants of the service. He flew about the Ypres salient, and other parts
of the line. The story is told of him that whilst staying with one
squadron he was already dressed in flying kit and on the point of
starting as a passenger on a night bombing raid. He was stopped in
time. I do not know whether the story is wholly true, but certainly he
wrote home:
“I had the opportunity of going in a Handley Page on a night bombing
raid, but had not the General’s permission, and as the pleasure would
have been mine and the responsibility for any mishap would probably
have fallen on the pilot, I felt bound to refuse. But I want to say
that I think it important that I should see one of these raids from the
air, and if I revisit France, I trust I may have leave to go.”
During his tour he was living in a world of new wonders. He was put to
school to the air. All the mysteries that go to the making of the
efficient fighting or reconnaissance machine were explained to him.
“I had the whole mystery of sound ranging explained and demonstrated to
me, though if the art were lost, I doubt if I could superintend its
recapture,” he says in a letter.
His visit was invaluable: it gave him perspective. Returned to England
he went straightway to Oxford and started on the Introduction to his
history. That Introduction in its final form is a beautiful piece of
writing. But the writing of it did not come too easily. Sir Walter
wrote with pain. The subject was new. The author was modest and
conscientious. Nothing but his very best would satisfy him. Indeed he
was seldom satisfied with what he wrote. “It goes heavy, so far, and I
am destroying much of what I write,” he says in a letter written when
he was finishing the Introduction. “False starts,” he goes on, “but it
will get smoother soon.” And a few days later, “I am cobbling the
Introduction; you shall have it by Monday morning.”
Statistics did not excite him. Long unwieldy committee names and
strings of facts tired him. In the Introduction he was able to let
himself go a bit. “It may seem rather a high-pressure start--opening
out the engine at once,” he wrote. “But it will be only now and then in
the course of the book, that I shall get a chance to say what I think.”
He brought his manuscript to the office and the staff sat around him
whilst he read it. He was very sensitive. He felt himself an amateur in
the midst of a body of experts. It must have been a new experience for
him to come and submit his work to a tribunal of ordinary people like
ourselves. As he read on he warmed to his work. He forgot us. We forgot
him. His fine voice held us. We were taken, as it were, over the world
on the wings of the wind. The whole meaning of air warfare was made
plain to us. We were looking down now on this battle-field, now on
that, and the whole vast organization was seen clear cut as through a
diminishing glass. Now and again the glass was reversed and focused on
to any individual member of the force. His feelings were laid bare to
our gaze. We seemed to understand everything. We did not notice when
the reading finished. The spell would hardly break. Perhaps it was not
so much what was read to us, although it was inspiring; it may have
been the spell cast by the author himself. Perhaps it was that the
sight of him, offering himself to our judgment, flattered us to wonder.
I do not know. I know that the officer who was then in charge of the
Air Branch, expressed very diffidently something of what we felt at the
reading. Sir Walter was immensely pleased. “I should be pretty sick if
the public liked my work, and the men who have been in the air didn’t,”
he wrote back.
At the time the Introduction was written the Air Force was in the
throes of the disintegration which followed the armistice. There were
criticisms in the press against the conduct of some of the members of
the service. Sir Walter was impatient of these criticisms. “Critics who
speak of what they have not felt and do not know, have sometimes blamed
the air service because, being young, it has not the decorum of age.
The Latin poet said that it is decorous to die for one’s country; in
that decorum the service is perfectly instructed.” That is the spirit
of his book.
At first he intended to devote a longish chapter only to the early
history of flying, but as he dipped into the subject he found himself
committed to something fuller. The first flight in a power-driven
heavier-than-air machine was made on December the 17th, 1903. Eleven
years later the question of war in the air was beginning to agitate the
minds of half the world. The development of air power in those few
short years was amazing. The movement had started with extreme
sluggishness. The feat of the Wright brothers attracted little
attention at first. The world which is often slow to recognize the
significance of contemporary events, did not know that a new era in its
history had already opened. Certainly the few years immediately
following the flight over the Kill Devil sand hills were years of
scepticism and witticism. Only a handful of men laboured in
whole-hearted enthusiasm for the cause of the air because they had
vision and knew what it meant to the future of the world. But
recognition forced itself on the nations of the world. Once interest
was aroused it spread with amazing swiftness. People felt uneasy. The
aeroplane was taken up as a weapon of national defence. The movement
was under way and gathering increasing momentum. The progress of the
art must have a share in the record of the war in the air, otherwise
the story would not be understood. Sir Walter soon saw this. “If the
battle of Trafalgar had been fought only some ten short years after the
first adventurer trusted himself to the sea on a crazy raft,” he
writes, “the ships, rather than the men, would be the heroes of that
battle, and Nelson himself would be overshadowed by the _Victory_.”
The shape of the book was a worry. “I’m having a dreadful time,” he
wrote early in 1919, “all by myself, struggling to get a shape for the
book. However, I had ten days or so useless with a vile cold. And I
dare say I shall cheer up soon.” The shape began to come, and as soon
as a part of the first chapter on the Conquest of the Air was written
he was anxious to come up to the office to read it to us. But he didn’t
want to inflict himself on us. “You will see to it, won’t you, that
attendance is voluntary and not a parade? It must not be like family
prayers.” He read it to us, to our great delight, and then took it away
to finish. But he was soon finding difficulties as to the length of the
early history. “From the cormorant in the Garden of Eden to 1903 will
be longish--too long, I think, to be part of a chapter,” and so it
became a chapter to itself. This was written during the Easter
vacation, and then Oxford claimed him again until the summer. But when
June came he was back at work on his history, and the second chapter on
the Aeroplane and the Airship was being written. He progressed well. On
June the 8th, 1919, he wrote, “I shall have most of a chapter ready
when I come, such a chapter full of riddles and shoals.” By the middle
of August, Chapters II and III were ready. “I have got another bit
done,” he wrote announcing this fact, “completing (but for a tail to be
added) Chapter II. It is too long, so Chapter II will have to be
Chapters II and III, thus: Chapter II. The Aeroplane and the Airship.
Chapter III. The Beginnings of Flight in England.... I have been
terribly slow. Some quite small things have cost me hours of turning
over pages, not to speak of letters or waiting for answers.”
But when the chapters were written they were by no means finished. The
Air Ministry had come into being only towards the end of the war. The
Royal Air Force itself was formed on April the 1st, 1918, by the
amalgamation of the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service.
The records telling of the early history of those two services were
scattered. The collection and collation of those records took time. But
it was soon seen even in the early days that there would be sad gaps.
Some important records were definitely lost. Others were missing. But
apart from this even where they were complete, Sir Walter found much
difficulty in weaving his story from official records. He wanted so
much to get the personal element into his book. Official records he
discovered were invented to conceal interesting facts. They were packed
in wool and cut no ice. He once complained that he asked for butter and
received a cow. So we were always trying to supplement the records with
first-hand evidence. Much of this material came late. Many important
facts turned up after the chapters had been written. They were
constantly being touched up (alas!).
An early example of this sort of thing was when Mr. G. B. Cockburn, who
had taught the navy to fly, kindly sent us his reminiscences. “The
reminiscences of G. B. Cockburn matter so much that I am rewriting the
whole of Eastchurch and Larkhill. It is a nuisance, but I suppose is
bound to happen again.” He was so considerate for his readers. “I can’t
say to readers, ‘You all know what an air-raid is like, so I shall only
tell you how many they were and what weight of bombs was dropped,’ they
must be helped a little to see the thing!”
So passed the summer vacation and then Oxford filled up again and
engulfed him. The prospect of 4,000 students in Oxford, although it was
not what he expected when he undertook to write the history, was a
prospect which pleased him. His research into the history stimulated
him. When he came to lecture to his new students he was better than
ever. His lectures were inspiring. “Oxford is full of the best lot of
men we have ever had, mostly back from the war, and when they want my
services I can’t refuse them, so I have no time. But I shall shut the
door in mid-March.” In mid-March he shut the door and prepared for a
visit to town. “I am always cheered by a visit to the factory of air
history,” he wrote, and further, “the weak point of this show is the
Old Historian.”
By the summer of 1920 the pre-war period of the history was finished
and he was working on the war period, and the war period offered
different problems. Sir Walter looked upon himself as holding a special
brief for those members of the air services who did their duty and were
content to do their duty without any sort of publicity or reward. He
was no believer in star-turns. He believed, with the officers who
commanded the air services, as he says in his Introduction, in a high
tableland of duty and efficiency and not a low range of achievement
rising now and again into sharp fantastic peaks. “The humblest flier,”
he wrote in a letter discussing this subject, “who went and strafed a
Boche and got done in is not going to be sacrificed or even
subordinated to the star performers. Every V.C. shall be clearly told
that men who deserved as well or better than he did are forgotten, in
large numbers, because they faced certain death without witnesses. The
hero of the book is chosen and is the Air, not the stars.” And this is
how he tells them in his book. “No history can be expected to furnish a
full record of all the acts of prowess that were performed in the air
during the long course of the war. Many of the best of them can never
be known; the Victoria Cross has surely been earned, over and over
again, by pilots and observers who went east, and lie in unvisited
graves. The public dearly loves a hero; but the men who have been both
heroic and lucky must share their honours, as they are the first to
insist, with others whose courage was not less, though luck failed
them.”
Like his friend Sir James Barrie, Sir Walter believed courage to be the
lovely virtue. He was fond of dissecting the British character. His
book on the air is full of delightful passages on this subject.
Courage, he says in his book, is found everywhere amongst
English-speaking peoples. Originally he wrote that courage was an
epidemic virtue among English-speaking peoples. Some people who were
privileged to read his original manuscript, were a bit doubtful about
this use of the word ‘epidemic.’ One distinguished air officer spoke
rather roughly about “outbreaks of pimples.” Sir Walter altered the
phrase and in a characteristic note, which shows the trouble he took to
find a single correct word, he wrote to me on a postcard, “I find
_epidemic_ is used by Milton and Swift as I use it. Later the word was
restricted to medical uses (and metaphors drawn therefrom). I suppose
my writing is too much under old and classic influences, for I did not
at first understand the objection. I don’t know what to do. Where
modern semi-educated usage impoverishes a word, I hate to give way. But
I want to be understood.”
Official documents do not always show such nice choice of words. Sir
Walter accordingly sometimes got high fun out of the records. A
pamphlet (a very able one) was sent to him mostly dealing with the
supply of munitions. “I wonder,” he wrote, “in what language does the
Munitions Man write to his wife? I shall set him to my classes to
translate, e.g., ‘The output of light bombs was greatly in excess of
that of the heavier natures’ = ‘The bombs made were mostly light bombs.”
“When he says ‘in the case of bombs,’ he doesn’t mean the case. When he
says evolve, factors, evaluate, and the like, he doesn’t mean anything
much. Public office English is ‘a bloody jargon.’” And again, “Lord
Haldane, in a letter to me, says the Wrights were ‘empirics.’ I suppose
he means they merely did it.”
But Sir Walter could never be anything but good-natured in his
fun-making. He enjoyed life to the full and sought fun wherever he
could find it. And perhaps he found it most in the dignity of outlook
of what he sometimes called the big-bugs. On seeing the photograph of
one distinguished public man who takes himself very seriously, he
commented, “It was of a face like ----’s that Charles Whibley once
said, ‘God has put that mark upon them so that we may know them.’”
Towards the end of 1920 the book was nearing completion. The last
chapter was started but had given a lot of trouble. It was a ticklish
chapter on the expansion of the air services, and the difficulty was to
find the thread of the story. On this he was helped by Sir Sefton
Brancker and Sir Hugh Trenchard, whom he always referred to as the
General. “I have been in correspondence with Brancker,” he wrote. “He
and the General won’t fail us.... I wish I were writing, instead of
acting coroner at an inquest where it’s not certain who’s the corpse,
and the witnesses won’t talk. But we must do it. We lose a lot by being
so near--all the later diaries, lives, etc. Our one advantage is living
testimony, and we _must_ get it.”
Whilst he was waiting for further light on the problems of the last
chapter he went to stay with Mr. Pearsall Smith at Warsash. “I had a
good holiday of ten days--it seemed quite long,” he wrote. “I was
taught the art of beach-combing. My friend who taught me got thirty-two
oysters in three-quarters of an hour on a repulsive tidal beach. I got
five in two hours. But I devoted myself mainly to the cockle who (it is
not generally known) is as cunning as sin, very mobile, and
quick-sighted. There are also occasional hauls from wrecks. August and
September have been a stale-mate, and I’m itching to write. I hope to
come up on Oct. 19th when the term is started.”
When he returned from his holiday he found Oxford busier than ever. The
last worrying chapter was put aside for the moment. “Oxford’s worse
than ever. Not a bed or a perch anywhere.... I lead the life of a
defaulting debtor, chivied by people who behave as if they had lent me
money.” And again a little later, “This week is a nightmare, but things
will get better soon after they get worse. I allude not to the Coal
Strike but to committees, boards, lectures and examinations.” But
examinations ended and he got back to the troublous Chapter VIII, and
by the middle of December wrote, “I pine to show you what I have
written. There’s not very much yet--about twenty-five of my MS. pages.”
But he got stuck again at the beginning of January. “Your letter was a
comfort. Since you left I have stuck. Partly I got wet and tired on a
long walk, but chiefly, I can’t see my way clear. The summaries I have
are so full of things too trivial (though I must have them and they are
invaluable) ... I think a pæan on the squadron must go into the next
(i.e., the fighting) volume. It belongs there. It’s really a short
treatise on morale. I think I can end Chapter VIII without it, but we
shall see.... Official reports are all packed in wool and won’t cut
ice.”
Then in February he went down with a slight fever. “I have gastric
influenza and fever,” he wrote on the 5th, followed on the 17th by “I’m
up and better, only rather groggy (or, to be strictly correct, shaky)
on my pins.” Once again Oxford took him off the last chapter. But in
mid-March he shut the doors once more, “My term has taken long in
dying, but now at last I think it is dead, and my mind (a rag-bag
stuffed with its debris) is free for other uses (as soon as I can empty
it).”
He got to work again and tackled some of the notes which the office had
prepared for him to use in the revision of the early chapters. “Your[1]
method of preparing things for revision,” he wrote, “is excellent and
will make revision easier.... I have gloomy forebodings about ----.
Will he be another of those whose criticisms amount, in effect, to a
single complaint that they are wallflowers at the aerial dance?... My
troubles are of a different kind. You remember I treated naval
co-operation in Chapter VII slightly. Now I have to treat it all over
again. I wonder (though with pain) if the passages in Chapter VII ought
not to be taken out and the whole thing put into Chapter VIII. Tell me
your opinion. As it stands the only excuse is that Chapter VII is
things done, and Chapter VIII is organization, constitution, etc. But
the doubt paralyses me, for am I writing (or about to write) what must
all be recast again?”
Through March he was deep in the last chapter. On the 22nd he wrote: “I
am always unhappy if I find myself using an unexplained term. I fear I
have sometimes mentioned types of machine with no explanatory comment.
You might keep an eye open for this. It is a large comfort to me to
have you goal-keeping.” And on the 27th: “You will think me hopeless,
but I am really stuck in the naval part of Chapter VIII. You see _I
don’t know_. If none of the questions that interest me are answered in
the summaries I have, are not my readers likely to be in the same
position?”
In the middle of April he came up to town and had dinner with General
Brancker. The following day he wrote: “Brancker depresses me, because,
whatever I mention he says something true and important that has not
reached us. He knows all the people and is a shrewd and cheerful judge
of them. I must tell you when we meet.... The latter[2] is wonderful on
any period or any incident, shake the tree and a plum falls off....
Brancker is as gay as a lark.”