When General Seely, as War Minister not long before the
war, spoke hopefully about the Army's infant Flying Corps, he was accused of misleading the House, inasmuch as of the hundred machines which the Corps possessed only a dozen could fly. On Thursday week, when he appeared as Under-Secretary in charge of the Royal Air Force, he had a very different story to tell. Within five years the little group of fighting airmen had expanded into a great aerial army of two hundred squadrons, for which new machines were being built last November at the rate of fifty thousand a year, General Seely said that our airmen, in gaining that marked superiority over the enemy which counted for so much towards the final victory, fought over forty thousand duels and shot down eight thousand enemy machines. The Royal Air Force in peace time would consiat provisionally of one hundred and two squadrons, with a strength of five thousand three hundred officers and fifty-four thousand men. General Seely described some of the remarkable new inventions for which the Force is responsible, including an improved wireless telephone. He spoke, too, of the possibilities of the aerial mail and transport cervices which are being arranged, especially in the East. When we began the war we were far behind Germany and France in the art of flying, but now we lead the world.
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