.dt The Project Gutenberg eBook of Sir Walter Raleigh and the Air History, by H. A. Jones
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<xxl>SIR WALTER RALEIGH
AND THE AIR HISTORY</xxl>
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.il fn=ill4.jpg w=402px
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<l><sc>Sir Walter Raleigh</sc></l>
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<xxl>SIR WALTER RALEIGH
AND THE AIR HISTORY</xxl>




<l>A PERSONAL RECOLLECTION</l>




BY
<xl>H. A. JONES, M.C.</xl>
<s>DIRECTOR OF THE HISTORICAL SECTION (AIR BRANCH) OF THE
COMMITTEE OF IMPERIAL DEFENCE</s>




WITH PORTRAIT




<l>LONDON</l>
<xl>EDWARD ARNOLD & CO.</xl>
1922


[<i>All rights reserved</i>]
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<i>Printed in Great Britain by</i>
Butler & Tanner, <i>Frome and London</i>
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SIR WALTER RALEIGH AND THE AIR HISTORY
.sp 4


.sp 4
.h2
I
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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:

.in +4
.ll -4
“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.”
.ll
.in

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 <i>Victory</i>.”

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 <i>epidemic</i> 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
<i>must</i> 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>I don’t know</i>. 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.”

Chapter VIII was finished at last and Sir
Walter’s life-work was nearing completion.
The next effort was revision. This effort
was almost as worrying as the original writing.
The records are often contradictory
and sometimes a whole day was spent trying
to check some small fact which eventually
was cut out of the book.

Perhaps the greatest trouble when revising
was given by the question of wireless. Sir
Walter was a man of letters. He was
intensely interested in anything and everything,
however, and was not content to accept
any technical facts. He wanted to understand
them. He was a constant interrogative.
Indeed it seemed sometimes as he
curled his long body into curious shapes in
his chair that he formed a note of interrogation.
This question of the why? was no
new developed one. He once told me that
when as a small boy he was sent to a governess,
he was given a Latin grammar and
severely told to learn the first declension.
The word meant nothing to him. “Please
what’s a declension?” he asked. “<i>That’s</i>
a declension, and you just learn it,” was the
reply. But the answer was inadequate and
Sir Walter took no further interest in the
lesson. He could not learn where he was
not interested. It was no use talking to him
about “coherers” and “microhenries.” His
only comment would be that “microhenries”
were far better called “harries” for short.

So when after Chapter V had been written
Captain Morris found new and interesting information
on the use of wireless telegraphy in
aircraft in the days before the war, the whole
of this difficult chapter had to be reopened for
new patching. “In regard to wireless,” he
wrote, “I am like a blind man who has never
talked to painters employed to write a critique
of a picture exhibition. It’s paralysing. The
only escape is to keep on broad lines. Every
one knows that wireless sends messages. I
shall be happier when <i>events</i> begin again.”

“I think I had better come up for a day
and have a long talk with you instead of
writing what will have to be rewritten.”
But he got to work on wireless, and on May
the 9th, “I have written about twenty or
more of my pages on wireless. I believe I
have made it much clearer and simpler <i>than
it is</i>. I have arranged to come to London
on Monday, June 20, bringing Chapter V
(which is the devil) and as much more as I
can. VI will be plainer sailing.” But before
he came to London he struggled on with the
wireless history. On May the 24th he wrote,
“I fear I shall make you impatient. I can
go on, if I have to, and copy the statements
I have. But if I were a reader of the book,
it would annoy me by avoiding the questions
that naturally suggest themselves to an
intelligent reader who has had no technical
education,” and two days later, “I know
from long experience that any one who
attempts accurately to repeat what he does
not understand never repeats it accurately....
If I could get my brain tuned to the
wave-lengths of all these papers, something
would begin to come through. All the oscillations
of my mind are strongly damped, but
I hope soon to get an oscillating current of
high frequency.... After all it’s very little
I need write about the process and instruments....
What is Rouzet’s full name?”

But June came and he was still working
away with pain. “I feel I owe you an
apology, yet I am doing what I can. It’s
the most difficult thing yet--wireless, I mean.
It is coming into shape, but there is something
absurd about sandwiching it in as an
afterthought. It’s of first-rate importance,
and I fear it may delay us a little.” Then
on June the 12th:

“I shall come on Monday next week,
latish morning, <i>with Chapter V</i>. Not content
or pleased. That wireless insertion has put
the chapter out of gear, and lots of small
things, later on, seem clumsy. One can’t
write a book backwards. But I think we
can patch it to look all right. I depend on
you and the office to go through my revised
Chapter V in the interests of consistency
rather than of truth. I think the facts are
right now, and the chapter is like a plain-faced
clumsy person celebrated for saying
true things in the wrong time and in the
wrong place.”

“Exam papers are pouring in in large
bundles. I grudge every minute to them....
I hope and believe that there won’t
be another Chapter V.”

Chapter V was sent to the printers for
proofs. In the meantime Sir Walter had sent
the chapter to one or two people to read over
the wireless portion. Sir Richard Glazebrook
sent him some valuable notes.

“I have just got the proofs of Chapter V.
I am an unnatural parent--I yawn over
them. But I could do something to them
while I am in the country and thus break
the tedium of a holiday, if I might have the
Glazebrook notes.” He could not take--what
he badly needed--a real carefree holiday.
“I am taking down Chapter VI for a
week into the country, where American and
other visitors to Oxford can’t call on me at
11 a.m. I hope to finish it.”

At last came the Preface.

“I am drafting a Preface. What is our
office called?... The Preface, I think,
will be very brief, and will try to avoid the
sin of prefaces, which mostly speak with the
voice of a hen when she has laid an egg....
Some civilians must be mentioned. C. G.
Grey certainly, and I should like your opinion
on the others....”

The question of names in the Preface was
debated. Wherever possible they were
instead acknowledged in the text.

“I enclose a draft Preface. Will you see
what you think of it? It gets into a flowing
style before it ends, but the important thing
is--does it say all it ought to say?

“I am jolly glad to be relieved of the
necessity of giving long lists of helpers’ names.
They only cumber a book, and are tombstones
that are read by none but the corpse.”

There were still a few outstanding questions.
The index was one which caused
a certain amount of discussion. He was
anxious not to have an index for each volume.
He contended that there must eventually be
a final index and that this could only be made
by combining the indexes from each volume
which he thought was clumsy. So it was
decided not to have an index, but instead
to have rather full summaries of each
chapter.

Another question that was debated was
that of maps and illustrations. He was all
against a lot of illustrations. He thought
they were unnecessary for a good book and
useless in a bad one. There was talk of a
large map of France to go into a pocket at
the end of the book. Some sort of a map
was necessary to illustrate the chapter dealing
with the early days in France from Mons to
Ypres. “I am still in favour of the one page
map wherever possible--and I hate the pocket
business. Map-makers care nothing about
books. A book with a pocket is not a book....
The chart-makers who are admirable
want a book to help the maps. I want maps
to help the book. If stuff is good to read
you don’t break it off repeatedly to look up
places on a map.” And the question of type
for the book, “Will you settle the type?”
he wrote, “I am tired of my own open-mindedness.”
And then sending a specimen
page from the Clarendon Press, “This is the
page, I think. I like the old-fashioned uniform
type--it does not depreciate quotations
as the modern system of mixed types or closer
spacing does. If you agree, can we fix it up?”
Then came the death of General Sir David
Henderson at Geneva and of Air-Commodore
Maitland in the R38. Emendations were
made in the proofs. “I have added a kind
of summary on Henderson, rather bold I
think, but true and appreciative. I call him
a white man which he was. If I can find
the time I will write an additional bit on
Maitland to be added in Chapter V.”

The following day another letter enclosed
the bit on Maitland. “Here is an obituary
(so to say) of Maitland. It does not half
express my admiration. He was as quiet
as a Quaker, and as considerate as a hospital
nurse. I wonder if he ever knew fear. It
sounds extravagant but I don’t think so--not
even in the R38.... Will you have
it added to the proofs? So things go on,
by degrees.”

In December he hoped that we should be
able “to send proofs to all the big-wigs
before Christmas.” In January, “I want
to hear that the book is finally in the hands
of the Press and that you are going to be
married.”

Sir Walter criticized his own work pretty
freely. In his final letters before he went
on his luckless journey to Baghdad he gives
an occasional amusing summary of the book.
“The whole book is like Blindman’s Buff,”
he wrote just before he sailed. “You catch
some one and feel his face and guess at him.
No doubt you are sometimes too complimentary
to an ugly fellow, and then the
others who are not blinded laugh in their
sleeves. Sometimes you say what every one
else had thought without saying it.” Or
this:

“The book, especially in the parts that
have given us trouble, is like a schoolboy’s
cake--too rich in facts and not suited for
quantitative reading. Still it’s better than
soothing syrup or thin gruel.” And finally
in his letter to me forwarding Chapter VI
heavily corrected, “Some authors seem to
expect fame. I shall be satisfied with forgiveness.”




.sp 4
.h2
II
.sp 2


I shall remember him best pushing open
the door. He always came in in the same
way. A gentle tap, a slight fumbling with
the handle, and the door would open and
he would be there, slightly bent, because of
his great height, a smile of welcome on his
fine face, the collar of his inside coat sticking
out above his outer coat. He would pause
for just a moment as if to take in the occupants
of the room, and then he would come quickly
forward to shake hands, and at once his rapid,
witty, bubbling conversation would flow.
His conversation was brilliant. You listened
amazed. Barely had you caught one choice
bit of wisdom before he was off on another.
It was bewildering. When he was gone
you sometimes tried to recall them. Impossible!
He seemed to await with you his
next effort. As it shaped itself in his mind
and fell almost at once from his lips he would
sometimes look at you, hold you with his
eyes for a second as if to say, “Are you
getting that?--I’m getting it,” and then when
he saw you had, you would both break into
laughter. He stood, it almost seemed, on
one side and enjoyed with you his other self.

It would be vain to attempt to reconstruct
his conversation. His gestures, the moods
which passed across his face as he spoke, the
play with his enormous pipe--all these are
essential to a true appreciation of his talk.
He would be talking. The pipe is out. Out
comes a box of matches. He strikes one and
applies it to his pipe. As the flame touches
the bowl, a thought strikes him. The thought
will not keep. Off he goes into conversation,
holding the match until he is reminded of its
presence when it burns down to his fingers.
He strikes another and the same thing
happens again. After he had sat smoking
and talking in the office for a morning, the
grate would be full of charred match-ends,
silent, derelict victims of his bubbling
thoughts. He might want to illustrate his
anecdotes. Before one realized the fact he
was off up and down the room in martial
stride showing his idea of the goose step, or
else he would dive for his hat to show a type
of headgear that his wife considered to be
inadequate to the dignity of a professor
about to visit Egypt. Through his eyes one
could understand most things. His vision,
his judgment, his sympathy and his experience
were all at your service. He touched
all the emotions and left you bewildered but
infinitely grateful for his company. He loved
his visits to London because he got talk with
all kinds of people. This he could not get
at Oxford, where, he jokingly remarked, he
saw the War in the Air from a bottle.

Some time in January on one of his visits
to London we fell to discussing the lay-out
for the second volume. Our conversation
ranged over all the various theatres of war.
We lingered on the East, because it attracted
him. We mutually regretted that the signing
of the armistice had stopped a visit
which he was to have made to the flying
fronts of the Middle East. He felt he ought
to see it. The first volume was out of the
way. The Easter vacation was coming.
Why not go then? I told him I thought
there would be every service help for him
once he got there. The thing was tentatively
fixed. I telephoned the steamship company
and retained a passage in the <sc>S.S.</sc> <i>Egypt</i>--ill-fated
vessel. We discussed the itinerary
and then passed to other subjects. I had
misgivings. Not that I thought he was too
old to undertake the journey, but because
I knew how tireless and conscientious he
was. I felt that he might be too vigorous,
that it might take too much out of him and
so leave him weak for disease. But I knew
also that his visit would be enormously
useful because it would make all the difference
to the spirit of the history of the Middle
East. The journey to France had supplied
the cream of his first volume. The journey
East would do the same for the rest of the
work. Not that it was any good pointing
out the difficulties and drawbacks of the
journey. I did try something of that sort.
“Adventures must be done, my boy,” was
his reply. He had gone to India soon after
leaving Cambridge. In India he had been
attracted to Baghdad. He tried to get there
by caravan. He had to wait until he could
get there by aeroplane.

Every facility was given him by the Air
Ministry (although he paid for the journey
himself). He wrote to tell me that the thing
was fixed. “I had a letter from the General,
enclosing a copy of a letter he has sent to
W. G. Salmond, asking for every facility for
me--beyond anything I should have asked
or hoped.

“So I wired you for the bunk--a complete
room at the extra charge (of £18 I think)....

“When I come up I hope you may be able
to fit me out with maps to use from the air,
and with some things to read preparatory.

“It’s a good (mild) adventure. Thank
you immensely for the dates, etc.

“The General has sent them all over to
Salmond, for his successor.

“So there I am, and it’s me for Baghdad,
‘Orace, my boy. (I am thinking of what
Robertson said to Smith-Dorrien.)

“It seems they will try to take me to
anything it is important I should see, so I
depend on your advice.

“You shall have a cheque as soon as <i>I get
the bill</i>.

“I owe all this suggestion to you. Bacon
says there are things a man can’t decently
do or claim for himself, and then a friend
comes in.”

In reply I sent him a passport form.
“Many thanks for the passport form,” he
wrote. (“A lot of notice the Arabs will take
of it if I come among them!”)

Sir Walter left London on March the 16th
to take the <i>Egypt</i> at Marseilles. He stayed
in London for a couple of days before he
left and worked hard at the office putting
in page headings on the latest proofs which
had just come in from the Clarendon Press.
We had to take a hurried lunch. Sir Walter
liked a good meal to the accompaniment of
beer. I suggested a tavern near Oxford
Circus identified with the male domestic
fowl. There is an excellent dining-room over
the main bar. The food is as good as is
procurable anywhere in London. The Scotch
ale has a bite in it. Sir Walter looked round
the assembled business men when we were
seated and remarked that he had no doubts
as to the quality of the cooking. The best
advertisement for the cut off the joint was
in the faces of the diners. He asked me what
they all did (I could only guess). He was
soon in conversation with the gentleman
next him, whom he congratulated on the
excellent portion of Shepherds Pie which
was placed before him. Did Sir Walter
know Mr. ---- (the proprietor) when he had
the <i>Swinging Anchor</i> round the corner (or
words to that effect). Sir Walter regretted
he did not. His neighbour then became
reminiscent on the history of lunches enjoyed
under Mr. ----’s direction over a period
of twenty years; his reminiscences were
punctuated by witty remarks from Sir
Walter, which sent him off again into new
channels.

Sir Walter enjoyed the lunch so much
that on the following day he looked forward
to going again. On this occasion, when he
was paying the waitress--a shrewd Cockney
girl--he was asked whether he found it cold
up there--this being by way of a joke on
his height as he towered above her waiting
for his bill. He was just like that. Every
one felt at home with him. His great charm
of manner, his dignity, his delightful old-world
courtesy, especially with ladies, made
him at home but also conspicuous in any
assembly. His human qualities earned him
the friendliness, even the banter, of people
who came into contact with him, but he never
in any way lost either dignity or distinction
as a result.

He went off to Egypt like a schoolboy
going for his holidays. He carried with him
an unbound copy of his first volume. From
Marseilles I received a typical letter.

.in +4
“P. & O. <sc>S.S.</sc> <i>Egypt</i>.
.in

.in +8
“Marseilles, March the 27th.
.in -8

.in +4
.ll -4
“Cabin passage. Punctual. Good night.
French on the make. Train table d’hôte
twenty-five francs, everything extra. Few
passengers on boat. This is the Alfred Jingle
style, but it contains all I have to say. It
won’t be easy to work or read, for every one
is on the prowl looking for some one else to
talk to or to play Bridge with. I must be
<i>strong</i> and refuse Bridge at first. Or at least
so as not to be grumpy, I shall say, ‘Bridge--delighted.’
I love to play Bridge. Let
me see--I always forget--are there four suits
or five? Of course I know there are twelve
cards in each suit.

“Talk is not so easily dealt with. But
there are some decent people on board. I
have talked with two sad, efficient, disgruntled
Indian Colonels, going back to earn
their pension. And of course there are social
ladies. When I was a lean gawky youth,
they were not kind enough to me. I don’t
blame them, but when they are kind now,
I wish they had come earlier.

“Book is all right. Small corrections
occur to me. Can’t make ’em now. Doesn’t
matter. God be with the office and all that
therein are!”
.in
.ll


A few days later he arrived at Port Said
and sent me the last letter I ever received
from him.

.in +4
.ll -4
“Here I am at Port Said after a calm and
easy voyage.... I am to go by train to
Jerusalem to-night (it takes some seventeen
or eighteen hours). There I am to meet
Ellington and to be his fellow-guest at the
house of the High Commissioner. He is
to drive me to the Nablus road. Then to
Cairo by aeroplane and from Cairo direct to
Baghdad....

“It’s going to be tiresome to-night, but
once I get to the R.A.F. I think things will
be very easy....

“Baghdad seems to be a gay centre. I
came on the boat with Major Lord Gough,
a one-armed Irish officer, who has left home
to escape the tax-collector, and is going to
command Arab levies at Baghdad. He will
do well, I am sure; he is cool, pleasant,
practical, ready-witted and original. Indeed
he shocked the Anglo-Indian officers on
board, but the Arabs, I think, will take to
him.

“It has all been absurdly easy up to now,
thanks to you. I will write again.”
.ll
.in

He never did.

The next time I saw him was at Victoria
Station on his return on April the 25th.
He had been due to arrive the previous day.
Lady Raleigh had spent the day meeting
continental trains. She had to return to
Oxford on the Tuesday afternoon, so I went
down that evening to watch the trains in to
see if he would arrive. The likeliest one was
the train timed to arrive at 7.30. Actually
it came in, in two portions, an hour later.
Sir Walter was on the second train. He
stepped out of the saloon loaded like a Christmas
tree. He had all his own luggage packed
for convenience of travelling in suit-cases.
He carried a topee and wore a waterproof
cap, with many flaps and folds, slightly
tilted. Under one arm packed in straw and
canvas was a thigh boot which some one had
given to him in the desert with a request
that he bring it to London and have it
delivered to the address marked on it, where,
presumably, it was to be half-soled and
heeled or otherwise reconstructed. Under the
other arm was a large round bundle, similarly
addressed for delivery to a lady in London.
This parcel, he supposed, contained Turkish
Delight. This fugitive gift to a lady was
carried a few thousand miles from the desert
by Sir Walter Raleigh, already in the grip
of a fatal fever. The many stories of his
great forbear hardly approach this for sheer
charm and gallantry!

It was raining in torrents and a bit chilly.
I got a taxi and Sir Walter directed the driver
to the Waldorf. He was unwilling to disturb
his club as he had not wired for a room. The
Waldorf was full and we went on to the Cecil.
Not a room in the place, so on to the Metropole.
He himself jumped out here a little
impatiently, but was received, as he said,
somewhat coldly by the office staff who, after
keeping him waiting, spoke to him almost
with astonishment that he should have the
temerity to ask for accommodation. At the
Victoria, the same story. We then tried a
small hotel in one of the side streets off
Charing Cross--Craven Street, I think. They
had nothing. Yes, if he did not mind there
was a small room through the office and
connected with it. He took it gladly. It
was small. But as he washed he carried
on a conversation with the proprietress, a
woman of friendly manners. We could get
nothing to eat there, and he had had no
dinner. He looked very tired and a bit faraway.

We went, through the driving rain, to a
near-by restaurant. He chose something, but
when it came, although it looked very good,
he complained after eating a little that it
was not nice. It was so unlike him. However,
he ordered some soft roes on toast and
we sat on till near midnight whilst he talked
of his tour. He was full of it. Full of stories
and impressions. I asked him if he had
made notes of the more interesting things
that had struck him. He had not. He had
them all in his head. He told how at the
aerodrome at Amman an Arab Sheikh had
appeared with his followers, all heavily armed
with service rifles and bristling with ammunition.
Sir Walter and the Sheikh were introduced
and sat together awhile at a corner of
the aerodrome. The Sheikh occasionally
stroking Sir Walter’s cheek apparently as a
mark of friendliness. The followers formed
a large circle round them and squatted.
This went on for a bit and then the conversation
being rather one-sided Sir Walter got
bored and walked away to sit at another
part of the aerodrome. He was deep in
thought. He looked up and there silently
squatting around again were the Arabs with
the sun gleaming on their rifles. He talked
a bit with the Sheikh and then tiring got up
and sought the officer in charge of the aerodrome.

“What do you do when you want to get
rid of these fellows?” he asked.

“Do?” was the reply. “What do we
do? Why, we take a big stick and tell them
to hop it.”

The big stick was produced, the order was
given, the rifles were quietly slung and the
Arabs went. They were like children, said
Sir Walter, and knew what you meant when
you told them that you didn’t want to play
with them any more.

He spoke of his stay with the High Commissioner
at Jerusalem. How he had gone
over the road on which the Turkish 7th Army
had been bombed from the air until it had
become a rabble. The havoc of that day--September
the 21st, 1918--was made clear
to him. The Turkish armies were in retreat.
Soon after dawn on the 21st a reconnaissance
machine landed with the information that
dense masses of men and transport were on
the road running north-east from Nablus.
This was the Turkish 7th Army making for
the Jordan, hoping to cross at Jisr-ed-Damieh.
The enemy retreat via Beisan had already
been blocked by the cavalry, but it was out
of the question that ground troops could
guard the Jordan crossings for some hours.
If the road could not be blocked from the
air, the army would escape. All available
aeroplanes were got together and there began
the most awful disaster which has ever been
suffered from the air by an army. To strike
from the air you must strike quick and strike
ceaselessly. The attack was arranged so that
two machines should arrive over the retreating
enemy every three minutes. In addition
a formation of six machines was sent over
every half-hour. The attack started at 8
o’clock in the morning. At noon it was all
over. The road is bordered by steep ravines.
No cover for a rabbit. There was no escaping
the pitiless rain of machine-gun bullets poured
on to the enemy from a low height, or the
bombs which soon reduced the head of the
column to chaos. The road was blocked,
but there was panic pressure from the rear.
Dead were piled on dead. Drivers jumped
from their motor-lorries. Motor-lorries ran
amok. Horses stampeded, tramping soldiers
to death beneath their hoofs. Guns were
overturned. Every three minutes and every
half-hour with demoniacal precision the aeroplanes
appeared, did their job, and went.
Every three minutes and every half-hour on
the ground confusion worse confounded. The
Turkish 7th Army a few hours before in
orderly retreat, soon ceased to exist. Sir
Walter inspected the road on a Scots Grey
charger. He confessed that he was brought
somewhat into sympathy with the panic of
the retreat because he was not at home on a
charger. On one occasion, and at a precipitous
and dangerous piece of road, with a
slope to doom on one side and an oppressive
gaunt height on the other, Sir Walter coughed.
The charger taking this as a sign of encouragement,
went off at a gallop. Happily Sir
Walter recovered his nerve and the reins
without much loss of time. He talked of
this trip, telling how the point where the
bombing started is marked by the stone on
which Christ sat and talked to the woman
of Samaria.

The soft roes on toast arrived and he
ordered another beer. And then on to the
desert. The aeroplane on which he was
making the journey to Baghdad had a mishap
and landed in the desert. For four or five
days no relief arrived. The little party soon
exhausted their stock of sandwiches and had
to fall back on bully-beef and biscuits. They
made tea in petrol tins. A wise friend had
insisted on giving Sir Walter a present of a
bottle of whisky just before he left for the
East. At the time he thought the present
superfluous. But during the stay in the
desert, it was invaluable. It made him most
popular. He found it difficult to get on with
the hard food. He was sixty-one. But
it was another adventure and he loved
it. He must have been the life of the little
party. He invented a game. They chased
paper boats to a given point on the sand,
made a bet and then each ran after his fancy.
They organized sweepstakes as to the time
and hour and direction from which relief
would come. Sir Walter never won. Relief
came with Sir Edward Ellington on his way
to Baghdad.

The journey was resumed. At Baghdad
Sir Walter sickened. But he flew to Mosul.
At Mosul he fell sick of a fever. But his
adventure was not over, so he shook off his
fever and flew back to Baghdad. He saw
and talked with everybody he could. He was
delighted with Baghdad. The dream of years
had come true and the truth was finer than
the dream. That is how he found life. He
recalled the taste of Baghdad. How an
apparent mist was hanging over the city
when they came to it from the air. How it
was found to be not a mist, but the mud of
centuries. He still had the curious taste of
it, he said, as he gulped a little beer, as if
to wash it away.

The following morning he came to the
office before leaving for Oxford. He made a
few additional corrections to his book. The
next news we had told us of his illness. But
he was still light-hearted and we never knew
how ill he was. In a letter to Colonel Daniel,
written on May the 4th in reply to an invitation
to dinner, he says: “It can’t be done.
They work away at my temperature but
without much success. They are of course
tyrannical and refuse me beer, which I pine
for. When I can get up to London we will
have some beer. They also fill me with
things the taste of which to any reverent
natural theologian is sufficient proof that
God never intended these things for human
consumption. I hope it won’t be very long,
but I am sure it can’t be next week.” The
next week his fever had been diagnosed as
typhoid, and on May the 13th he was dead.
His last adventure was over. At the height
of his powers he was touched and taken by
the long arm of war.

He loved the wide, wide world. He loved
dearly his fellow-men. The world is a better
place for his having passed through it. He
left behind him books that will live, but he
was not chiefly a writer. More than anything
else he leaves behind his example. He
touched and made brighter with his genius
all who came into contact with him. To be
with him was to lose pettiness. His personal
influence has gone out quietly to a thousand
different corners of the Empire. We may
lament his death and the possibilities which
died with him. There is no unmixed good
on earth. We can rejoice at his life and be
humbly grateful for his example. He was a
great Englishman.

.fm
.fn 1
When he says “you” and “your” in these letters
Sir Walter means the Air Historical Branch.
.fn-


.fm
.fn 2
General Brancker.
.fn-
.pb
.sp 4
.h2
Transcriber's Notes
.sp 2

.if t
Footnotes have been moved to the end of the text.

_Italics_ are identified by surrounding the word or phrase with underscores.

Inconsistencies have been retained in spelling, hyphenation, and grammar, except where indicated in the list below.  
In some cases, minor punctuation errors have been corrected.
.if-

.if h
Footnotes have been moved to the end of the text.

Inconsistencies have been retained in spelling, hyphenation, and grammar, except where indicated in the list below.  
In some cases, minor punctuation errors have been corrected.
.if-

.in +4
.nf
He loved the wide wide world. --> He loved the wide, wide world.
quantitive reading.           --> quantitative reading.
.nf-
.in