Page:Aircraft in Warfare (1916).djvu/221



§ 110. Maintenance of British Supremacy. The maintenance of the present superiority of the British reconnaissance machine and the development of different types, and, in short, the building up and consolidation of the Aeronautical Arm, both as to quality and quantity, in order to ensure our capacity to hold our own with the other great Powers, is a task of national importance, and, as such, one of the first magnitude. In order that our Aeronautical Arm may be raised and maintained as a whole at the necessary high degree of efficiency, more will be needed than merely the technical superiority of our machines; many other questions of vital consequence will require to be adequately dealt with. However, the basis of strength lies in possessing the right types of machine in adequate numbers. Hence there must be no relaxation of effort; we must retain our technical ascendancy by every means in our power.

There is much to be said at the outset in favour of the exercise of greater secrecy in the matter of technical information. At present a great deal of work of an important character is done at the public expense which is of the utmost value to the aeronautical constructor, and forthwith it is given complete publicity; one has only to glance through any one of the annual reports of the Advisory Committee to realise the extent to which this