THE GREAT ADVENTURERS.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 231, 1 December 1916, Page 5 (Supplement)

THE GREAT ADVENTURERS.

NEW BREED OF BRITISH AIR-KINGS. By JAMES DOUGLAS. (Mr. James Douglas, one of our most brilliant writers and thinkers, is irankly a hero worshipper, and he finds a noble altar for his incenso in the brave deeds of the boys who are winning for Britain the admiralty ol the air. It seems only yesterday that 1 sa* at two o'clock in the morning, in a car outside the Hendon Aerodrome waiting for the gates to open. The queue .i cars was soon a mile long, and Grahame-'White had to be dug out of bed to let us in. It was the second lap of The Dailj Mail circuit, and nobody had imagine! that the crowd would be storming the flying ground before dawn. My little party had sat up all night. We had met at a merry supper party, and we had started out hours too soon But it was worth it. The thrills of that marvellous dawn are still in my blood. It crept like a grey ghost out of the night to the music of engine that were being tuned up. While *c waited wo had hot ctffee and bread and butter in a tent. And then GrahamcWhite frightened us out of our wits doing insane stunts on a baby biplane. In those days our nerves were raw, and we shuddered to see a man behaving lik" 1 a snipe at one moment and like a swalio.v the next. THE MIRACLE BECOMES A COMMONPLACE. Then came the whiring flight of tl.e airmen over the trees into the clear, cloudless sky of dawn. I was at Brooinlands on the day that Beaumont ani Vedmes came back, weary and oily and begrimed, but gay with Gallic wit. They wrote their autographs between mouthfuls of bacon and eggs md chattered at the same time. Since those days I have talked to many of our young airmen, and I have learned to admire their cool pluck, their professional skill and their tireless keenness. What was: a miracle then is a commonplace now. We breed air-kings as we used to breed vikings. Children that we used to tip are no<v human eagles whoso native clime is in the clouds. The pedants who formerly prated about the degeneracy of the race are wearing the foolish face of the false prophet. Tho race has been true to its traditions. The viking blood that of old laughed at the stormy sea in cockleshells is now laughing at the tea of the air in winged shallops. T sometimes wonder what our poets are doing in these tremendous days. Where is the poet of the air ? Only ;i poet can sing the great song of the eky-king who is the viking writ large. In these high matters the instinct of the people is always right. The people know a hero when they see on<», and they leaped at the chance of •• cclainiing the knightly valour of the youngs fky-king who thrust his sword of flame into the vitals of the German airship last Sunday, after a swift due! fought in the mists of night two tailes above th<; solid earth.

I am glad i'nat his name is Robinson and not Vere de Vere. He himself would be the first to say that he is an ordinary British boy, one of thousand:* of ordinary British boys with ordinary names who have in this war outshone all the paladins of old romance. I know these boy?. They are inorediWs, unthinkable, inconceivable heroes. Do not imagine that we have the power to understand their heroism, whether it be displayed on the battlefield, on t'.ij sea or in the air. No, sirs; we cannot even grasp the fringe of it. And in the foremost files of our tincrowned heroes are the greatest adventurors of all our adventurers—the skykings. Read this description of a ra*.d on Zeebruge:—

I was about 7,000 ft. up and absolutely lost. My speea indicator rushed up to ninety miles an hour, and the wind was fairly whistling through the wires. I pulled her up, but she had quite lost control. A hair-rais-ing experience followed. I nose-dived, side-slipped, stalled, etc., etc., time after time, my speed varving from practically nothing to over 100 miles an hour. I kept my head, but was scared absolutely stiff. I didn't get out of the clouds, which lower down turned in!o a snowstor n and hail, until I was only 1,500 ft. up. 1 came out diving headlong for the earth. As soon as I saw Jia ground I, of course, adjusted my sense of balance and flattened out.

That is an extract from a letter written by the late Lieutenant Harold Kosher, R.X.A.S. His "war letters' are published in a book called "In the Royal Naval Air Service." ' These letters are the finest war-letters I have read. Everybody will be reading them soon In them you see the very soul of our air services. And if I know anything of literature they will be immortal. Kipling and Wells have tried haM to do what "Rosh" (as his comrades called him) has done. They will I swear, admit that he lias in these letter outclassed them utterly. Mr. Arnold Bennett, in his introduction, tells us that Harold Rosher was killed at Dover Inst February. He was training now pilots. One of the machines had just been repaired after a nrsliap. The pilot had got into i*. Harold told him to get out, as the machine was untested. He took it up himself. It nose-dived, and he was killed in seven seconds. He gave nis life for his pupil's. He was only twenty-two. yon H ITS NOBLEST AND BEST. There are many lads like Jiim doin.; work like his with modesty like his and for most of them there will lie no Y.C 1 ., no reverberating fame. But they are heroes all. They belong *<• the noble company of the Great Adventurers whose deeds will be chanted by lytic poets for generation after generation. AN e are too close to th°s > sky-kings to see the splendour of their courage? Our eyes dazzle: they should have died hereafter. It is mighty easy to gabble about our Admiralty of the Air. but it ;« mighty hard to grasp the quality of the human spirit which has won that Admiralty. It is the stuff of youth at its nn!)!evt and bravest and be.s't. I think we must

leave the comprehension of it to the mothers. They know. They remember the hero before he became heroic —hw tremblings, his tears, his tears. The/ can look along the little corridors of infancy and childhood that led 71m up to the heights of peril and down to tho deeps of danger. They keep the boy's kiss fresh as dew on their lips. They understand the marvel and miracle if the little child who flowered into a king of men.

The pity of it! The glory of it! Let lis trust the mothers to understand it all to the last drop and the last dreg of reverence and love and pride. JAMES DOUGLAS.