FOREWORD
By Lt.-Col. J. T. C. MOORE-BRABAZON, M.C., M.P.
I have been shown the great honour by Mrs. Hawker of being asked to write a Foreword to this book about her late husband. I can do nothing better than give the advice to all to read it, because, if they have followed aviation for some time back, they will live over again that heroic epoch when flight was really being made possible and will appreciate some of the difficulties and many of the successes that make the early days of aviation such a fascinating story; and if, on the other hand, they have only taken an interest in aviation lately, they will get conveyed to them from this book the atmosphere that pervaded the little community of enthusiasts who existed in the early days.
The figure of Hawker looms up large in the early days of aviation, and such was the man, that even after the war, with the hundreds of thousands of people that came into the movement, he still stood out a noteworthy figure.
His name will go down for all time coupled with others who gave their lives for the cause, such as Rolls, Grace, Cody.
It does indeed show a singular change in the mentality of the nation that the most popular sporting figures of recent times have been men whose prowess has been associated with their domination over machinery rather than animals. The bicycle was the instrument that first compelled the attention of all to a knowledge of mechanics, the motor-car demanded further knowledge on the subject, but it was not until the advent of the aeroplane that the imagination of the youth of this country was fired to appreciate the necessity for knowledge of mechanics.
Hawker, thirty years ago, was an impossibility, but when he died he was the idealised sportsman of the youth of the country, and it was rightly so. Modest in triumph, hard-working, a tremendous “sticker,” yet possessed of that vision without which no man can succeed, he stands out a figure whose loss we mourn even to-day, but whose life and career will serve as an example for others to attempt to follow.