On behalf of the Sopwith Aviation Company, its founder proposed a vote of thanks to the Daily Mail for the “very sporting way” in which they had promoted the competition. The vote was seconded by Mr. Green, the builder of the engine.
In reply, Mr. Marlowe referred to the important parts played by Mr. Sopwith and Mr. Green. He said: “They made the flight possible. They brought it so near success that it must be achieved next year, and I can only hope that when the prize is won they may be very near the winning-post.”
The following editorial comment is from Flight, September 13th, 1913, and should be carefully studied by anyone who doubts the utility of aviation and in particular the usefulness of Harry’s flight round Britain:
“Under the heading of ‘Mr. Hawker’s Flight. What is the Moral of it?’ there was published in the Manchester Guardian of the 1st inst. a letter, signed by a Mr. S. V. Bracher, whose address is simply ‘London,’ and which is so full of false premises and erroneous conclusions that we can hardly allow it to pass without comment. The main proposition which he sets out to disprove is, as he says, that the enterprising newspaper which promoted the competition is now declaring that the lesson to be learnt from it is that the Navy must have a great many waterplanes, and that the designers of British engines and the builders of British waterplanes must make their plans immediately. He apparently does not think either that the Navy requires waterplanes, or that it is essential that British designers of engines and aircraft should make any plans for the future. He begins his argument by saying:
“‘To anybody able to keep cool amid the vast output of scare headlines and process blocks, it must be perfectly clear that one of the lessons of Mr. Hawker’s plucky adventure is that the time is not yet ripe for great public expenditure on aviation. His achievement has enabled everybody to realise the extreme precariousness and uncertainty of aerial navigation as hitherto developed.’
Continuing, Flight says:
“To take the first point, which apparently is that the Navy does not want waterplanes. We have no knowledge whatever of Mr. Bracher’s status as an authority in this matter. For all we know he may be the power behind the throne at the Admiralty—presuming that such a personality is needed by My Lords—or, on the other hand, he may know even less of the technical side of the subject than we ourselves. It seems to us that the best reply we can make to the proposition as stated is: Ask the Navy. But there is no need to ask the Navy, since we know perfectly well in advance what the Navy thinks of aerial navigation and its probable influence on war at sea. Is it for fun that the Navy is establishing aerial stations round the coasts and is training dozens of officers in the science of flight? Or must we regard things seriously and believe that the Naval authorities know their business? There is manifestly but one reply to this, and we can safely leave even Mr. Bracher to figure it out for himself. Unless we are content to ignore all the lessons of the past development of flight, and particularly those learned during the nearest approach to the ‘real thing’ it is possible to devise, we must come to the cold-blooded decision that the Navy not only wants waterplanes, but wants them rather badly.
“Having got thus far with our argument, we come to the next Bracher point, viz., that the main lesson of Mr. Hawker’s flight is that aviation is yet in so precarious a stage of development that it would be foolish to spend large sums of public money in the equipment of an aerial defence service. Does Mr. Bracher really seriously ask his public to believe that this is the one and only conclusion to be reached from the result of Mr. Hawker’s attempt to circle the coasts of Great Britain? Unless he is writing with his tongue in his cheek—and we do him the justice of saying that we do not think this for a moment—then he must be woefully deficient in imagination and wanting in the power of logical reasoning. Let us hark back and see what actually did happen during this flight. We need not go over all the details of it. Quite sufficient that we point out to Mr. Bracher and others who may be of his way of thinking that Mr. Hawker actually flew for a distance of more than a thousand miles—that is to say, a full two-thirds of the whole distance he set out to cover—and that he failed through absolutely no fault of the engine or of the machine. It was the lapse of the human factor that brought the enterprise to an untimely end. Therefore, it is fair to deduce the argument that already the machine and its engine have overtaken and passed the capacity of the man, and that if improvement is needed anywhere it is in the human and not the material machine. Let us say that we are not advancing this as a definite argument, but we do press the point that it is a fairer deduction than that reached by the correspondent of the Manchester Guardian.
“No one claims, as far as we are aware, that the aeroplane has reached its ultimate stage of development, but is that any argument for holding back provided we can be satisfied that it has arrived at a useful stage? Not for a moment could such a contention be allowed. As well might it be argued that because the Dreadnought is practically obsolescent before it is completed for its first commission, we should cease building battleships until such time as the final development has been reached. The man who would seriously argue thus would, deservedly, be accounted a dangerous lunatic. Upon the same ridiculous principle no one would go into the water until he could swim; no business undertaking would be engaged upon until a profit actually accrues at the moment of starting, and so on.
“The next point is this. Mr. Bracher says: