8398 REPORTS ON THE STATE OF SCIENCE, ETC. 
(whether well-meaning or otherwise) is exerted, to an extent which workers 
in other fields can perhaps hardly realize. Hence, for Aeronautics it is 
not merely a matter of benevolent interest that public opinion should be 
well-informed: it may prove to be an essential condition of its own 
development. 
I think that we who spend our time in aeronautical research have still 
to appreciate the importance of this aspect. We are too much inclined 
to go our own way quietly, studying those problems which we hold to be 
important, and mildly contemptuous of ‘ aeronautical correspondents ’, 
with their insistence on the spectacular and the ‘stunt’. So long as 
aeronautical research and development depend for their existence upon 
the State, it is not enough to frame a wise policy,—we must be prepared 
to defend it. We cannot afford to regard with complacent amusement a 
state of public opinion in which speed is held to be more important than 
reliability ; in which to talk about non-stop flights to New Zealand is not 
only better journalism, but better business, than to proceed steadily with 
the building of a craft which will fly to India ; and in which, while aeroplane 
accidents continue to exhibit a sinister resemblance, few know that the 
Aeronautical Research Committee has recently developed a control which 
gives every promise of a remedy, whilst emphasis is laid on the fact that 
it did not invent the ‘ slotted wing’, the ‘ Autogyro ’, or the ‘ Rotor Ship’. 
Aeronautics Needs to ‘ Settle Down’. 
6. No doubt, in the main, these things are due to the circumstance 
that Aeronautics is stillin its infancy. It is one of the many disadvantages 
of that overrated period, that although heaven may lie about us in our 
infancy, people are apt to lie about us too; at least, they are apt to make 
predictions about us then which in our later years we try vainly to fulfil. 
And this child is so very precocious! It is not surprising if many have 
come to think that its natural environment is an atmosphere of record- 
breaking and of ‘ stunts’. 
But infant phenomena must grow up,—although their invincible habit 
of doing so has been a recurring embarrassment from the days of Mr. 
Vincent Crummles to the days of Jackie Coogan! Nor should this fact 
be regretted. For steady advance and solid achievement, in applied 
science as in general, seem to be consolations reserved for the comparatively 
humdrum period of middle age. The spectacular days of the motor-car, 
no doubt, were those in which one lit up an ignition tube in front and 
started for a run to Brighton with prayer and the expectation of a day’s 
hard work; yet there has been more real progress in the relatively 
unexciting atmosphere of to-day. What Aeronautics needs, most of all, 
is to ‘ settle down ’,—to quiet and steady advance along natural lines of 
development. That, if we look deep enough, was what really led to its 
spectacular achievements in the war: ultimately, those successes were 
founded on a basis of sheer hard work, done in the days of peace. No 
other path will lead us surely to success in the future; nor, on examina- 
tion, do the ‘ stunt ’ predictions of to-day give any real promise of important 
advance. 
By way of illustration, let me take some of the questions which bulk 
largest in aeronautical columns to-day, and briefly assess their importance 
