In the discussion following my reading of the Wilbur Wright Memorial Lecture, before the Royal Aeronautical Society, on June 6th, 1916, Lord Northcliffe drew attention to the attempt which had been made to rob the Wright Brothers of the credit of inventing the aeroplane.

“ We have not heard much of that in England,” said Lord Northcliffe, “ but ‘ a prophet is not without honour save in his own country,’ and in the United States there have been long and persistent attempts to belittle the work of Wilbur and Orville Wright. I have closely read and followed the history of the hundred years of aeroplane experiments, and I am convinced that the credit of the first flying machine is due to the Wright Brothers, and from the point of practical flying to nobody else. As an Englishman I am in an independent position, and I know that these words of mine will go across the Atlantic, and I believe they will assist in stopping the spread of the insidious suggestion that the Wrights did not invent the aeroplane.”