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.”

Major-General Sir Sefton Brancker said he knew Squadron-Leader Hill as one of our most daring, cool-headed and really scientific pilots. He had also realised that evening that he had a brilliant fund of imagination as well. His (Sir Sefton Brancker's) chief qualification for talking about getting off and landing was that he was once more notorious for making bad landings without hurting himself or anyone else than anyone in the Air Force. He was all for eliminating the human factor in control as time went on. He thought the devices which Major Hill had explained were absolutely on the right lines of progress. Pilots did not like the idea, but he was all for developing the stabilisers, height indicators, and all the gadgets that the Author had described. But there were limits to this policy. Some time ago there was an official objection from the French at Le Bourget that the British pilots were stunting.