My subject to-night, specialised aircraft, is one capable of a wide variety of interpretations; so wide, in fact, that when I had to tackle the problem I found much difficulty in deciding which of the many possible lines I should take.

However, I realised that the congregation has no say in the sermon, and that your only alternatives were to stay or to walk out. I propose, therefore, to inflict upon those who choose to stay a short account of how aircraft (heavier than air) have been developed in England on specialised lines, followed by some remarks on the special requirements for commercial work, more particularly in respect to those points of design in which the fare-paying user is intimately concerned. In fact the passenger's comfort is really the main subject of this paper.

I would like here to emphasise the fact that I am addressing you to-night entirely in my personal capacity.

You all know those jolly words from “ Alice's Adventures through the Looking Glass,” and in a measure we are about to push our way through the melting mirror of hearsay to the strange world of wonderful facts, where boats fly, and men think nothing of the sort of ascent that blew the breath out of the poor White King when he received his first dusting in the air. We will talk, you and I, of shoes for aircraft—ships that fly and sealing wax that guards the secrets that have made the British seaplane the greatest example of its kind in all the wide world.

First of all you would like to find out, I know, how aircraft manage to fly at all.

You can find that out easily. Take a large box lid or other flat surface, hold it up vertically before you and run across the room with it.

“ The time has come, ” the Walrus said,
“ To talk of many things ;
Of shoes and ships and sealing wax,
Of cabbages and kings. ”
Lewis Carroll