10
A Leader
WHEN one has met some of the command-
ers of the Royal Air Force, one is struck
by the strange, indefinable likeness that
exists between them all. The fine faces, the blue eyes
that have stayed so young beneath greying hair, that
mixture of the gentle and firm, that friendly yet
serious discipline all belong essentially to the Air
Force. The fighter pilot known to his comrades as
the Enfant Terrible, who to-day says a thousand and
one crazy things in the squadron's mess, will in
twenty years have grown into this colonel, his hair
prematurely whitened by the dangers of his life,
distant and betraying, beneath the courteous humour
of his nation, a secret sadness—the sadness of a
commander who must give to men he loves orders
that are both terrible and necessary.
The Group Captain stood in front of a map which
entirely covered one wall of the room and showed
me his objectives:
'According to our reconnaissances,' he said, 'the
principal enemy troop concentrations are here (and
his pencil described a vast circle). So their supply
lines are these two railways and these roads. These
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