In both countries, the official line was that this great stride forward in aviation would assist the cause of peace. Nevertheless, it was telling that chief among the dignitaries who welcomed Blériot to the Savoy was Richard Haldane, the Secretary of State for War, who assured him his achievement ‘marked the beginning of a new era’.30 A French paper, Le Siècle, could scarcely keep from gloating: ‘Great Britain is no longer the impregnable fortress of which the garrison could intervene without uneasiness in foreign wars. She constituted at will a European or an extra-European Power. Very soon
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