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Aviation History
1911
1911 - 1092.PDF
EDITORIAL COMMENT, At last the looked-for conditions of the G The aeroplane tests to be conducted next year Aeroplane by ^e ^ar Omce authorities have been Trials. issued, and without the least hesitation we say that they are parsimonious and unsatis factory. Compared with what the French Government allocated for a similar purpose quite recently, the sum of money which figures in the way of prizes is paltry, and we do not for a single moment believe it will attract the manufacturers. Again, there is yet another reason why we do not think it will attract and that is because, if the conditions are carefully read, it will be seen that the authorities are not obliged, according to the text, to allot one single penny of this money in prizes, even though the machines entered, if any, pass the tests with all the eclat possible. We do not say or suggest that it is likely they would so far break faith with their implied obligations as to withhold prize-money which had been morally won, but in a test of the sort outlined in the official communique the element of business is paramount, so far as the manufacturer's point of view is concerned, and where he is invited to lay down plant and to otherwise spend his money in the effort to provide a machine capable of fulfilling the severe requirements of the War Office, he certainly has a right to know exactly where he stands. That is a matter which, however, the authorities can soon put right by an assurance that the prizes will in fact be awarded, whatever the result of the trials may be. It must be kept in mind that we are not dealing with some thing problematical. It is not as though the aeroplane had not proved itself to be a practical proposition. That it has done to the full, even supposing that we have not yet evolved the machine which is capable of fulfilling the War Office requirements in their entirety, a proposition we do not by any means admit, though it has to be recorded in this way. Let us see how these tests compare as to the value of the money prizes offered with those of the French War Department. In the latter, ^53,000 was the total sum offered, against ^11,000 in our own case. The most successful manufacturer in the French trials received the handsome sum of ^32,000, while under the British conditions the maximum amount that can be won is ,£5,000—about what it will cost the serious constructor to enter and take part in the trials. True, the War Office is prepared to purchase for ^1,000—or rather, to take an option to purchase—any machine awarded a prize, a sum which is a little more than enough to cover the cost of such an engine as will ensure the machine passing the tests laid down ! But just think of it, oil and petrol is to be supplied free for the tests. Prodigious ! Then, what has become of the suggestion that the War Office should give contingent orders for the machines it admits it will require ? There is not a single word in the official conditions about the purchase of one machine, save the reference to the option we have already noted. The more one studies the official attitude towards the industry, the more unsatisfactory does it appear. It is admitted that aeroplanes are as much entitled to be classed as "ordnance" as guns for our battleships. Therefore, they must be built in this country—that is a prime essential. Now, there is hardly enough private trade in aeroplanes at the present moment to justify people in putting up large sums by way of capital to cope with the demand that exists or with the nebulous future require ments of a State department which does not yet know its own mind. In consequence, it becomes absolutely necessary that an industry capable of coping with the demands of peace and war should be created and that can only be done with the assistance of the State. There is no blinking the fact at all—it is patent to everyone that we in this country cannot hope to create such an industry as is needed, unless the State, which is to ultimately benefit, will take a wise and prescient view of things and assist in the creation of that industry upon which our national existence may very well depend at some future date. There would have been no aeroplane industry in France to-day had the State not seen the possibilities and done the right thing at the right time. Let us make another comparison. The French appropriation for next year's aerial programme is to be very nearly three-quarters of a million sterling. Germany intends to spend twice that amount in the very near future on the development of her aerial resources. We, the wealthiest nation on earth, are allotting a whole eleven thousand pounds to the furtherance of the movement towards our aerial supremacy! Here we have a Government which is literally wasting millions on vote-catching schemes of social reform, fiddling and flirting with wild-cat propaganda of all sorts, and there does not seem to be one single member of the Government or one of its responsible advisers who has the horse-sense to point out that the time has come when parsimony and vacillation must be discarded in favour of a really forward policy in aerial matters. Hard on the heels of the issue of this magnificent prize scheme of the Government, comes the speech of Col. Seely —who, we fear, mainly reflects only his own personal soundjviews—at the Royal United Service Institution last Monday evening, upon the occasion of the Aeronautical Society's resumed discussion upon the military Aeroplane. We had waited, he said, until there came a moment when we could wait no longer. In the opinion of the Government the time to move has now arrived, and he assured his audience that the Government proposed to attack the subject of aeroplanes with all the vigour they could—not only to make up lost ground, but to see to it that Britain should not be behind in this machine of warfare. And, he might have added, their idea of seriously attacking this pressing subject is by the offer of a paltry £11,000 in prizes to be competed for eight months hence ! If the matter were not so vital, it would be positively humorous, but the pity of it is that there is no humour, save of the grimmest sort, in it at all. The more we study the present policy of the Government in its relation to the problem of our aerial supremacy, the less we seem to understand it. One day they blow hot, and the next cold. One day they are as prolific in promises for the future as they are chary of performance the next. We confess that the whole official attitude is, to our understanding, somewhat worse than the riddle of the Sphinx. Perhaps one day a modern GZdipus will reveal himself and puzzle it all out, and, we are inclined to add, we trust with the same consequences as the mythology tells us ensued upon the successful solution of the riddle—not to OZdipus, but to the Sphinx. But until that happens we are almost driven to think that there is no hope for the immediate future, and that we shall continue the policy of drift and muddling along that seems so characteristic of British officialdom. And, in the meantime, if war came to Europe ? IIOO
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