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Aviation History
1912
1912 - 0118.PDF
EDITORIAL "There is visions about," and that well- The Visions meaning institution, the International Interactional Arbitration League, appears to be seeing Arbitration some °f them. While we have the very League. deepest sympathy with the avowed aims of the League, it is no use disguising from ourselves the elementary fact that its efforts in the cause of international peace and amity do not carry us very far. We may take it as read that in all civilised countries there exists a powerful minority which abhors the god of War and all his works, and believes, rightly enough, that the world would be a better place in which to live if only the rulers and peoples of the earth could be persuaded to do away with the crude arbitrament of war and settle disputes between the nations by the eminently and more satisfactory—and cheaper—medium of arbitration. No one will be found, we imagine, to controvert this broad statement, but, on the other hand, the number of those who can be found to agree as to its possibility would be infinitesimal in regard to the mass. We do not for an instant desire to quarrel with the aims of such societies as the International Arbitration League, because we have every sympathy with its objects, and when it starts out on a campaign directed towards a universal agreement among the Powers that armed air-craft should be banned in the civilised wars of the future, we can find it in our hearts to echo the desire by which it is prompted. It is such a campaign as that to which we have referred which marks the latest phase of the League's activities, and of which a "memorial of protest" is the outward and visible sign. This memorial bears the names of upwards of two hundred prominent personalities, and appeals to all Governments to work for a common under standing " which shall preserve the world from what will add a new hideousness to the present hideousness of war," It is rightly pointed out that, without universal agreement, no single Power can afford to neglect the new weapon which science has forged. But the memorial points out, the Hague Conference is an accomplished fact, and for the first time, in the face of new develop ments in the art of war, the machinery to check development is ready to hand. Thus, continues the memorial:— "All civilisation protests its desire for peace and goodwill ; protests its wish to reduce the already grievous burden of armaments. Unless its protestations be those of a hopeless hypocrite, it cannot stand and watch the conquest of the air, that most glorious of men's mechanical achievements, callously turned to the usages of destruction ; it cannot idly acquiesce in a new departure that must heavily increase this burden of armaments. " There are many who believe that aerial warfare, by reason of its sheer horror, must prove a blessing in disguise, frightening men from war. To those we say civilisation does not sanction the ravages of a new and arrestable form of disease, in order that men through.horror may be the more eager to join hands in stamping out all forms of sickness. And further, you underrate the fortitude and adaptability of human nature, which has long proved that it can endure all forms of terror. " There has never yet been a moment when it was practically possible to ban the war machines of earth or water. There is a moment when it is practically possible to ban those of the air. That moment is now—before the use of these machines is proved ; before great vested interests have formed." All this is very beautiful as a matter of sentiment, but we are much afraid that one main factor—that of human nature—is left entirely out of the calculation. In spite of our peace societies and our arbitration leagues, that same human nature that dominated the affairs of men in the Stone Age is supreme to-day. It is only a few days ago that the skeleton of a man, said to have lived some FEBRUARY IO, 1912.. COMMENT. thousands of centuries ago, was unearthed in Norfolk. In its measurements and its characteristics generally it differed not at all from the skeleton of the man who died but a decade ago. Away back in the Dark Ages this Norfolk skeleton, which was then a living, sentient being,, probably set about the circumvention of his fellows and the annexation of their property with the aid of a stone axe or some equally primitive weapon. It may have been, that, according to his lights, he was a man of peace, in which case he simply kept his flint axe in a handy corner of the cave in which he dwelt, simply as a ready means of defence against possible assailants. And, in order that he might have a better chance in the inevitable conflict when the day of wrath arrived, he doubtless expended much time and thought upon the fashioning of his axe, and, perchance, even evolved some sort of weapon which put him on something more than equal terms with those of his fellow men who lacked his industry or ingenuity. What happened ? Thought had not advanced to the stage of peace societies, so he was not waited upon by deputations of the patriarchs of the time, which begged him in the name of humanity to discard his new invention. On the contrary, it was voted a good thing for the individual or the tribe, and was adopted and improved upon until something still better was evolved and took its place. Now the point is, that even as the bodily characteristics of the human race have not materially altered in these thousands of centuries, so have the natural instincts- remained unaltered since the dawn of history. It is true that they have undergone an external process of refine ment, which leads us all to express horror and loathing at scenes and incidents which were mere commonplaces to our ancestors, and that some of the ultra-refined among, us are capable of feeling deeply and genuinely aghast at the use to which many devices and inventions of science are put in the race between nations for the circumvention one of another—for war and the preparation for war simply amounts to this. But these ultra-refined natures- are no more normal, as compared with the mass, than are the inmates of the nearest lunatic asylum; and when we come to average things up, we find that the veneer of civilisation is at best a very thin one. Without going quite so far as to say that man's natural instincts lead him to murder, and the appropriation of those things which are not his, whether we regard man as an individual or as a community, the real cause is not very far removed from this. Until all this is changed—until, that is, human nature has undergone a complete change—" memorials of protest" against armaments at large and the components of which they consist, are merely in the nature of pious resolutions which do no one any harm if they achieve little good. The irony of it is that while two hundred British notabilities are affixing their signatures to this memorial,, the French Minister of War is expounding to his Parlia ment the details of his scheme for spending immediately a round million sterling on air-craft for warlike purposes. Germany is increasing her aerial fleet very largely. Italy is actually using dozens of aeroplanes in her war in Tripoli. Russia, Spain, Japan, China, America, Turkey— all the Powers of the earth, in fact—are buying aeroplanes to be used against the next enemy! It may be both deplorable and pathetic that immediately science succeeds in giving us something new, the first question to be answered is that of whether or not it can be turned to the purposes of wholesale murder—but then, that is- human nature once more. 118
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