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Aviation History
1916
1916 - 0448.PDF
[/JJCHT] that was happening, but it cannot be good to be always pulling up a plant by its roo:s. The lesson there has been for us to develop on present lines. There is this difference between the French and ourselves. Their service is not a joint sen ice, but is largely an Army service. An arrangement which is perfectly good for France with lit one service becomes not so good and perhaps bad when jou are dea ing with two services which ought to work together in the I/est possible way. We rejected the proposal of leaving the matter as it is. The next queitkn is that of an Air Ministiy. My right hon. friend said that the Government alone were standing in the way. AS I listened to his speech I could not help wonderirg what tcr.ible thing had happened in the five months since he left the Government. I think the air pioblem was there then. It has rot arisen since. I would like to say for myself, and I believe for the whole Govern ment, that we had no p ejudice whatever against an Air Minister. If we had announced an Air Minister it would have been what the House of Commons and the I'ress would have liked. There is no earthly reason why we should not have done as much as we are doing if wu had thought it as good for the service of the country. We did not. Again I do not really understand my right hon. friend. I do not want to make a controversial speech ; I want rather to try to let the Mouse understand the motives which actuated the Govern ment in the proposals they have put forward. I really do r.ot under stand my right hon. friend. He is in favour of an Air Ministry. Did that never occur to him as a good thing earlier, when he himself was a menber of the Governme.lt ? , Colonel Churchill: J put put before the Prime Minister, early in June of last year, some proposals of this character. Mr. Bonar I aw : If J remember correctly the right hon. gentle man had left the Admi-alty. Colonel Churchill : Oh, yes. Mr. Bonar Law : I really do not understand my light hon. friend. If there was one man who, if an Air Ministry was the right thing, had the power to establish it, it was my right hon. friend. When the war broke out every department was over head an J ears in work. It is quite true, as my right hon. friend said, that Lord Kitchener was glad to leave the defence of London to him because they were all overworked. If, at that time, he had thought an Air Ministry was the right way of dealing with the matter, he would have had no difficulty in carrying the proposal out. When my right hon. friend was at the Admiralty there was a Joint Air Committee, and the two branches of the Air Service had but one name—the Royal Flying Corps, with a naval and military wing. When the war b oke out my right hon. friend did what probably, on the whole, he was justified in doing. He bad one department in his own hands, and he showed great energy in developing it in the best possible and the most practicable way. But instead of saying that an Air Ministry with these two services was the right solution, he /or the first time gave a new, special name to the naval wing of the Royal Flying Corps, and instead of making it a joint service, so far as his own action was concerned, be separated the two services more than ever they had been separated before. Colonel Churchill : I have r.ot refreshed my memory, but I think the Royal Naval Air Service w; s a name started befure the war. Mr. Bonar Law : I have not looked it up, either, but I think I am right. Every member of the House mist realise that there are great objections in the middle of a war to starting a new service and uprooting everything that has been done. Even though the advan tages will be greater later on, the Service will suffer for the time being. In this war we cannot afford to let it suffer even for the time being. There is no analogy between this case and the Ministry of Munitions. Though the Ministry of Munitions had difficulties enough to contena with, its was a simple problem compared with this. It was taking away from the War Office one branch of War Office work. The business of the Ministry of Munitions is to supply material. It has not to rue that material, and it has not to direct the policy and the way in which that material is used. For a long time to come, however rapidly you develop the Air Service, the great bulk of the work in the air will be done in connection either with the Navy or with the Army. Now surely, and this is a very strong reason in the middle of a war, it is not very wise to upset all that, to take away the training of the men, for instance, from the Army, who are doing it well, and put down something new in the btlief that later on you will get better results. What is the alternative? I am not defending this proposal from a brief without bslieving in it myseli. This seemed to me from the first the best method during the war of trying to deal with this question. You have two services dealing largely with the same materials, ami, to some extent, in the same way. Is it not the obviously r'ght course to try to get these departments to work together ? So far as I am concerned, even if I believed that an Air Ministry MAY 25, I9J6. was the right thing in the end—and I think an Air Ministry may come out of it—I should say the right way to get it is to make some arrangement of this kind, to let it grow, and gradually let it ab-orb more and more the work of the Air Services. What are the grounds of criticism against the present system ? With two services there is likely to be overlapping and competition in buying material. This Board lias complete power to put a stop to that. Let me dfal with the kind of criticism the right hon. gentleman made against the Board. That there will not be voting at this Council he thinks a wonderful thing. That is the system on which every one of the Government departments is carried on now. The head of (he depattment represents the views of the department. The idea that the President of this Board will take one view, and that both the services will take a different view is an absurdity. What will happen very likely is that one service will take one view and the ether another, and both of them will be overruled by the President. Then we come to what my right hon. friend says about the President having power only to make recommendations. He says Lord Curzon, as a member of the Cabinet, could make recom mendations now, and that he has a free hand to bring them to the War Council. This new Board is a joint Board of the two services— that is the essence of it—with an outside President, who is a Cabinet Minister, who shall be expected to go into all air problems and to make recommendations to the two services. Then what follows? If these recommendations are not carried out the Prtsident has the right of at once taking them to the War Council, who will give a decision, whi:h decision will be final. It is quite obvious, 1 think, that if the two dtpartmen's have made up their minds that they regard this Board as the fifth wheel to the coach, as something which ought not to be there, as an enemy, this scheme cannot succeed. But the essence of it is that the Board in esseniiils represents the two services. It has on it the men who are b:st qualified to speak for those services in their department, and rurely it is not unreasonable to hope that when these subjects are discussed by such a Beard they will look upon the decision i as the real method of carrying out their policy, and that, more and more, this new body will have allocated to it all the du ies, so far as they can be per formed, even of an Air Minstry. The next kind of criticism relates to the allocation of machines. That is very important, too. So long as it is the case that ne:ther department can get as many machines as it wants they struggle with each other to get them. That does not mean that there is ill-will between the two departments, tut each knows it can make good use of the machines, and each tries to f et them. How is that to be settled? Surely the obvious way is by having a Board like this with an impartial arbitrator who shall say " The Navy needs these, the Army needs those, and they shall have them unlets the War Council decides it i° a bad arrangement and it is reversed." My right hon. friend says the War Council, because the First Lord of the Admiralty and the Secretary of State for War are on it, will overrule this Poard. Both the First Loid of the Admiralty and the Secretary of Siate for War have approved of the Com mittee, and 1 he fact that they have approved of it means that so far as they are concerned they intend to make it a success. In addi tion to that, the War Council would not agree to such a pr( pr sal unless they iii'ended to do what they could to make it a success. Therefore you may start certainly with this presupposition, that the sympathies of the War Council will be with the new Board. Then another kind of criticism—and it is a very strong one—is in regard to services which are neither naval nor military—Joint strvices, what for the sake of a shoit phrase I may call long-distance arrangement'. Perhaps it is a very bad anangemert that each depaitmer.t should be planning for themselves independently of the other, and one of the instructions which ate given to the Board specially states that they are to devote themselvts to considering that class of work. In ether words, their duty w.ll be to assist in every possible manner in organising these joint operations and making the best recommendations for carrying them out. If hon. members will look at the difficulties of the present position, and will ask themselves what better plan is avail able, and when they make criticism about this, ask them selves would not the same criticism apply to an Air Ministry, or any other method adopted, I am satisfied they will come to the conclusion that this plan has two great merits—it has the possibility, and I hope more than that, of developing the a:r service in a way ii has never been developed bt fore, and k has this further advantage, that it does not interrupt the work which has been going on now, but will speed it up at the worst, and make it better than it is at present. It is perfectly true that not only imagination, but a keen interest in a subject like this is requked to develop it in the best and most rapid way. I have thought from the beginning that in the nature of the case neither the First Lord of the Admiralty nor the Secretary of State for War could possibly devote their minds to a subject like this in a way in which it could be done by a man who had no other 448
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