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Aviation History
1917
1917 - 0002.PDF
fighting for the powers they knew to be essential. To them we owe in no small measure the new order of things. • ' .• • .•'"•'>!'•> The intervention of the President of &«Z^f/.o the United States in the affairs of theAmerican . „ , , ,, Peace Note, nations of Europe, has not exactly enhanced his reputation on this side of the Atlantic. Neither by the Entente Powers nor by the Germanic combination has his unwarranted attempt to accelerate the peace movement been welcomed. Why he should have thought that his move was likely to produce any other effect than it did is not easily to be understood, unless the theory will hold water that he was, at the time the Note was written, in possession of some secret information relative to the German attitude towards peace by negotiation. Unless there was some such underlying reason, then the Note can only be regarded as a serious diplomatic blunder, which was calculated to produce precisely the opposite effect to that intended. That is exactly what has happened, and we take leave to think that President Wilson's error has made the prospects of an early peace more remote than they were. We fully appreciate the motives that led to the sending of the Note. The whole world is sick of war —the British Empire is just as sick of it as the rest. But what President Wilson seems to have overlooked is that there are some things which are infinitely worse than war—even war as it is waged in Christian Europe in this twentieth century. President Wilson knows exactly what it is we are fighting for. He comes of the same stock as ourselves, and should thus be able to appreciate and understand our ideals. He knows that we have not accomplished what we have set out to achieve, and he has been told in plain terms that until we have reached the goal there will be no slackening of effort—we, at least, are not too proud to fight for our ideals. It is when President Wilson sets out to tell us the reasons that have prompted liis intervention that we find him far from happy in his manner of expression. When he says that : " America's interests have been most seriously affected by the war," we find it difficult to understand him. Materially, the European war has been by far the best thing that ever happened for American interests. It has made the United States the wealthiest country in the world. Almost the whole of tlie world's gold is in American hands. America has captured a very large proportion of the trade of t he world that before the war was done by the European nations. What, then, does the President mean when he speaks of injury to American interests ? If he means that American prestige has suffered in the eyes of civilisation as a result of the dilettante policy of its Government, then we can understand him. But in any other direction it is the merest hypocrisy to talk about injury to interests. The President has had his answer from both groups of belligerents, and that answer has been an emphatic refusal to entertain his suggestion for a peace con- ference. He has in effect been told that when his mediation is desired he will be asked for it. Let it be hoped that he will take the hint. The war is our affair, and that of our Allies., When we have consum- mated our aims, we shall be to the full as competent to make ]>eace as we are to make war—and we neither desire, nor will we admit, the interference of anybody else in the making of it. JANUARY 4, 1917. :' : "• In the lengthy despatch, published at Sir D. Haig the end of last week, in which Sir and the Douglas Haig reviews the story of the Nff*Lf<?r Somme battles, be payi a well-deserved Machines, tribute to the work of the Royal Flying Corps. It is not with that tribute that we are concerned at the moment. The work performed by our aviators at the Front has so often been the subject of eulogy from the High Command that there is really no need to emphasise it again. There is, however, a significant passage in the despatch, to which we would call attention. Sir Douglas says : " Not only has the work of the Royal Flying Corps to becarried out in all weathers and under constant fire from the ground, but fighting in the air has now become" a normalprocedure, in order to maintain the mastery over the enemy's Air Service. In these fights the greatest skill and determina-tion have been shown, and great success has attended the efforts of the Royal Flying Corps. I desire to point out,however, that the maintenance of mastery in the air, which is essential, entails a constant and liberal supply of the mostup-to-date machines, without which even the most skilful pilots cannot succeed." There is a world of pregnant meaning in the last sentence. It would be undesirable to speculate too deeply as to what the implication contained in these words really is. It is certainly possible to read into them the meaning that the " best " machines have not readied the Front in sufficient number, else why should the Commander-in-Chief " desire to point out-" ? The necessity ought surely to have passed beyond the stage of needing emphasis from him. His warning words, however, come almost as an inspired confirmation of certain remarks recently made in " FLIGHT," to which we would once again urgently direct attention. While we know and appreciate the efforts that have been made by those responsible for the equipment of the R.F.C., it would seem that there still remains much to be done before the future of our aerial supremacy can be said to have passed out of the realms of anxiety. The sooner the Air Ministry is constituted and gets down to serious work the better it will be. ; :^ r The closing days of the old year were the ^ remarkable for a series of important Enemy. British raids on enemy positions and munitions works. Enemy camps were successfully bombed in Gallipoli ;. the great and highly important Chikaldar Bridge on the Baghdad Railway was attacked by seaplanes and destroyed ; a great raid was carried out on the blast furnaces at Dillengen, in which over a ton of bombs were dropped on these necessary adjuncts to the making of muni- tions ; and yet another aerial attack was made on Zeebrugge. Not at all a bad record when it is borne in mind that all these raids were additional to the ordina^ work of our airmen on the various fronts. The most important of these raids appears to have been that on the Chikaldar Bridge. It is stated in the official communique that this bridge was destroyed. If this is really so, then it means that an important _ link in the enemy's communications has been broken. Its effective destruction would cut off not only the Baghdad main line extension itself, but also the Syrian lines, from railway connection with Western Asia Minor, and with its" centres of supply for the Turkish armies in the Caucasus, in Mesopotamia and in Palestine and Arabia. It is a really vital link and its severance would be of the utmost importance in its influence on the Eastern campaigns.
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