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Aviation History
1917
1917 - 0244.PDF
IGHT enemy all the sordid bungling and the sorry ineptitude which surrounded the most ghastly failure of the whole war. We imagine that the German General Staff will not grudge the sixpence it costs to obtain a copy of the Report from His Majesty's publishers. Cer- tainly our own Government would be delighted to see a similar official record of incompetence and criminal levity issued by the enemy. It is being whispered abVoad that there is more in the publication than meets the eye. Of that we are not in a position to say anything, but the real reasons will possibly emerge when the Report comes to be debated in Parliament. That it will be so debated almost goes without saying, for neither Parliament nor the nation is inclined to let the matter rest where it is. Then we may see the dictum falsified that the politician is never punished. * • «• Under this title the World prints a long Are we article, which in the main traverses the lviaKing same ground as we have covered of War ? months ago in the columns of "FLIGHT." The writer, Mr. de Wend-Fenton, takes as his text the growth of bureaucracy, and speaks out with considerable freedom. In opening he says :— " There seems to be a feeling among all classes of the community that it is highly dangerous to those principles of Liberty for which we are understood to be waging this war that we should indefinitely surrender ourselves, our souls and bodies, our present and future belongings, into the hands of a bureaucracy which bids fair to rival Prussian despotism without the saving grace of Prussian efficiency." All of which we are in complete agreement with as the pages of " FLIGHT " testify. He proceeds to say :— " We are taxed up to the very hilt, many of our securities are forcibly taken from us, and we are constantly urged to place all we have at the Government's disposal. At the same time, we are persistently hampered if we endeavour to replenish our exchequers by any form of enterprise in which the Govern- ment has not a finger, and consequently businesses are being closed all over the country. All this, on the assumption that it conduces to the successful prosecution of the war, we have borne without murmuring. But there is an uneasy feeling, a feeling which is growing and spreading, that the war is not the ultimate object of this outbreak of Bureaucracy which is spreading its tentacles far and wide until it is getting a grip on every department of our national life. The creation and multiplication of these new offices, each with its myriads of secretaries, clerks, and assistants, savours of a swarm of locusts which, like a plague of old, are settling down to devour once-Merrie England. Is it to be expected that all these new Departments, Boards and Committees, with their multitudinous off-shoots and ramifications, with their hordes of well-paid officials, will silently melt away with the signing of Peace ? Does the man-eating tiger, once he has tasted human flesh, return to his previous uninteresting diet ? " One might go a step further. Human nature is human nature. Is it absolutely certain that a Government to whom war has brought a degree of despotic power the mere sugges- tion of which three years ago would have been scouted as fantastic and impossible, will be in a desperate hurry to dam MARCH 15, 1917- the source of its greatness ? Until the nation is completely broken in, may not Bureaucracy consider that the continuance of the war is not an unmixed evil t ' We shall not sheathe the sword,' said Mr. Asquith, ' until Prussian militarism has been broken.' ' We shall not sheathe the sword,' might be his successor's pledge, ' until British bureaucracy is secure.' Step by step we have been led on, by cajolery, by appeals, by fair promises, until we stand literally on the brink of slavery. For the first time since Cromwell's day Britain has put her head into a noose and handed the string to a Dictator. With lamb-like subservience we have accepted every edict under the well-worn formula that it was for the safety of the State." Mr. de Wend-Fenton has made precisely the points that we have insisted upon time and again, and we welcome his advent to the field as a champion of our civil rights, which, as he and we have pointed out, are menaced right, left, and centre. To our way of thinking, the main seriousness of the position is that we are not getting the efficiency of the Prussian system, while we are suffering all its disabilities. After all, there is something to be said for a system that produces the best results, however irksome it may be to live under, but that is where the shoe: pinches ; we are not getting the best results or any! thing approaching them. That is why we view th£ future with the grave disquiet we do. Unless we are very careful, we shall find that bureaucracy in its most pernicious form is with us to stay. Then, indeed, will this England of ours not be worth living in or for. We have received a number of letters in "A Roll of reference to our remarks last week on Problem"." tne subject of the scandal of the non- inclusion in the Roll of Honour of the names of officers killed on service in England. Notable in this correspondence is a letter from the mother of an officer killed while flying at home and who com- plains that not only does the name of the officer concerned not figure in the casualty lists, but in these cases the relatives do not receive the Royal telegram of condolence which is always sent when an officer is killed at the front. As our correspondent says, duty flights, even in England, are not joy-rides, and to our way of thinking it is scandalously hard that the poor consolation which is extended to the relatives of officers killed on active service should be withheld simply because an officer meets his death on duty in England. It seems to us to be one of those matters which ought to be taken up by some member of Parliament who has weight enough to secure some alteration in the absurd regulation which works thus hardly on the kith and kin of officers who give their lives for King and Country equally as much as though they died in the face of the enemy. We know enough of the methods of the bureaucrats of the War Office to be certain that they are not likely to move except under the pressure of opinion from outside. The Death of Count Zeppelin. BY the death of Count Zeppelin at Berlin on March 8th Germany has lost one of her most popular idols, while aero- nautics has lost probably her most enthusiastic and per- sistent worker, albeit his inventions have been turned to such dastardly purposes. Born at Constance on July 8th, 1838, Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin was nearing the end of his seventy-eighth year. He was a veteran of the American Civil War, when he fought for the Union, and he had taken part in the Austro-Prussian war of 1866 and the Franco- German war of 1870. He retired from the army in 1891 with the rank of General of Cavalry, and then began to devote himself seriously to the study of airships. His first vessel, which was 420 ft. long and carried two 16 h.p. motors, was tried in 1900, and then followed a series of alternate successes and disasters. It is unnecessary, however, to refer in detai" to the history of the Zeppelin airship, as it was given in oui issue of October 26th, together with sketches showing how th< design was gradually developed. The immediate cause o Count Zeppelin's death was inflammation of the lungs supervening after an intestinal operation. The funeral tool place at Prag Cemetery, Stuttgart, on March 12th. Th< King of Wurtemberg offered a tomb in the Royal cemetery By the Kaiser's command General von Hoeppner, Com mander-in-Chief of the German Air Services, attended thi funeral, and a large number of workers from the Zeppelii works at Friedrichshafen were present. Two airships, flying black flags, cruised over the town and dropped wreaths tc the ground, and ten aeroplanes appeared over the cemetery. 244
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