FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1917
1917 - 0384.PDF
APRIL 26, 1917. question :—Is it an order or not that when a hospital ship carrying British and German wounded is tor- pedoed by an enemy submarine, no German is to be saved until every one of our own men has been got safely away ? We do not know whether this is the case or not, but we submit that it ought to be, because unless the thing is made clear by a definite order, we have reason to believe that the innate chivalry of our own people will too often impel them to give everyone an equal chance, possibly even to differentiate in favour of the Germans. • • • It is with the greatest possible satis-Bure J a™jracy faction that we regard the action of a Expenditure, representative number of Members of Parliament who have tabled a resolution demanding that a committee be appointed with power to review all national expenditure, examine Ministers and officials, and report to the House—and therefore to the public. In a letter addressed by this Party to the Press, the point is made that the House of Commons is powerless to exercise either control or influence over the national expenditure. The Govern- ment have decided to rule without the House ; the Treasury has waived its control; most departments are a law unto themselves ; and no one interposes to check their expenditure. It may be within the recollection of our readers that, in introducing the Budget of last year, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer stated that olar " total expenditure for this present financial year would be £5,000,000 per day." He added:—" I confess frankly that I shall be disappointed if serious economies cannot be effected in the course of the year, and this large total reduced." What has been the result of these " economies " ? During the year the number of new departments of the Government which have been brought into being to " control " one thing or another has been such that we frankly do not pretend to recollect their total. The creation of these new departments has made for so great economy that instead of the war costing us five millions, the national expenditure has grown to more than seven millions a day. In addition, with the establishment of each new ^department we have seen yet more of our liberties filched from us, until the sum total of the position is that we are paying out colossal sums of money in order to support a bastard Prussianism without a tithe of the Prussian efficiency which is the only justification of bureaucracy. To put it in a few words, we are the most official ridden nation on earth at the present time and we are paying more per capita for the privilege than any people have done since the dawn of history. If the Party to which we have referred—which has the support of over 160 members of all parties, made up of 50 Unionists, 90 Liberals, 15 Labour, and the Irish Nationalist leaders—can force the hands of the Government and achieve what they are after, they will have gone one step along the road to reform. But we doubt if they will find the Govern- ment in the least disposed to surrender any part of the autocratic powers they have taken to themselves— at any rate, so long as the end of the war remains out of sight. They—that is, the anti-extravagance party—might with great advantage go a step farther and form themselves into a party for securing the repeal of the Defence of the Realm Act the moment the war is over, with the automatic abolition of the numerous parasitical growths that have sprung up under its evil influence. Short of that, we do not see how we are going to rid ourselves of the present plethoric officialdom for generations to come. • • • In every connection we see around us D xl*8?1 the evil consequences of the presentRun Mad. •, • r J.I_ re • * Kpredommance of the official. As an example of this, the treatment of the press photo- graphers on the occasion of the American Dedication Service at St. Paul's last week may be taken as a case in point. Although armed with the usual police permits, these men, who are as much the servants of the public as of their emploj'ers, were ruthlessly excluded from every possible point of vantage, while every facility was given for the taking of_ photographs by men in the uniform of the Royal Flying Corps. Moreover, the Pressmen were, to our knowledge, treated in several instances with the grossest rudeness by officials, police and others. Does the Government, among other things, intend to create a monopoly of pictures of public interest ? Does it mean to close down yet another business and take it over itself ? Or was the occasion simply taken advantage of to drive home to the people that at last the official has attained to the summit of his desires, and that he, and he alone, is the master and the public merely sheep to be driven whither he lists ? For our own part, we are not particularly interested in the occasion on which these things happened, so we are not labouring under any sense of personal grievance, but to our way of thinking it has come to a pretty pass when honest men are prevented from earning their living and the resources of a fighting portion of the King's forces are taken to do their work. Moreover, it seems to us that there is a dis- tinct snub to our American Allies implied in the action of whoever was responsible. The fiction is that the photographs of the King's progress to the Cathedral are " for official purposes only." Therefore, they cannot be sold to the Press. It seems to us that, apart from the legitimate interest that our own people are likely to feel in the doings of His Majesty and the importance of the occasion, the American people would have been very keen on seeing the manner in which one of the greatest events in their history was cele- brated over here. That privilege has been denied to them by the crass stupidity of someone in authority here. A worse case of officialism run mad we have seldom come across, and we trust that something will be said in Parliament about it. It is not too much to say that the The exposure of the loathsome methods of andMtluf dealing with their dead who die in battle Dead. adopted by the Germans, has sent a thrill of horror through all the civilised world. That any nation calling itself civilised can descend to such horrible desecration of the bodies of tkose who die in its defence as to render them down for the sake of the oil and fat to be obtained from them would be absolutely incredible did the facts not rest on the best of all evidence. That evidence rests on, first of all, a report from one of the accredited German correspondents in the war zone. It is borne out by other witnesses who aver that the facts have been well known in both Holland and Belgium for many months past. Last of attj: it is confirmed by the disingenuous dementi sent out by the German Wireless Press, which does not attempt to deny directly that the story is a true one. 384
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
