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Aviation History
1917
1917 - 0909.PDF
SEPTEMBER 6, 1917. they do not connote"~an immediately disruptive policy. First let us get the war finished successfully, and then we do not mind what becomes of all the " Old Gangs " who let the country unprepared into the war and who consistently bungled and muddled its conduct for more than three years. There are, we think, even worse things than muddling and extra- vagance at a time like this, and one of them would be a political upheaval such as would certainly follow on an attempt to substitute for the present Govern- ment one formed from the new Party which is pledged to a cleaner, sweeter political life. To attempt to swap horses while we are still in the middle of the stream would be a disaster of the first magnifude. We most sincerely trust, then, that those who stand for the new order of things will content themselves in the meantime with the perfection of their organisation against the time when it will be possible to make drastic changes, even in the Constitution if need be, without danger of the results which would be almost bound to accrue from immediate and premature action. With these qualifications we are able to extend a welcome to the new Party, for Heaven knows it is nearly time the Augean stables of British politics had the river turned through them. We have come to a pretty pass when our political system can be assailed as " Vanoc " assails it in the Referee of last Sunday, and when we are compelled to agree that what he says is too literally true. What he says is this : " Not all, but most of, the Members of Parliament are thinking, not of their country, but of themselves, their careers, State salaries, ' honours,' and pickings. All honour to the 128 members who I/UGHT1 take no salaries. Politics in Britain is a fool-catching trade, like rat-catching or money-lending. %(The average Member of Parliament knows no language but his own ; is inordinately vain ; succumbs (as easily as His Holiness the Pope to the skill of cos- mopolitan, financial and humanitarian schemes." If the National Party can knock the bottom out of that sort of thing we shall be able to overlook quite a number of minor shortcomings which are bound ;to manifest themselves in a new organisation. •••;.- • • • • The " No peace with Kaiserism " is the American keynote of President Wilson's replyCP py tO to *ke Pope's peace note. In America °pe" and in the Allied countries it has met with universal acceptance and endorsement. Even the neutrals are disposed to see in it the only possible basis of a guarantee for the future of the world's peace—as indeed it is, and as long ago as three years we said so in " FLIGHT." Mr. Wilson puts the case most admirably when he says :— " The object of this war is to deliver the free peoples of the World from the menace and the actual power of a vast military establishment, controlled by an irresponsible Govern- ment which, having secretly planned to dominate the world, proceeded to carry the plan out without regard either to the sacred obligations of treaty or the long-established practices and long cherished principles of international action and honour ; which chose its own time for the war ; delivered its blow fiercely and suddenly ; stopped at no barrier either of law or of mercy ; swept a whole continent within the tide of blood, not the blood of soldiers only, but the blood of innocent women and children, also, and of the helpless poor ; and now1 stands baulked, but not defeated, the enemy of four-fifths of the world. " This power is not the German people. It is the ruthless master of the German people. It is no business of ours Militarism. WHICH ? The World Set Free. The above two very suggestive drawings by Frank Reynolds are particularly appropriate just now, in view of the very outspoken reply of Mr. Wilson, the President of the United States, to the Pope's futile appeal for a German peace. These two clever drawings were published towards the end of 1914 as forming one of the series of 12 pictures for the 1915 Almanac, published annually by Messrs. Abdulla and Co., Ltd., the well-known cigarette firm, by whose permission we now reproduce the above. The drawings were significant at that date, and are still more significant at the present moment. - 909 E 2
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