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Aviation History
1917
1917 - 1019.PDF
OCTOBER 4, 1917. and cut off as she is from every source of supply save her own, can find the machines and the men to raid London night after night, while we, apparently, can find no answer that is productive of the one effect that matters. We know the magnificent work that is being done by our airmen on the other side of the Channel. We know that they are making night and day hideous for the Hun behind the battle line. We know that they have rendered at least one of his great aerodromes—that at Ghistelles—untenable for him. That is excellent, we agree, but the outstanding fact remains that German aeroplanes are able to cultivate the habit of nightly visits to the heart of the Empire and to get away with practical impunity. To the last we attach very little importance, since our own airmen enjoy the same immunity from loss in their night bombing expeditions behind the lines in Belgium, but the argument is a two-edged one, for the reason that it enables us to predicate the same measure of safety for British squadrons detailed for the " strafing " of German towns. Meantime the demand for reprisals is becoming so loud and insistent that something will have to be done in the matter lest worse befall. There is a limit even to British stoicism, which will willingly, even cheerfully, suffer the un- avoidable, but which is apt to get uncomfortably restive under ills it does not understand m believes could be avoided with competent management. In a word, either there must be inaugurated at once a policy of hitting the Hun where he will feel it most, or there must be a frank statement of why we are unable to do it. And, if we cannot, it will not avail to advance merely sentimental reasons. We have got beyond that, and the temper of the people is rising to a point at which they will refuse to be put off with talk about " clean hands " and the rest of the nauseous piffle of the pacifists and the sentimentalists. Even they must realise now that war as made in Germany is a grim business, and requires to be handled in grim fashion. Business War after the War. Mr. Holt Thomas, writing on this sub- ject in the Daily Mail, passes on the suggestion made to him by a well- known French journalist that the Allies should announce as a counter to the German policy of frightfulness that :— " (1) On the first ship sunk in contravention of international law the Allies would close definitely for 20 years one of their ports against the German ships. ". (2) A list of the ports in the order in which they would be closed should be definitely announced. " (3) A German ship should be considered to be :— " (a) A ship built in Germany. " (b) A ship belonging to the Germans. " (c) A sliip of which the crew consisted of more than 50 per cent. Germans. " (d) A ship carrying German merchandise of any sort." We would interpolate into the first paragraph of this the words, " or on the first aerial raid on an Allied open town," and further, make it perfectly clear that for every ship sunk or raid carried out another port would be closed. We would go even beyond that and give notice that if frightfulness of the kind so dear to the heart of the Hun were per- sisted in after a period of, say, two months, every port of every Allied country should be indefinitely closed to Hun shipping and merchandise. The Germans have shown the world that they are abso- lutely unfit for intercourse with civilised peoples. They have taken all and every pains to demonstrate that they are pariahs of the very mangiest type, so there can be no questions of sentiment regarding the punishment of their foul deeds. We certainly do not want them, and we can well do without their mer- chandise. We have got along very well without either their company or their goods for more than three years now, and there does not seem to us to be any good reason why we should accept either in the future. Apart altogether from the ethical side of the matter, there is self-preservation to be considered. We do not want another great war sprung upon us fifteen or twenty years hence, and we know that so far from Germany having renounced her dreams of world domination, her only regret is that her plans have miscarried, and she is busy thinking out alterna- tives for another attempt which shall bring her the desired result. Until, therefore, we can be reasonably * certain that the German people have sincerely re- pented of their evil deeds and have -renounced once , and for all their present aims, it is absolutely essential, in order that the peace of the world shall be preserved, that Germany shall be held down from the economic and industrial expansion which alone will provide her with the means for making another attempt on the Jiberty of nations. The Hun is an outcast of civilisa- tion. -He has deliberately chosen the part. There- fore let us see that he continues to fill it until he sincerely arrives at the conclusion that it is a part which does not and cannot pay him. It is full time that we made up our minds to this. Germany is pre- paring apace for the commercial war that will follow on the cessation of hostilities, and is doing all she can to secure a favourable handicap. She has destroyed a large proportion of the world's shipping and is her- self" building apace in readiness for the attempt to capture the carrying trade of the world. She has. stripped naked the mills and factories of the terri- tories in her temporary occupation with the cynically avowed object of giving herself an industrial start in the race, and says in so many words that while the Allies are reconstructing their industries she will be enabled to capture the markets overseas. There is manifestly only one policy which will effectively counter the German plans. The Allies have command of the ocean routes, the coaling stations and the ports of the whole world. If we decide that way, then not one ton of German shipping or one ton of merchandise can pass the ocean highways. Are we going to use this potent, this decisive weapon, or is Germany to be given the free hand she obviously expects to get ? In exercising this power to the full, one very wide loophole will have to be guarded against—the preven- tion of Germany being able to make "clearing houses" for their imports and exports of present Neutrals, including Holland, Denmark, Switzerland and other countries, to the enrichment of the said Neutrals, by enabling them to take tolls from Germany i which legitimately should go into the pockets of the nations fighting for civilisation. British Aviators Released by Holland. IT was officially announced by the Dutch Ministry of Marine on September 29th that the two British aviators who were brought to Nieuwediep on the 25th inst. by a Dutch fishing vessel after they had been obliged to come down on the open sea, have been set at liberty. Their machine, how- ever, has been seized by the Dutch authorities. Apparently this is the machine, first reported as a French seaplane, which came down, through lack of petrol, off the Haaks Lightship. IOI9 F
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