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Aviation History
1918
1918 - 0062.PDF
are the omnibus and electric railway employees of London, many of them women, who have stuck to their duty during the worst periods of air raids and have carried on without thinking for a moment of their own safety, but only of the public convenience. We do submit that these are entitled to consideration, and we put it to the Premier that when next he is opening the floodgates of the fountain of honour— we trust we are not guilty of the majeste—he will see to it that the names of some of these humble heroes and heroines are included, even though they are not Government servants. •*•<•>••>The As we hoped and anticipated, ways and Museum. p antcipated, ways andBritish means have been found of dispensing ith th Bitih M h pg wit the British Museum as a home for the Air Council. Lord Curzon announced in the House of Lords last week that it was " no longer necessary " to appropriate that building. Moreover, it has been found that to take over the Natural History Museum, which was also threatened, and to attempt the conversion of its galleries into public offices would be too costly and would lead to delay. The incident is thus happily closed, but there cannot be the slightest shadow of doubt that had it not been for the strenuous opposition of the public, and par- ticularly the section which most prizes the educative values of these collections, both the British and the Natural History Museums would have followed the numberless hotels and clubs which have been absorbed by new Government departments. Lord Sudeley was doubtless perfectly right in suggesting that the decision to appropriate these buildings was taken before the Government was in possession of full information. Indeed, we have it on the authority of one of the trustees of the British Museum that the Commissioner of Works himself never went near the place in connection with the appropriation proceedings. He left that to one of his subordinates, who does not appear to have taken much trouble to inform himself of the suit- ability of the building for its designated purpose before deciding to take it over. Sir Alfred Mond is notoriously out of sympathy with the objects for which the Museum exists; but even so, knowing that there is a very large mass of the people which regards it almost as a holy place—and being a servant of the public, moreover, it might have been thought he would at least have taken it to be his duty to give the matter some measure of personal attention. But not a bit of it. The Commissioner of Works is far too high and potent a personage to trouble himself about such trifles as these—they can be looked to by the office boy or a junior clerk ! The whole thing appears to have been treated in a most unbecoming spirit of levity. The way the matter appeals to us is that if the appropriation of such a building as the British Museum is treated as being merely incidental to the day's work and is decided upon practically without a moment's consideration, what are we to think of the spirit in which so many other of London's great buildings have been commandeered for the public service ? They seem to have been taken over without the slightest regard to their suitability for the purposes to which they have been applied ; enormous expense has been incurred to even measurably fit them for occupation by their new tenants ; and then in many cases it has been found necessary to look for more suitable premises and to clear out whole departments, again at enormous expense to the JANUARY 17, 1918. nation. It is to be hoped that the museums incident will focus attention on the methods of the Office ot Works and that some steps will be taken to control its appetite for public buildings. We are fully aware that the departments, old and new, must be housed somewhere, but it is surely not too much to demand that some care and circumspection should be exercised in the commandeering of quarters for them. • * •* Among the recent changes in theThe personnel at the Admiralty there is one andThe"Air departure that we do not fully under- stand. In the list of new Staff appoint- ments is included a " Director of the Air Division " whose duties are not specifically defined and it is this appointment that rather bewilders us for the moment. Were it not for certain collateral facts we should rest content with the thought that the duties of the new Director were in all probability to be confined to the operations of air craft with the fleet and that he would nowhere impinge upon the functions of the Air Council and the Air Force. But there are certain signs abroad which appear to indicate that the Admiralty goes quietly on its way ignoring, if not altogether at least to some extent, the new order of things created by the passing of the Air Force Act. As examples we may refer to the recent order that R.N.V.R. officers attached to the R.N.A.S. are to wear wings with the letter " A " between ; the detail change in uniform of observer officers ; and other straws which show which way the wind tends to blow. Without the least desire to be either critical or unduly suspicious, we confess we do not altogether like it all. We cannot forget that it was the attitude of the Admiralty which rendered negative the efforts of the original Air Board, and that it was that attitude which for a con- siderable time exercised an effect on aircraft pro- duction which was, to say the least, the reverse of beneficient. However, there is no need to pursue this subject any farther—we can only " Wait and See." To turn to another aspect of the matter, we are glad to note that in the making of appointments to the new Admiralty Staff, the question of seniority is not to carry weight. All appointments are to be made, in consonance with the Admiralty practice since the beginning of the war, purely on merit and the suitability of officers for the special work they are to be called upon to perform. That is entirely as it should be, and we would that the same methods obtained throughout the whole of the public services. Were it so we might have been spared seven-tenths of the waste and muddle that have characterised the conduct of the war. Indeed, we do not think it is going too far to say that had that rule been in in- variable use and applied all round, from top to bottom, the war would have been over and won 4.m°r ag0" One of these days the Admiraltymethods may penetrate universally into the whole ot the public services—and then we shall get efficiency.Certainly the nation will never get value for its money while nepotism and senile seniority are theonly roads to advancement. • • • Aeroplanes ¥% ann°uncement, originally made in from FLIGHT, that the Government in-Ireland. tends to erect an aeroplane factory in . Ireland, has naturally given muchsatisfaction in the distressful country, and, according
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