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Aviation History
1918
1918 - 0144.PDF
spondingly serious results to the other. Will the Allies possess that margin of superiority? We confess we are much more mentally exercised about this than we are about the German excess of man-power, which is not, as we have said, decisive and is only temporary in any case. There is nothing upon which to base a decided opinion. We know that Germany has been straining every nerve to speed up production. We know also that she is, on the one hand, handicapped by the shortage of certain essential materials, but, on the other, she has the great advantage over the Allies of not being particularly concerned about the con- struction of shipping, and thus has a mass of material and in great measure the resources of her shipyards to draw upon for aircraft construction. Therefore, the race is likely to be more even than at first sight might seem probable. In spite of strikes and labour troubles in this country, we have no reason to think that our own pro- duction has been bad, even if it has not been as good as it might. In fact, we do not think that when the storm breaks our Air Services.will-be any mere starved for machines than its personnel will be lacking in gallantry and initiative Sa . It will be remembered that when itHun was suggested that President Wilson's Sentence speech should be dropped over the on German lines from aeroplanes, the Huns Officers promptly gave notice that any Allied airmen who were captured in so doing would be treated as spies. No time has been lost in putting the threat into execution, and news has been received in England that Capt. E. L. Scholtz and Second-Lieut. Wookey, of the R.F.C., have been tried by court-martial and sentenced to undergo ten years' penal servitude " for dropping hostile proclamations in Germany." According to a German statement, these two officers were shot down near Cambrai on October 17th, and were sentenced on December 1st. There is no need to waste time or space in abuse of the Hun for this last outrage on the canons of civilised war. We know he is a brutal materialist, who will stop at nothing in his own advantage so long as he is reasonably certain his outrages will not provoke retaliation in kind. He cannot make his case worse than it is in the eyes of civilisation. For all time he will carry the brand of Cain. The deeds of rapine and violence with which he has disfigured his conduct of the war will remain in the memories of this and succeeding generations so long as history endures, and he will be regarded as an outcast and a filthy beast with whom no decent persons or com- munities will have dealings of any kind. That being so, one or two more crimes will make his case neither better nor worse, and no one realises that better than he. Therefore, protest is unavailing, and all we have to consider now is what we are going to do about this savage sentence passed upon two British officers for doing their duty. It will certainly not meet the case for our own Government to make formal representa- tions through the Spanish Government. The Hun would merely laugh at it, as he has done before when we have displayed this kind of weakness. Fortunately in this case we have the remedy ready to our hands. This business of propaganda from aircraft is as old as the war itself—and the Hun has had a practical monopoly of it until lately. So long ago as the siege FEBRUARY 7, 1918. of Antwerp German airmen'were supplied with leaflets to be dropped into the enemy lines, telling the Belgian soldiers that the Germans were their best friends and that they were foolish to continue fighting for a lost cause. Ever since then the game has gone merrily on, in some cases—as on the Italian and Russian fronts—with disastrous effect on the fortunes of the Allies. It follows, therefore, that we must have among our German aviator prisoners a number who have been shot down or compelled to land behind our lines in possession of propaganda literature. Let there be no nonsense, no delay about it. The Government, we are glad to know, has threatened reprisals in kind, but that is not enough. The German Government should be told that unless the two officers concerned are at once released from penal servitude we shall take immediate steps to try not two but half-a-dozen of their captured airmen on similar charges, and, if found guilty, to impose similar sentences. That is the only way in which any impression is to be made, and unless we are shrewdly mistaken it would produce an" immediate effect. We know the French have been able by the threat of reprisals to get better treatment for their soldiers who have had the misfortune to fall into the hands of these barbarians—and it is only by these threats and their immediate translation into deeds that it has been effected. We cannot allow two gallant officers to endure the treatment accorded to German criminals without making the most strenuous efforts to save them from so terrible a fate. What are our authorities doing about it ? We believe this suggestion of reprisals has been put to the Govern- ment, but up to now no assurance has been received that it will be adopted. This is a matter where sentiment has to be disregarded, and in which no considerations of chivalry have weight. The Hun knows no law but that of brute force, and it is only by its exercise in double measure that he can be brought to his senses. The The situation as between the Amal- gamated Society of Engineers, the • Government, and the rest of the trade A.S.E. union groups, seems to change almost hourly, SQ that the ordinary mind is. really at a loss to follow its many phases. So far as it is possible to see, the A.S.E. as a whole appears to be standing out for the recognition of the principle that its members, being highly skilled workers, are a caste above and apart from the common herd of trades' unionists—thereby demonstrating that it is imbued with the truest principles of democracy as understood in Russia. Behind that caste feeling, there is also the influence on the executive of those men belonging to the Society who are of military age, but who are nowise inclined to give up their huge wages, their comfortable nights in bed, and the safety of their skins, in order to take their share of the risks of the trenches. With the merits of the three-cornered dispute we do not intend to concern ourselves at the moment, for the very sufficient reason that from the standpoint of the unprejudiced observer the case for the A.S.E. does not appear to possess any merits. What seems to us to matter—and it is all that matters—is that it is of the utmost importance that no question of procedure should obscure the broad man-power issue, which is that if we are to obtain 140
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