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Aviation History
1918
1918 - 1047.PDF
SEPTEMBER 19, 1918. . > - • • : . and that, therefore, the last place through which the comb should be drawn was the coal mine. However, the Cabinet persisted in its plan, and the result has been that we are faced with a serious shortage of coal during the coming winter, and the action which was taken " after full consideration " has had to be drastically modified, and we are now returning miners from the Army at the rate of 2,000 perdayto make good the shortage that ought to have been foreseen from the start. We have taken this as a case in point to show the want of prevision which has characterised the war policy of the present Cabinet. All through it seems to have treated this country as a bottomless reservoir of the material for war. That it is not we ourselves pointed out many months ago, and, as we said then, the Government has to face the salient fact that it can have the men or it can have the money, but it cannot have both. If it takes away the tax-paying portion of the male community, it is sufficiently obvious that there can be no taxes forth- coming to pay the bill. On the other hand, if we are still to continue to be the financial milch-cow of the Alliance, it is equally clear that we must retain in civil life the men who pay the way of the State. The moral of the whole position is that the Government cannot have it both ways, and that it must make up its mind which is the most essential to the needs of war, men or money, and let the country know with as little delay as possible. The present uncertainty of things is not the least disquieting feature of the situation. No-one knows what the Government has in mind, and there is a tendency to think that the latter is carrying on the business of the country in a spirit of opportunism and of action without mature consideration of cause and effect. Rot" While we are not inclined to pay too much attention to the stories we hear rfU °f indiscipline and worse in the Ger- Oerman .r . , tTr .... ,, Armies. man armies m the West, it is reasonably certain that there is something very seriously the matter with the Hun military machine. At the close of the 1917 campaigns the same symptoms had been noted, principally regarding the com- parative willingness to surrender which was mani- fested by the enemy's troops, and there is no doubt the morale of the latter had fallen considerably below the level at which it stood at the beginning of that year. Under the influence of the peace with Russia and the German victories in the West early in the present year, coupled with the promise held out by the High Command of an early victorious termination of the war, it certainly rose again to a very high level, and was well maintained up to the closing phases of the battle of the Marne. Since then it seems to Transfer of R.A.M.C. Personnel to R.A.F. AN Army Order, dated September 9th, states that on the 1st October, 1918, all medical officers and other ranks, Royal Army Medical Corps, employed exclusively with the Royal Air Force will, as noted hereafter, be transferred or . attached to the Royal Air Force unless, prior to that date, they give notice of objection to such transfer or attachment :— (a) Medical officers and dental surgeons holding tem- porary commissions will be transferred to the Royal Air Force, and will be required to relinquish their temporary commissions in the Royal Army Medical Corps or General 'List respectively. A pro rata gratuity will be issued where an officer is serving under a yearly contract which has not expired. (b) Officers belonging to the Regular, Special Reserve or Territorial Force, Royal Army Medical Corps, will be attached to the Royal Air Force and continue to serve on the con- ditions of their present terms of service. have steadily declined and to have reached so low an ebb that we are justified in the belief that all is not well with the internal economy of the Kaiser's legions. We need take no notice of the stories cir- culated by neutrals of mutinies in the German army and navy, although there is a certain amount of confirmatory evidence in favour of these statements. For example, the story of the seizure of certain torpedo craft by naval mutineers and the sinking of some of them by pursuing light cruisers is to some extent borne out by the washing ashore of bodies from German torpedo vessels of the sinking of which our own naval authorities have no first-hand knowledge. All we can say is that there may have been mutinies, more or less serious in character, but that we should be foolish to accept the tales told by neutrals as indicative of any wide-spread feeling of unrest in the German services. . Much more valuable as an indication of the state of the enemy's morale is the growing readiness with which the Hun yields himself prisoner when he is cornered, and the satisfaction he displays when he is at last safe behind the Allied lines. Since the opening of the Allied offensive on the 18th of July the British, French and American armies have between them taken something over 200,000 prisoners, which certainly argues a low state of morale. True, the enemy command claims that in the offensives of March-July 212,000 Allied prisoners were taken by their armies, but the claim is, we believe, very far from justifiable, and if we put the actual losses in prisoners at about half that figure it would probably not be far out. But the thing that really matters is the manner in which prisoners are taken, and whatever the numbers we lost in this way earlier in the year we may be sure that they did not yield themselves in the same easy, happy-to-be-taken spirit that is being displayed by the Hun now. We may be wrong, but it seems to us that it is clear evidence of the beginning of " rot " in the German armies. They are convinced now that not only can they not look forward to victory but that they are bound to be beaten in the end, and are thus disposed to get out of a hopeless business at any cost. There is no longer any real hope for them ; they realise that they are dupes of a doomed system ; and that the best thing the individual can do is to get out of the war by the readiest means, which in this case is surrender. Of course, these symptoms of " rot " are only symptons so far, and the growth will have to spread a great deal farther before they can produce collapse on a wholesale scale, but they are present, and we cannot doubt that the successive blows of the Allied offensive will help along the pro- cess until at last that collapse of morale occurs which will render the final victory possible. H H "** (c) Other ranks, Royal Army Medical Corps, now employedexclusively on Royal Air Force duties at Royal Air Force stations, hospitals and convalescent homes in the UnitedKingdom will be transferred to the Royal Air Force, and the procedure giving effect to such transfer will, as far aspracticable, follow the lines laid down in Army Order 97*of 1918. Kitchener Scholarships. INCLUDED in the last Lord Kitchener NationalMemorial Fund scholarships awarded to disabled officers and men who on the outbreak of war relinquished theirstudies at universities and hospitals in order to join the forces is the following :—F. S. Coleman, late air-mech., R.A..F. Scholarship for four years at St. Bartholomew's Hospital.Charles Brownlee, late Sec. Lieut. R.A.F. Scholarship for three years at Edinburgh University. IO47
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