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Aviation History
1919
1919 - 1638.PDF
DECEMBER 25, 1919 more or less regularly. Airship services are carried out on alternate days between Berlin and Friedrich- shafen, and it is intended to open shortly similar services between Berlin and Copenhagen and between Berlin and Stockholm. According to the Memo randum, the civil aviation policv is expected to be:— 1. That at first Government assistance in the shape of subsidies will be necessary. 2. That existing aerodromes and material will be retained, and privately-owned aerodromes acquired by the State, thus forming a strong nucleus for civil aviation under Government support and control. 3. That a combine will be formed of all firms for working purposes, each firm to standardise a type, and all types to be approved by the Government. 4. That there will be co-operation between military and civil services. 5. That propaganda will be employed especially in the State schools. M There is an aerial police in being and regular patrols are carried out. In order to keep touch with ex-Service flying men, an airmen's union has been •established with branches at Baden, Mannheim, Karlsruhe, Frankfort and other centres, and a German Air Fleet Union, similar in constitution to the German Navy League, has been formed to foster the national interest in aviation. While all this is taking place abroad, What what are we doing to foster the develop- We Doing ? ment °f civil aviation ? The Air Minis try seems to have its hands tied, and while there exists a Department of Civil Aviation— the first to be created—that Department appears to be powerless to formulate a policy. How far the fault lies with the Government themselves and with the Secretary of State, and how much is to be laid to the weakness of the Department, we have no means of knowing. But it is certainly a most deplor able position in which civil aviation stands, nearly fourteen months after the Armistice. Talk of en couragement there has been in plenty, but there has been nothing done by the Government to give the slightest encouragement to private enterprise. The Post Office, which might have been expected to show some imagination and insight, hangs fire in the matter of mail contracts. The one or two tentative contracts for mails which have been placed are so small and so ill-conceived that they amount to nothing. Nor is the attitude of the postal autho rities even sympathetic to the idea of the carriage of mails by air. In effect, the reply of this Depart ment to those who propose the inauguration of aerial services is : " Start your service and we will give ' sympathetic consideration ' to any proposals you may have to make." In a word, the whole attitude is one of non possumus. We almost begin to despair •of ever getting things going if we are to wait for Government encouragement. As a matter of fact, we think that private enterprise will do well to proceed along its own lines and cut out all idea of the promised encouragement. If the latter should, after all, materialise, it will be so much to the good. If it does not, the-industry will not be disappointed, having made up its mind that the attitude of the Government is " Nothing Doing ! " In the House of Lords last week Lord Aviation Montagu of Beaulieu raised the question House^f °* t^ie resignati°n OI General Seely Lords and asked for a statement of the policy of the Government regarding aviation in general and the R.A.F. in particular. He depre cated placing a single Minister at the head of two Departments of State, and pointed out that in France and Germany, where a great deal of attention was being paid to the subject of aviation, separate Depart ments had been formed ; in Italy the intention, so far, was to have a separate Ministry ; while in the United States a very able Commission had also reported in favour of a separate department of aviation. The Lord Chancellor replied on behalf of the Government, but it cannot be said that he shed any fresh light on the immediate intentions of the Govern ment. He simply repeated that the reasons for General Seely's resignation were stated at length by the ex-Under-Secretary himself and that there was nothing, therefore, to be added. He explained at some length the reasons which led to the appointment of Mr. Churchill to the dual offices he now holds, but told the House nothing that was not already known. He reiterated that there was no intention of going back to the state of things existing before the R.A.F. became a separate service and with that assurance the House had to rest content. One thing, however, Lord Birkenhead said which had a disquieting tone. The day might come, he said, when the Board of Trade would assume control of, and responsibility for, civil aviation in the same way that it had assumed control over the mercantile marine. Anything worse than such a prospect is scarcely to be imagined. When it is properly realised what a blighting effect is exercised by the Board of Trade over the mercantile marine ; how its regulations harass and hamper development and place the British shipowner at a disadvantage with his competitors, all who view the future of aviation with goodwill must pray that no such undeserved fate may overtake it. We do not want to see the interests of aviation in the hands of a Board of Trade, of which the Speaker of the Irish House of Commons and the Archbishop of Canterbury are ex-officio members ! As we have indicated, the Lord Chan cellor's reference to Board of Trade control of the mercantile marine was singularly unfortunate. We believe it is the case that not a single British ship owner or ship-master but would vote for the removal of the incubus of its control and the institution of a properly equipped Ministry of Shipping if it were put to him. It is in spite of Board of Trade control and not because of it that the British mercantile marine holds the proud position it does. Yet it is to this Department that the Government apparently visualises giving the control of aviation. Why, when we have an Air Ministry with its own Department of Civil Aviation ? We do not know—nor do we under stand the position at all. In one breath the country is assured that it is not the intention to make any change from the present manner of administration. In the next a complete change of policy is fore shadowed, and we really forget where we were yesterday. We are more than ever convinced-that so far as concerns the aviation policy of the present Government it may be described as a paradox—it hasn't any. 1640
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