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Aviation History
1920
1920 - 0144.PDF
If this country is equipped with such a fleet, by means - of fostering civil aviation, she will be more effectively C" defended than in the whole of her history, and that •7 without an enormous expenditure on armaments. .-••••'"'' For she will be in possession of a weapon which in ...:-v. one night can deal a deadly stroke at the heart of any - malefactor. All this is perfectly true and is what FLIGHT has urged for years and repeatedly ever since the Armis- tice gave us leisure to regard the future. It has been adequately realised by all whose interests are in the smallest degree associated with aviation. It has been fully appreciated even in official circles, and we :; . have seen an able Under-Secretary for Air resign his office rather than be associated with a policy which is calculated to leave us entirely defenceless against attack by a Power with greater vision than our own Government seems to possess. If ever there was ' • a strong case made out for the immediate and whole- '»• hearted support of any movement we submit it has been made out for civil aviation. Yet what do we ' see ? As " Ex-Squadron Commander " tells us, even . • within the last few days there has been added to the ..-" steadily growing list of firms ceasing to manufacture aircraft the name of a company which has been • responsible for some of our best machines. The drawing office has been closed and the whole of the staff dispersed. Our aeronautical industry is fast • dying out for lack of that State aid which is bringing" our Continental neighbours to a development of air power far superior to our own, destined to prove not .;, only a means of defence but a source of revenue. •'. And while this is happening the Government, which ought long since to have declared its policy so that • we might at least know where we stand, is chaffering with the miners about the nationalisation of mines, : entailing further national liabilities of thousands of millions of pounds and watching with bated breath • the results of by-elections. Are they going to carry •_ out their expressed intention of encouraging civil aerial enterprise or are they not ? The question •*! has been put often enough, but there is still no •; answer forthcoming nor, frankly, do we believe it : will until the growing force of public opinion compels a statement. How to Let it be clear that this is no questionG j of bolstering up a dying industry by the assistance of State funds. It is nothing of the sort, because it is, commercially speaking, a matter of the most complete indifference to the firms constituting that industry, as we pointed out last week, whether they build aircraft or not. Most of FEBRUARY 5, 1920 them are fully engaged in other businesses which are keeping their works going all the hours they can work, and they are making even better dividends for their shareholders than they could hope to earn in their own proper sphere of aircraft construction. It is first and last a question of the safety of the Empire against unscrupulous attack by an enemy with the wit and vision to realise our hopeless weakness in the. face of a menace from the a_ir. This is not by any means a far-fetched statement of the position as it will be within a very few years unless there is a radical alteration in our policy. We are doing nothing, while others are rapidly building up a sound concrete scheme of commercial aviation from which will spring an overwhelming preponderance of military air power. It is all very well in the abstract for our own Government to say it intends to pursue the traditional British policy of allowing aviation to be developed by private enterprise. We have seen how badly " traditional British policy " has let us down within the scope of very recent history. We can most of us remember the time when the traditional British policy was one of " splendid isolation." The course of events showed that this policy made of the Great Britain a species of Ishmaelite trusted by none and even feared by few. It was changed for one of Continental alliances, which was sound enough if we had recognised what our obligations really meant and that there was a possibility of our alliances, or understandings, involving us in a great Continental war. We treated our obligations as we are now treating the question of air power. We failed to raise a force sufficient to ^adequately fulfil those obligations and the result was the Great War. It is a matter of practical certainty that had we possessed an army on the Continental scale Germany would never have dared to have forced the issue as she did. In other words, Germany believed we %ere too weak to take the risk of coming to the assistance of France —and we know how nearly right she was in her surmise. We know too well also what our unpre- paredness cost us in the end. Unless we are very careful, this traditional British policy, whicli is after all not immutable, as we have seen, will land us in the same mess again—and we may not have the same fortunate issue out 01 it. How is the hand of the Government to be forced ? Only, as we have said.by the evolution of a sufficiently powerful body of public opinion, which can only be created by persistent propaganda through such a League as that advocated by Mr. Holt Thomas and others. Even that will take time and we cannot say we are able to view the possibilities of the interval with anv satisfaction at all. .. -,. . Air Work on N.W. Frontier IT is reported from the N.W Frontier of India that on January 23 a force of 100 recalcitrant tribesmen, believed to .be under the leadership of a fanatical priest named Lala, was caught and bombed by our aeroplanes in Tank Zam. The Bombay-Karachi Service AFTER all it was found possible to inaugurate the Bombay- Karachi mail service on January 23. A de H. 10, with 48 lbs. of mail, left Karachi at 2 p.m. and reached Rajkot at 5 p.m. It left at 7.45 a.m. the next day, and arrived at Bombay at 11 a.m. The inward mails were taken on, and Bombay left at 8 a.m. on Jan. 25. Rajkot was reached at 11 a.m* and left at 1 p.m., while the mail arrived at Karachi at 4.30 p.m: Aeronautical Adviser to China GROUP CAPTAIN (COLONEL) F. V. HOLT, C.M.G., D.S.O., R.A.F., has been appointed Aeronautical Adviser to the Chinese Government, and is shortly leaving for China to takeup his duties. Czecho Slovakia Air Mail FROM information to hand from Prague, it appears that 19,000,000 kronen, roughly about /79,00c, have already been subscribed by British and French interests for the establish- ment of an aerial post system in Czecho Slovakia. The only other information available is that the equipment is to comprise some 150 aeroplanes. U.S. Aviators Captured and Released WHILE carrying a military message on January 28, two U.S. Army aviators—Davis and Grimes—were forced to land in Mexico about 30 miles south of Zapata. They were captured and held in custody by the Mexicans, but were eventually released and returned to American soil. 144
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