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Aviation History
1920
1920 - 0306.PDF
into die Ewigkeit. We were promised due and proper punishment of the war criminals, and this has de- generated into a sorry farce. Half a dozen other lesser matters, which were all a part of the absolute minimum to be exacted from the defeated enemy, have gone the same way as indemnities and the hanging of the Kaiser. Is it or is it not the fact that the Allied Governments are standing supinely by while Germany openly and in complete defiance of her pledged word makes ready for another war of aggression ? It is all very well to argue—as no doubt will be the answer—that Germany has been so severely beaten that she is not likely to embark on another war. We have to remember that Germany •is a desperate nation, in which the forces of reaction are likely at any moment to assert themselves. We have seen that happen within the week, though we do not know yet how much ultimate success they will achieve. There is absolutely no guarantee that, if we allow Germany to ignore her treaty obligations and build aircraft on the scale on which she apparently plans, she will not make a desperate throw and attack us from the air within the next year or two. She would have little to lose by so doing, and it needs no insistence of argument to demonstrate that she would stand to gain enormously by success. Boiled down to the bare bone, it simply means this : that failure would hardly make Germany worse off than she is now, while success would give her all or nearly all she went to war for in 1914. In these circumstances it is surely criminal not to insist upon the absolute carrying out of the terms of the Peace Treaty. Already the Allied Governments have treated Ger- many with far too much lenience and consideration. They seem to have forgotten that treaties are merely scraps of paper in the eyes of the Hun, and are tacitly allowing him to treat the war settlement, as is his wont, in the matter of solemn obligations he may find irksome or to his disadvantage. • • <•» ' - It cannot be said that the debate on : _The the Air Estimates last week added the anything new to public knowledge of Air the Government attitude towards avia- Estimates tion generally and the Air Force in particular. After Gen. Seely and Col. Burgoyne had criticised policy, Mr. Churchill replied in a speech which may, as one journal has described it, have been brilliant but was certainly very unconvinc- ing. His main effort was to justify bis own plurality of office and to endeavour to convince the House that there was never so desirable or satisfactory an arrange- ment as the one under which he administers the War Office and the Air Ministry both. It seems to be more clear every day that what Mr. Churchill is play- ing for is a Ministry of Defence, with himself as the Minister. Properly constituted and organised, we are not inclined to say that this would be a bad thing, but the present position, pace the Aerowar Minister, is not good arid has not been beneficial to the cause of aviation, civil or military. The most serious part of his speech on the Esti- mates was that in which he refused to spend money for the fostering of civil aviation. The refusal was well wrapped up in words, but it was a refusal just the same. What Mr. Churchill said was that civil aviation must fly by itself. The Government could not possibly hold it up in the air. The best the Government could do—the first thing they had got to do—was to get out of the way, and the next thing MARCH 18, 1920 was to smooth the way. Both these steps had been taken; and he would take occasion to lay before the House very shortly a paper by the Controller-General of Civil Aviation which would show in detail the very numerous steps which were being taken to smooth the path of civil aviation. When those steps had been taken it must fly by its own power. Any attempt to support it artificially by floods of State money would not even produce a really sound commercial aviation service which the public would use, and would impose a' burden of an almost indefinite amount on the Chancellor of the Exchequer. We cannot pretend to be satisfied with these pronouncements, but at least they have the merit of < informing us where civil aviation stands. There is to be no money for the " encouragement " which we were assured was to be forthcoming, and it is to be left to the industry to find out of its own resources, the great reserve of machines, pilots and mechanics which will be necessary to expand the Air Force to a war footing in case of emergency. It is true that this is the most obvious result of the policy outlined, but we have taken it as being the most serious from the point of view of the nation and the Empire. There are other aspects almost equally important, but they are not perhaps so apparent to the man in the street whose opinion must be educated and guided along the lines of greatest appeal. Gen. Seely put his finger on the weakest spot of the whole programme when he pointed out that nothing was allowed for expansion. We would put the matter in a stronger way, and say that expansion is being deliberately discouraged. If there is to be no support for civil aviation—and support does not necessarily mean grants in aid— there is not only going to be no expansion or possi- bility of expansion, but there will certainly be a withering away of the tree. In Germany, France, Italy and America plans have been made to secure expansion, with the result that in each of these countries they have a large number of firms with big designing staffs. What, however, is the position here ? How many firms are there in the British industry who have been able to keep their staffs together ? Some held on, hoping against hope that the Government might evolve a real policy, but in the end they have had to give up the struggle and distribute their staffs to the four winds. The conse- quence has been that all the brains and energy which were devoted to improving design and performance during the war are lost to the industry, or will be before very long. The outlook is certainly not of the best. We can only hope that the promised paper by the Controller-General of Civil Aviation will contain 'something of more promise than seems warranted by the declarations of the Aerowar Minister. •»<»*• Addressing the Nottingham Society of General Engineers the other day, Gen. Brancker ^ITthe61" had a sreai deal t0 sayon the subiect Situation °f State aid to civil aviation, and it is rather a pity that the Aerowar Minister was not in possession of the address before he made his statement on the Estimates. Gen. Brancker said very truly that owing to the special conditions which prevail at the moment aerial transport cannot pay its way, even if it is assumed that the aerial routes are created and maintained by the Govern- ment. The Air Estimates indicate that money is to be spent on " land and buildings," presumably for the creation of air routes, but these routes will be 306
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