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Aviation History
1934
1934 - 0118.PDF
, .FEBRUARY 8, 1934 Gas Convention at the Hague. Instances of " sen- sible " agreements which have been respected could be multiplied, while actual breaches of the accepted rules of war were not common in the last great struggle. Above all, as regards the arguments in this book, neither side used gas bombs or made any other deliberate attack on the civil populations of enemy cities. Like other advocates of a bad cause, General Groves is very illogical in pressing the claims of frightfulness and baby-killing. On page 172 he argues that the quickest means to achieve a decisive end in war is to attack the people. " Nor can it be maintained that this course is other than the best strategy and that certain to be adopted." Eight pages later he writes " no responsible air authority advocates direct air action against a civil popula- tion." It is a little hard to reconcile those two statements. To proceed, it is always the other villain who will adopt " the best strategy " and make a beginning of the murderous business. Then the virtuous We will be forced to retaliate. Well, of course we shall. That needs no labouring. But with the knowledge that retaliation will promptly follow the crime, who will be anxious to make a beginning? If a German order to obliterate London meant the certain obliteration Berlin next night, would any Chancellor be iron enough to give the initial order? We can conceive only two possible cases of such an outrage." (1) if a nation were so confident of its own strength that it could afford to indulge in brutality, and (2) if a nation were so desperate that it had lost all sense. General Groves admits in one place that a country's best defence against such air attack would be the enemy's fear of reprisals, but then he seems to forget that point. " A war may be won in forty- eight hours and the losses of the winning side may actually be nil! " Perhaps, if the other side had no power of striking back, but between Powers equally strong in the air the two slaughters would cancel each other without profit to either side. Again, we ask, who would wish to begin it? General Groves several times quotes the statement of Marshal Foch that air attack " may impress public opinion to the point of disarming the Government and thus become decisive." He had evidently not heard of Foch's conversation with General Seely (now Lord Motti- stone), which the latter recently quoted. The gist of it was as follows: General Seely remarked, " Marshal, your flying corps could destroy London in a night," to which Foch replied " Yes, but yours could do the same to Paris next night, and so neither will happen." Though this advocacy of unrestricted massacre takes up a great part of this book, it does not seem to be the real text. There is certainly a demand that our Air Force must be strengthened, and there we are quite at one with General Groves. The main object for writing the book seems to us to be indigna- tion that our Air Force was reduced in 1919, and an outcry against the " military mind " which the author regards as responsible for the reduction. It was apparently the military mind (chiefly embodied in Lord Trenchard) which failed to see that all future wars would be wars of areas, i.e., of gassing civilians, and therefore consented to the reduction of the Air Force in 1919. A great deal of space is occupied with examples of the futility of the military mind in the great wax, and with much of it no one who fought as an infantry subaltern in 1915 will be inclined to disagree. Still, infantry subalterns may be mistaken. Chiefly the workings of Lord Trenchard's military mind when commanding the R.F.C. and the Independent Air Force are attacked. The charge is made that at periods during the war, though we were superior in numbers of fighters and in performance of machines, yet our air losses were heavier than those of the Germans. The charge is novel, and it is interesting. It deserves further examination. 1'hen the American General Patrick's book is quoted for the statement that Lord Trenchard admittedly fought against the idea of the Indepen- dent Air Force, but that it was forced upon him. It is also alleged that he did not use that force entirely for its proper purpose of destroying arsenals. For the moment baby-killing fades out of the picture. What seems to be the kernel of the book is a paragraph on page 169: "It was because of this egregious mistake (i.e., the attitude of the military mind towards the 'war of areas ' theory), paralleled only by the failure during the war to grasp the possibilities of the strategic air offensive, that our post-war air policy envisaged national defence by a small but highly efficient force of fighters. And it was to that that Britain's air power was sacrificed in 1919." Of course the villain who sacrificed it was Lord Trenchard. A Marshal of the Royal Air Force who is not em- ployed on air duties is presumably at liberty to defend himself, and Lord Trenchard is quite capable of doing so, if he thinks it worth while. But in common fairness we must protest that in 1919 our air power, together with many other desirable things, was sacrificed to the supreme necessity of saving money. The Foreign Office said that there would be no other war for at least 10 years, and they were right. Britain, bled almost white, could afford no luxuries in defence Services when there was no call to use them. Drastic reductions were inevitable until our finances had somewhat recovered. There have been other reasons since as well as economy, namely, the desire to set a good example and also to placate American sentiment. The Chief of the Air Staff and a succession of Air Ministers were bound by these reasons. Now at last the time has come to build up again. General Groves' book will add somewhat to the demand for an increase in our Air Force, but it is a pity that a good cause should be helped by a book written in such a strain of bitter animosity. . • • • * In a recent article in The Times Major Woods Humphery has explained that there is no technical objection to Imperial Airways running separate mail services in fast mailplanes, but that the division of .. passenger and mail services would, inir . al his opinion, add to the cost of each and ervices so ma^e ^le company more dependent than it has been on Government subsidy. So far as fast mail services are concerned, we think that this position ought to be faced. Speedy car- riage of mails is an advantage from which the whole community would benefit, and so special provision by the whole community would be justified, whether through the channel of the Post Office or otherwise. With regard to the passenger services we must hope that Major Woods Humphery is unduly pessimistic. The traffic is growing, and travellers appreciate the comfort provided by Imperial Airways. 118
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