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Aviation History
1934
1934 - 0236.PDF
FLIGHT, MARCH 15, 1931 it could afford to indulge in brutality, and (2) if a nation were so desperate that it had lost all sense." Mr. Churchill said on Thursday last: " If one side had an all-powerful air force and the other only a very weak defence, the temptation to use the weapons of terror upon the civil population, might well far outweigh any detrimental effects on neutral opinion. If, however, the two sides were in an equality and in the same position to do equal and simultaneous harm to each other, then the useless- ness of the crime would reinforce its guilt and horror and the evil effects upon the action of neutrals." Mr. Baldwin, later in the same debate, said: " The real danger to peace is a very strong air Power on the one hand, and a defenceless city on the other hand." There seems a very substantial agreement between those three statements. It is the same with the question of Air Defence. We have frequently urged that, while no immunity from bombing can be guaranteed to London or any other city, still a strong, well-organised defence could take such toll of the raiders that they would probably soon decide that the game was not worth the candle. In particular we attacked Mr. Baldwin's recent statement that " The bomber will always get through." In Thursday's debate Mr. Baldwin asserted that he stuck to his previous statement, but then proceeded to tone it down. He said: "It is quite true that the bomber will always get through any defence you can visualise to-day, but it is equally true that the greater the force there is to oppose it the greater the chance of casualties among the bombers, and therefore the more thought before invasion takes place." Mr. Churchill likewise spoke of " the effec- tive punishment and destruction by an active and efficient home defence of any invaders who may come to our shores . . . We should be able by those means to impose deterrents upon an invader, impose deterrents upon a potential declaration of war, and gradually to bring attacks upon us, by attrition, to smaller dimensions and finally to an end altogether." That is what General Ashmore did in 1918, and what we believe will happen again if our land is ever subjected to air attacks by an enemy. When Mr. Churchill, Mr. Baldwin, and FLIGHT are agreed upon so many vital points of Air Defence, there is small probability that their views are egregiously wrong. The most important practical point about the debate, however, was the assurance given by Mr. Baldwin, as a responsible member of the Cabinet, that if all our efforts at disarmament fail (he would not agree with Mr. Churchill that they have yet failed, but the Lord President of the Council must be loyal to the Foreign Secretary), " then any Gov- ernment of this country—a National Government more than any, and this Government—will see to it that in air strength and air power this country shall no longer be in a position inferior to any country within striking distance of our shores." No pronouncement could be more weighty than that, and it very nearly satisfied those members who had expressed most alarm about our present weakness in the air. They were inclined to ask for a time limit to the attempts to secure an international agreement on disarmament, and their request seems not unreasonable. It really looks as if Sir John Simon and Mr. Eden are prepared to go on talking and negotiating ad infinitum, and while they talk, foreign Powers are increasing their air fleets. Though we are adding four-minus-one squadrons to our strength in the British Isles, we are not catching up the growth of foreign air services. On the contrary, the difference between their strength and ours is growing greater. Mrs. Tate was very sound when she asked that, if there should seem no likelihood of the success of the Air Convention within a short period of time, the Government should bring for- ward supplementary Air Estimates, and should not wait until next March before the matter was again considered in the House. She shrewdly pointed out that we may be faced suddenly with an enormous expense to achieve parity, and asked if it would not have been more economical to have spent a larger sum each year rather than to let ourselves fall so far behind. Capt. Balfour was also wise in asking that we should plan ahead, for at present we had not barrack accommodation for more than three extra squadrons. From the Air Estimates we turn in conclusion to the Naval Estimates. The First Lord, Sir Bolton Eyres-Monsell, said that the Fleet depended more and more upon its naval Air Arm. " We regard it " he said, " as the spearhead of the Fleet, and are prouder of our naval Air Arm than of any arm of our Service." There is no " anti-air " sentiment in the present First Lord, and he is himself a former naval officer. That all lends greater weight to his very reasonable plea that controversy on the respec- tive merits of the Navy and the Air Force was wholly mischievous, and must do great harm, not only to the two Services but to the country. FLIGHT is quite with the First Lord in holding that the two Services are complementary and both are necessary to the country. As a result of these two debates, we feel that the prospects of air development for the defence of the country and Empire are brighter than they seemed a short while ago. • •:• •:« * Imperial Airways are to be congratulated on the decision to speed up their scheduled services to Cape- town and Singapore. No one has ever criticised Imperial Airways for the comfort which they pro- vide for their passengers (and comfort Faster js of great importance on very long Empire Air • °N <- ,i • <v i , iServices journeys), or tor their efforts to make themselves self-supporting against the time when subsidies must come to an end. The only strong criticism ever levelled against the company has been on the ground of speed. By the present schedule their machines leave Croydon for Singapore on a Saturday and arrive on the Tuesday week— after 9£ days' travel. Next month, though the start remains on a Saturday, Singapore will be reached on the Sunday week—after 8 days of travel. The journey to Capetown will take 9 days instead of 10. These accelerations take place after leaving Brindisi. the Mediterranean being crossed in one day instead of two. When the agreement with Italy comes into force, which will make Marseilles instead of Brindisi the port of departure on the Mediterranean, a new schedule will have to be worked out. Presumably, there will not yet be night flying across the Conti- nent, so that the new arrangements will not be all pure gain. Next month it will be possible to reach India (Karachi) in 5£ days and Calcutta in 6. That is a great advantage. We hope this is but a foretaste of further accelerations in the near future. 236
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