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Aviation History
1934
1934 - 0372.PDF
FLIGHT, APRIL 19, 1934 This is the last issue of FLIGHT which will appear from the old address of 36, Great Queen Street, Lon- don, W.C.2. Our next issue will be edited at new and modern offices at Dorset House, Stamford Street, S.E.I. FLIGHT will then have crossed the river—not the Jordan- but the Thames. All Londoners will admit that if one seeks inspiration, journalistic or other- wise, by gazing at the great river of London, the view from the Surrey bank is more inspiring than that from, say, the old Air Ministry quarters in the now defunct Hotel Cecil. An illustration on another page will assure our readers that the staff of the paper will be housed in a building equipped with all modern appliances which make for good and efficient work. If we have given satisfaction in the homely building which we are now vacating, we hope to be still more worthy of our readers' support when our work is done in more spacious and under more modern conditions. We hope that bur friends will soon learn their way to our new abode and will come to visit us as freely and as frequently in the future as they have done in the past. Was it, we wonder, thoughts of a small force of Metropolitan Police gently dispersing a huge crowd of Communists in Hyde Park, which inspired Lord Trenchard to say, when opening the Town Head- COUNTING <luarters °f ^e County of Middlesex HEADS Squadron the other day, that he had never been a great advocate of counting heads, and that a really efficient squadron could go through a large amount of indifferent material (if not too greatly outnumbered) as a knife goes through butter? Certainly, during the war, Lord Trenchard contrived to make the Royal Air Force the greatest, as well as the best, air weapon in the world. Then he had no hesitation in inviting the help of Providence by amassing the proverbial big battalions. Doubt- less, at the present time, too, we should all sleep a bit more easily in our beds if the squadrons of Air Defence of Great Britain were multiplied a few times. Lord Trenchard, we take it, was preaching the superiority of quality to quantity, and, in rather guarded words, was doing something to allay the scare from which some people have recently suffered over the supposed defencelessness of London against air attack. To give such crumbs of comfort is good' work, for scares seldom do much good, though they may sometimes egg an apathetic Government into taking a salutary interest in the defences of the country. The older heads among us recall that Lord Rosebery's Government fell on a " cordite vote," and that the pre-war Liberal Government had to give way before a popular cr ' of " We want eight (new battleships) and we won't wait "—a cry which prob- ably had a good deal to do with saving the country in 1914. The present National Government is not, we think, apathetic. It is anxious to do everything which can be done to diminish the chances of a European war, and everyone is agreed that such an object is most worthy. The theory that the best way to reduce the danger is to achieve some measure of disarma- ment is not, in our opinion, sound. Mr. Baldwin himself has said that disarmament by itself will no»t prevent war. The only way to prevent it is to remove causes of quarrel. Mr. Baldwin has also given a solemn assurance that if all attempts at disarmament fail, then the Government will see to it that Great Britain is not left defenceless. A certain increase in the number of our Home Defence squad- rons has been undertaken this year, and we under- stand that the moving of No. 100 (Bomber) Squadron to Singapore is officially regarded as only a tempo- rary detachment of the squadron. We can hardly believe that any air unit which gets to Singapore will be speedily released to return to this country, and once the transference of that squadron is made permanent it will be necessary to raise another to take its place as a Home Defence squadron. That being so, this year's increase amounts to four effec- tive squadrons, and this perhaps is a reasonable increase in the circumstances. We must build up gradually, and not in one hectic burst. We have not got the aerodromes or the barracks to accom- modate at once all the squadrons which we must ultimately maintain. Lord Trenchard also said that he firmly believed that the British Air Force (in which he obviously included the Auxiliary Air Force) was and would remain second to none in efficiency, skill, and—what he believed to be one of the greatest British charac- teristics—thoroughness. No one has greater experi- ence than Lord Trenchard, and no one is in a better position to judge of such matters. His words carry great weight. Thoroughness is most certainly a characteristic of all British flying, and the craving for thoroughness was carried to such a pitch in civil flying that an outcry was raised against the restric- tions of the civil side of the Air Ministry. The simile, too, of the knife cutting through butter, was very striking. Evidently Lord Trenchard be- lieves that a small British Air Force would be a match for many times its own numbers of foreign opponents. We believe that it would be so in one short campaign, but it would surely be dangerous for us to push this argument too far. Everyone is now thinking of the Germans and the Russians as the two possible menaces to the peace of Europe. The Russians have not yet acquired a reputation "for thoroughness, but the Germans are a very thorough people. The latter do not at the moment possess an Air Force, but everyone believes that they will soon raise one. If we were ever opposed to them again—as we certainly hope that we never shall be it would be rash to regard them as. mere butter. However good our Air Force may be, we must not be content to have quality alone. Quantity is also necessary, and a steady progressive increase in numbers is what we hope to see take place in the next few years. IMPORTANT NOTICE TO OUR READERS From to-morrow, Friday, April 20th, the address of the Editorial, Advertising and Publishing Offices of FLIGHT will be: Dorset House, Stamford Street, London, S.E.I. Telephone : HOP 3333 (50 lines). 372
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