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Aviation History
1942
1942 - 0130.PDF
• My d FLIGHT JANUARY 15TH, 1942 Topics of the Day ESCAPOLOCY "Indicator" Goes All Psycho-analytical : What Shall We Do with the Odd Ones? A S one who is repeatedly doing battle with the wartime- slavestate exponents—in other words, those who w demand the complete subjection of everyone and everything to the needs of the State, at a time when we axe actually fighting for the right of the individual to do and say what he pleases—I find it difficult to know what to do with those people who are actually doing themselves a little too proudly in this war. I don't mean so much those who are making big profits—to a very large extent the income-tax people are*4eeing (or will see) to them—bur"" those who are super-escapists and who have, without a twinge of conscience, wangled themselves soft jobs in places of complete safety, and those who are doing absolutely nothing whatever. Because the percentage is small I don't much mind what is done, but I think it would be a terrible mistake if, as a nation, we got into the habit of forcibly regimenting everyone and leaving no freedom of thought or deed ; such an attitude would probably persist far into the future peace. Of course, we are at war and we are fighting com pletely ruthless and single-minded opponents; there is^ every real excuse for ruthlessness among ourselves. Ruth- lessness can .produce immediate results. When the Germans require a series of aerodromes they conscript everyone in the district and force them, at the .point of the bayonet, to get on with the laying-out of runways. The job is completed in a comparatively short tiqie. Over here you can watch a lot of highly paid statuesAt " work " on ( any aerodrome project—these statues being led by a lot > of slow-moving civil servants who are often far Bpore bound by little bits of red tape than the people who aie actually in uniform. Works and Bricks have had to put up with a lot of criticism and are the butts of innumerable jokes, some of them unkind and unfair. But on the whole they have asked for everything they have got; no reputation of that kind is entirely unmerited. Service Escapists Among the super-escapists I include those who are con tinuing with their job in,a peacetime way ; those who make no attempt to gear up their work to the new, fierce con ditions. There are probably more of them in the Services than out of them, for the average civilian is far more con—- scious of the fact that there is a war on, than are those to whom war is merely a natural outcome of their normal career. A few di these stolid people continue in the same old way, demanding the completion of the same amount of paper work, and making little or no attempt to speed up the work. To-morrow will always do, and the "sys tem '' cannot be altered! To the annoyance of the genuine residents who have faced all the blitzes and are now enjoying a respite, and to the chagrin of Service people on leave, London has recently been very full of all kinds of persons of this kindr" I don't know who they are ; probably a great many of them are ex-residents who have not thought it worth while to reopen their houses or flats and are now living in hotels. At any rate, the hotels have been full and it has often been impossible to obtain a table in a restaurant. Not unnatur ally, the apparent wealth of these people has tended to annoy Service visitors who have arrived for a few days with their wives to spend their short leaves and small sums of money before returning to their various jobs. The same Service visitors would probably appear whether air raids- were in progress or not, and many of them, knowing that the mass of '' others'' would beat it like rats from a sink ing ship after the first air-raid alarm, have gone back to work with some wrong ideas. I am not, personally, the least bit concerned about Mr. X. or Miss Y. and what they do with themselves during a war. If they can face the fact that they are doing nothing very much, while other people are 'risking their lives, then good luck to them. And there will always be the people who make big money out of a war—they are™ no happier, and that is all that counts. But I am concerned about the effect these people have on the various Services— and, in particular, on the minds of the privates and A/C.2S and ratings who are doing a whale of a good job for .some quite ridiculous payment. Some of them are doing it because they have to, and some because they prefer to— but the effect on them is the same. Samuel Butler's Idea Then there are the people who " can't face it." Of course they can ; the majority of them haven't even tried. There is a tendency nowadays to think in Erewhon manner about—" nervofis systems and things like that. You remember Samuiel Butler's little country where people were put in prisoi for being ill, and nursed back to mental health after committing a crime? The idea, in moderation, is right enough. There is a hospital "area" in the south of Engmnd where all the flying nerve-cases are sent, and - * whet a bunch of skilled psychiatrists, or whatever you call then!, are having a simply tremendous time experimenting on f lot of strange and difficult young men. Some of them —infract, the majority—are genuine, and have either beea"" thrcfugh it, or have had a very good try, but the reputa- tioM of the place has tended to be ruined by a minority of patients who have not even given themselves a chance. I L kn»w, incidentally, a young woman who is afraid even to >gj/ out and certainly afraid to meet anyone ; she has simply let herself get into that state. Everyone passes a sort of dividing line in the early part of their lives. Before reach ing it they tend to run away from unpleasant things, and after passing it they face these things and find that they are not so very bad after all. Some people never pass the- line ; they never even try. Of course, all this attention to nerve cases is a tremendous improvement on the bad old system of forcing them into such a horrid situation that they either run away and are shot for their pains, or just commit suicide. And it is obviously useless to have even one desperately and uncontrollably frightened person in a squadron. But the fact that there are such uncontrollably frightened persons about is the direct result of a ridiculous convention which ought, long ago, to have been broken down—the converf- tion, bred very largely by novels, that real men or women are not afraid. Of course they are—desperately. Warped Thinking Most of our thinking is warped by such conventions. Fear, in the Victorian days, joined sex and sewage systems among the things which were never mentioned and there fore didn't exist. It will be at least another generation before people learn to take such things, accept them, and forget about them ; then we can start to live properly. Re pressions will join storks and gooseberry bushes, and the psycho-analyst will be out of a job. There will no longer be any need for people to be hugely rude because they're shy, or to shoot the most enormous lines because they are suffering from an inferiority complex. We shall become normal—perhaps. " INDICATOR." '"Twelfth Night" Salvage '"THERE is an old English custom that Christmas decora- *- tions and Christmas cards should be left to adorn the house until the "Twelfth Night." Some people, however, remove them sooner than this. But everybody will have finished with them by now, so they can be put to even better use by being added to household collections of paper salvage as a New Year's gift to the country. I
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