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Aviation History
1943
1943 - 0580.PDF
234 FLIGHT MARCH 4TH, 1943 Topics of the Day There is Still the Future To-morrow Must Not he Just Another Day: The Need for Immediate Airline Organisation After the War : Flying People and the "New World" MAYBE there is nothing new under the sun. 1 haveno doubt at all that the troops of Darius, fivehundred years before the present date-line, pushed on thinking, if they thought at all, of the new world they would like to make. Seven hundred thousand of them, if 1 remember rightly, crossed the Bosphorus by a bridge of boats to subdue Thrace and Macedonia (invaders and pro- spective invaders please note that seven hundred thousand and that bridge of boats), only to be led on by the retreat- ing Scythians (Germans please note) as far as the Volga and losing eighty thousand men then and in the retreat back to the Danube. People have always, especially at times like these, been making new worlds in their minds, but by the time they have finished a war they are usually so tired, and often so full of hate and all uncharitableness, that they are incapable of putting their ideas into effect. Furthermore, and not unnaturally, they are rather busy making a living for themselves—a job that is particularly difficult after a war, during which all the best jobs and all the good things have SQ often been taken by people who were much too sensible to go and die on a held of battle. ' . We are very proud of the twentieth century and its accomplishments. Rightly so. We've made it possible for the people of the world to live in comfort and security for the rest of their days by reason of the mechanical devices we have perfected. All that is needed is a little organisa- tion, so that the fruits ot this mechanical civilisation shall not escape us. And if evei we feel too proud we have only to think of our mistakes, of the good ideas people had thousands of years ago, and, for instance, of the fact that Mozart did his best work in 1791—betore Watt had invented the steam engine, before Marconi had made wireless tele- graphy possible, and before the Wright brothers had flown with a heavier-th'an-air machine. I'm inclined to think that Mozart was more important than any one of them, but that is by the way, and in all probability Mr. Payne or someone has considerably improved on his orchestra- tion There's so much noise nowadays that I doiibt if any incipient Mozart would manage to produce anything worthwhile. War Energy for Peace 'When I think of all the selfless energy, courage and cleverness that have gone into the prosecution of this war, ] wonder, with thousands of others, whether there is any reason at all why this same selfless effort can't be applied to the work of rebuilding and reorganising. It can, of course, provided there is the necessary incentive and finan- cial support. And the people who are temperamentally suited to the job of seeing that the effort is properly applied are, I'm quite sure, the world's flying people. Not necessarily those who actually fly, but those' who are in any way connected with the business, i don't think 1 am deceiving myself when I say that pilots are less able to suffer fools gladly than any other race of men and women ; their very job makes them see things far more clearly, relieved of all the tedious shibboleths which suiround them. The entire vocabulary of the flying man is steeped in the great and necessary work of de-bunking. At the moment there is a strong taint of cynicism in it all—but who wouldn't be cynical when surrounded by so much fantastic rubbish, dogma, and false thinking as there is in the world? Just look at the number of variations, invented for the most part by the pilots themselves, of that bit about the few who saved the many. It was a magnificent and quite true piece of oratory when the words were originally spoken, but the sentiment has been hopelessly overdone, and the R.A.F. laughs at it nowadays with that peculiar mixture of pride, cynicism and common sense which per- vades the youngest Service. Perhaps because they are engaged in the most modern of all industries and because, in order to get on with the war, they have so often to override the " Powers that Be," those engaged in any part of the aircraft industry are infected with the same excellent virus. Heaven knows there' are lots of people in the business solely and simply for the pjurpose of making quick money—or as much as they can wangle past the eyes of the Commissioners of Inland Revenue—and there are lots of people who are knowingly failing to put in their very best, but the general rule seems to apply. Lufthansa Bombers Even before the war it was very noticeable that the people in the flying world came.nearer to running on their own a little international federation than anybody else. 1 often wonder what our old friends in D.L.H. really thought when they were given the job of dropping bombs on the Warsaw, or the Rotterdam, or the London where they had spent so many happy times and met so very many pleasant people. Luckily, perhaps, not many of the German airline pilots and personnel were on the job—it was safer to send enthusiastic young men who had never been outside their own country and had been taught through years to believe that all other nations were unimportant and of baser metal. We shall never know. Most of the old gang are dead, and those who still survive will have been inculcated with the Nazi ideology. Even so, they and their younger compatriots are pro- bably nearer to seeing the light—or what the British and Allied people have for hundreds of years considered to by the light—than any others. The appearance of a certain measure of sportsmanship from time to time over such matters as rescue buoys and boats proves that the flying people, even of our hated enemy, are not beyond redemp- tion . As I've remarked before on this page, it will be a tragedy for us and for the world in general if the flying people are reduced to selling vacuum cleaners after the war. If they are, I shall be inclined to think that it is a deliberate policy amongst those who are afraid of the faint glimmer of real light which can be seen in the eyes of those who fly and those who make aircraft. Just as it seems now to have so nearly destroyed it, air- craft can still save the world. Instead of sitting at home reading and writing faintly superior or actively rude diplo- matic notes to one another, the rulers of the nations ^yill have a chance of getting about quickly, and of seeing and talking to each other before any crossness or feeling of unfairness has set in for good. I've always been firmly of the opinion that if our old friends Adolf and Benito had been anything but the. most essentially ignorant and parochially-minded humbugs, there would n'ever have been a war. Adolf was airaid to go abroad in case his thin veneer of magnificence and intelligence should be cracked ; Benito travelled within the Axis and strutted about <n North Africa ; maybe he was afraid that anywhere else his small stature and fantastic uniforms would not create quite the impression he wished Admittedly, master Ribbentrop provides an exception to such a suggestion. But he never had a very happy time, and put up so many arch-blacks in England that he must
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