Arms Cut
The official explanations of the exact effect of the cuts and postponements in the arms production progrdmme which Mr. Churchill announced last week cannot explain the cuts away altogether. The point at which we are to be sufficiently armed to feel secure and to meet our existing commitments has now been postponed to a distant date. In fact the levelling of production to an annual rate of £600 million a year tends to remove altogether the original assumption that the effort of rearmament would reach its peak at a fixed date, after which there might be some relaxation. Frequent changes-of degree in the programmes have combined to produce something like a change in kind. The reduction in the number of aircraft to be produced, and in particular the cuts in the programme for the Canberra light bomber, might even mean a move towards the hitherto unpopular American conception of a European defence system in which the United States provides the air cover for a European army. It is to be hoped that this idea will be ruled out again at the meeting of the Atlantic Council on Monday. From the point of . view of the British aircraft industry the picture is not, of course, entirely dark. Orders for military aircraft for foreign Govern- ments together with the bouyant demand for civil types seem to be sufficient to maintain potential capacity for an emergency. But industrial potential and security are not the same thing.
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