GREAT BRITAIN AND THE AIR L ORD LONDONDERRY believes the Government's
new air programme will avert a race in armaments. Lord Cecil and other of the Government's critics believe the inevitable effect of the programme will be to promote such a race. What precisely, let us remind ourselves, is the programme ? At the present moment we have an Air Force strength of 840 machines. At the end of the War it was numerically the strongest in the world. Today France, with 1,650 machines, the United States, Italy and Russia are all superior. The Government, as interpreted by Mr. Baldwin in the House of Commons and Lord Londonderry in the House of Lords, intends, if the general situation remains substantially what it is, to bring the Air Force strength to some 1,800 (which will leave it in the fifth place still, but with most of the leeway made up) over a period of four to five years. The cost, for new machines, new pilots, new ground-staff and new aerodromes, will be in the region of £20,000,000, or an average of about a penny on the income-tax in each of the next four years. And obviously increased charges for maintenance will drive the Air Estimates from 1938 onwards up to new levels. Of the 41 new squadrons 33 are destined for home defence and the remaining 8 for service abroad. The whole programme, unlike the pre- war German Navy Law, is fluid. According to Mr. Baldwin " we reserve the right to modify or adjust the programme in the light of new factors that may arise." According to Lord Londonderry the Government will continue to watch closely the international situation and the further progress of disarmament, and in the light of that " we can accelerate our programme or we can cut it down, as circumstances demand."
Whatever may be said in criticism of the Government's decision the case against it has been put altogether too high. Every sane man will deplore the necessity, if necessity there be, for any increase in armaments any- where. But to characterize the Government's action as aggressive is either grossly foolish or grossly unjust, and to suggest that it means a new armaments race is to leap to conclusions which no legitimate premises warrant. What country will be disposed to build more aeroplanes because we have framed a contingent programme for reducing our conspicuous inferiority to other Great Powers ? Certainly not the United States, which can be in no kind of way affected. Certainly not Russia, whose plans are governed by quite other considerations. Hardly Japan, which has little reason to care whether we are strengthening our home defences seven thousand- miles away or not. Certainly not France, which is delighted to see us, as a guarantor of Locarno, equipping ourselves to discharge our liabilities under that treaty more effectively in case of need. Certainly not Italy,, which never measures herself in rivalry against Great Britain. As for Germany, if she claims the right to develop her own air force, she will find the warrant for it not in our conditional increase to 1,300 machines, but in France's actual possession of 1,650. Regrettable as the new policy is, the new-armaments-race argument has no leg to stand on.
There are better grounds for challenging the Govern- ment's decision than that. There is the criticism, voiced by Lord Reading in the House of Lords on Monday, that a peculiarly unfortunate moment—with the Disarmament Conference still in being, and new hopes aroused by M. Barthou's conversations in London last month—has been chosen for announcing a sub- stantial increase in armaments, and the much broader contention that since (as the present air manoeuvres rather look like demonstrating) there is no real defence against air attack, it is mere provocative folly to spend money on increasing defence forces. The first argument has some substance, though the Government is justified in replying that the best rejoinder to the inflated demands of Mr. Churchill and his Press supporters is the definite announcement of a moderate programme here and now. The second goes too far for its own success, for carried to its logical conclusion it would mean the abandonment of any air force at all except for purposes of reconnaissance. Technically, moreover, the claim that there is no defence against air attack is not valid. That the advantage is with the attack no one questions, but that 1,300 machines would provide better defence than 840 no one can seriously question either, and the Labour Party, which while in office stood as firm as its political opponents for parity with the United States and superiority over Japan at sea, is on very assailable ground when it objects to some approach to parity in the air.
But to say that is a very different thing from simply approving and endorsing the Government's decision. It may be justified, the international situation being what it is. But why is the international situation what it is, and what is the British Government doing to change it ? The scale of national armaments will be wholly different according as the collective system stands or falls. Today it is not effectively standing and has not completely fallen. It was challenged directly and disastrously by the Japanese in 1931, and the British Government was as determined, as anyone that the challenge should be evaded. From that blow the collective system has flat begun to recover. No Government could reduce its armaments today in the certain confidence that its fellow-members of the League of Nations would come actively to its assistance if it were attacked. We are thrown far back beyond the point reached by the justified hopes of the League's foun1ers in 1919. Nations have pledged themselves not to attack each other and the pledges have been broken, and with impunity. It is not inconsistent with genuine idealism to see facts as they unhappily are. Any other idealism is blind and misleading. If the collective system is note realized the black prospect opens before humanity of founding the hope—if not the confidence—of national safety on national armies and navies and air forces, and under that dispensation no Government can let its defences fall below a certain point.
But the very breakdown of the collective system, and the consequences that entails, doubles and trebles the force of the arguments for establishing it again, and impregnably. It is by the part it plays in that task, not by its choice as between 840 and 1,800 aeroplanes, that the Govern- ment will be judged. So far it has no distinguished record. Mr. Baldwin and Sir John Simon have, it is true, reaffirmed this country's obligations under Locarno, a collective engagement which undoubtedly makes for peace in Western Europe. The Cabinet has let the Air Force dwindle relatively in the hope that general air limitation was pending. It has propounded a plan at Geneva for an all-round reduction of air forces, and advocates the total abolition of military and naval aviation provided a plan can be devised for effectively controlling, if not of internationalizing, civil aviation. All that is academically satisfactory. But the Govern- ment has never convinced anyone that it is putting half the driving force behind its Geneva proposals that some of its members have behind the demand for a wire air force. It has always regarded the inter- nationalization or civil aviation as a fantasm to be dissipated rather than as a reform to be realized. The obstacles are great but the problem has never yet been faced seriously. Neither has that of an eventual inter- national air police, which M. Pierre Cot, out of his prac- tical experience as Minister responsible for the largest national air force in the world, discusses on a later page. These are the things that matter, and it is by its attitude to them that the Government will merit praise or blame. Mr. Baldwin has made it clear that the new air programme is contingent. If some general disarmament agreement, or failing that such an air convention as he himself desires, is reached, the programme will be correspondingly modified. That is its best justification. But it will be no justification at all unless the Government in the remaining months or years of its term of office concen- trates as it has never concentrated yet on making the League system a reality in the world. No single nation can achieve that alone, but no single nation can do more towards it than Great Britain.
Previous page
