Letters to the Editor
GREAT BRITAIN IN THE AIR [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—As I recently attended the International Aero- nautical Federation at Zurich in the British interest, some observations on our aeronautical position may not be out of place.
It seems to have dawned on the Swiss that their sentinel mountains no longer ensure the invulnerability of their country. This not very original idea is still too original for us, who are in a like case. The Swiss, having but few landing grounds—and those much handicapped by their immense development of electrical power transmission and its attendant high-voltage overland lines, which often interfere with safe alighting are developing the use of their lakes as alighting places. Already their boat-building for river, lake and lock craft is a serious export business, and soon, I daresay, the seaplanes of a nation that has no sea frontier and no Admiralty will show their wings over those waters where we were once supreme.
There would seem to be no appreciation in England of what the air means to us, on the one hand as a threat, on the other as a source of the very advantages that are of most use to a nation that tells the world from Geneva that its communica- tions are to it not only useful but vital.
When a Frenchman first crossed the English Channel we were stung into action so sharply that a Britisher first crossed the Atlantic Ocean. Since then what have we done ? It so happens that I know, and that I know it to be good—but what is the use of my knowing ? I am already converted. As far as the world is concerned we have gone steadily back- wards since the War. I sat at a table with representative men from all nations and presided at the setting of the seal of final approbation to some ninety-seven records in every conceivable form of aerial activity. Was there one single British line of superior excellence ? Not one. There are forty-five different classes of performance and in each class we have an excuse, I suppose. We do not excel in gliders because we have not the splendid German sand hills to glide from. We do not take a record in the baby class, the little light aeroplane, because—well, why ? Is it that our weather is a handicap to practice ? In the maximum speed class (the fighter eisss that goes at 260 miles an hour or more) our excuse is that we have not the appropriate high-speed landing grounds. In the heavy-weight carriers what is the matter with us ? Surely we agree that Britain lives by its transport. Have we then no concern with carrying, say, six tons at high speed—or have the Germans a more intimate concern in this matter ? Anyhow, they have the record.
It is not that we cannot find the flyers to take the risks. As one of the three judges at the Naval and Military Aeroplane Competition held by the British Government in 1912, and as a student of aeronautical science and observer of the air-minded men of England since 1908, I have been impressed with the fact that when hare-brained inventors have produced their most catastrophic phantasms, when the urgent demands of defence have produced their most hazardous and skilfully risky air projectiles, it has always been, not only possible, but easy to find a queue of youngsters ready and anxious to sit the mount and try its paces, to risk their lives, and in the event to prove that they were in fact as full of skill and nerve as they dared to believe. The cause of our backwardness is not lack of good pilots. It is British stodge.
Out of nearly 45,000,000 of us who depend, as we advertise everywhere, upon transport and communications, how many pockets have been opened to the extent of half-a-guinea to support the Air League ? A million ? One quarter million ? One half of one half of that quarter ? No! How much do the eleven millions of London, the most " bombable " town in the universe, believe in the Air Threat ?
The war taught us that the River Thames and its reflecting surface, unobscurable by night, shining by moonlight like a beautiful streak, is an infallible guide for the enemy in the air to his objective. He counts the bends of the river and selects at will Westminster Abbey, or the War -Office, or Chelsea Hospital, Charing Cross Station, or the Admiralty. Knowing this, having had our trains stopped times without number lest the sparks from their funnels showed their where- abouts, have we had a serious proposal that our London railway stations or approaches, on which our railway transport of troops and munitions and food depend, shall be put under- ground, or otherwise protected from air ? We are too poor ? Really ! Yet our latest railway " stunt " is to select Charing Cross Station for a splendidly situated over-the-river bridge- target, at a cost of £17,000,000! Are we the same Londoners who ran into the Underground for shelter during air raids ?- I am, Sir, &c., MERVYN O'GORMAN, Colonel, C.B., D.Sc.
Zurich.
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