Shall Air War Be Ended ?
WHILE the guns begin to echo in Manchuria the Disarmament Conference is entering on the decisive phase of its labours. Great Britain has proposed the total abolition of military aviation. France has proposed a treatment of the problem of effectives that would put the standing armies of the continental Powers on virtually a militia basis. The naval Powers are understood to be concerting, or to be about to concert, plans for carrying naval disarmament substantially further than the point at which the Washington and London Conferences left it. That is not the rather cynical paradox it may seem. The fact that Japan may leave the League and leave the Disarmament Conference has to be faced. The prospect that under the stress of the Jehol campaign she may actually increase her armaments is not to be ignored, though if League Powers do their duty in instituting an embargo on the export of arms to Japan any effective expansion of her fighting power may prove difficult. But it would be disastrous if a single State should be allowed to bring the Disarmament Conference to wreck just at the moment when the hope of some positive result is stronger than it has been for months. The Conference must go forward with or without Japan. It must reach whatever decisions it can reach in spite of the absence of one of its principal members. Then it will necessarily have to consider which of the decisions can be put into force at once and which must be held in suspense till the situation in the Far East has cleared one way or the other, and Japan's ultimate intentions, as distinguished from those she evinces in the present abnormal circumstances, arc known.
On land France has made proposals which would lower her existing one year's service—it was three years for some time after the War—to no more than eight months and thus reduce her cffcctives by some 40 per cent. That is a notable offer and no factious objection to it deserves a moment's shrift. But for British observers of the Conference, at any rate, the vital issue at this moment is the abolition of air-warfare with all its un- imaginable horrors. The British view on that was laid before the Conference on Monday by Lord Londonderry in a speech which must of course be regarded as a considered statement of Cabinet policy, and was intended obviously to put into concrete form the British lead given in more general terms by Mr. Eden in his effective appeal for action and decision by the Conference a fortnight ago. Viewed in that light the Air Minister's speech is a little equivocal. It gives no decided lead. It takes throughout the line that the British Government would be prepared to do this or that provided the obvious objections to such a course could be overcome, and the objections are then enumerated at rather depressing length. That may be well enough. It is necessary to be practical and wise to be cautious. There is fortunately no reason, particularly with Mr. Baldwin's profoundly impressive speech of last November still in our memories, to doubt the earnestness of the British Government in the matter of air disarmament. But it would have been more encouraging if Lord Londonderry had definitely challenged the Conference to take decisive steps instead of simply indicating Great Britain's willingness to disarm provided various obstacles could be cleared away.
It is on those obstacles that attention must now be concentrated, for the case for the abolition of air warfare, and the preparations for it, is so overwhelming that all argument pointing in that direction is superfluous. Much more forcible language, indeed, might be used. The case is so overwhelming that the firm and fixed resolve ought forthwith to lie taken that air warfare shall be abolished and all obstacles to it somehow swept away. Obstacles will always be fatal if we are prepared to let them be. Lord Londonderry has put a series of seven questions which must be answered satisfac- torily before the resolution to abolish air warfare can be taken. What they amount to as a whole is whether civil aviation can be so controlled, with or without the actual internationalization of machines and aerodromes, as to make the impressment of civil aero- planes for military purposes in time of war impossible. It must be recognized at once that there is probably no way of making that absolutely impossible. When Lord 'Londonderry asks, for example, what steps can be taken to prevent the Government of an aggressor State from seizing the civil aircraft within its borders the answer must be that none are practicable, but that the fear of consequences if the rest of the League Powers act swiftly and resolutely as a unit may well be an effective deterrent.
In that connexion the French demand for a small League Air Force to act in such an emergency as this is by no means to be lightly dismissed. Such a force, staffed by volunteers, could be recruited without difficulty, and if its only function was to operate in case of need against a national air force improvised out of civil machines and manned by pilots who had never received military training, quite a small force would be sufficient for the requirements of the situation. But the immediate question is whether the total abolition of military aviation can be considered a practical proposition. The Italians hold that it is not, and advocate simply the abolition of bombing machines and all aerial bom- bardment. In that case what is to be said of the total abolition of military aviation in Germany, enforced for the last thirteen years by the Treaty of Versailles ? If Germany has managed to exist without military aeroplanes, so can any other country in the world. As for ourselves, who are constantly being reminded that our air force is only fifth in size among the forces of the world, the abolition of the four which exceed us would be a palpable gain, in spite of the strength of some of them in civil machines.
As for other obstacles, they will arise, and are arising, on every side, and if interested excuses are accepted as valid reasons, the attempt to abolish air war will very soon be stone dead. The Federation of British Industries objects to the suggested internationalization of civil aviation on the ground that British invention and British construction would somehow suffer. Whether the F.B.I. would seriously prefer military aviation, with all its unspeakable potentialities, to continue rather than accept internationalization of civil aviation, without which the abolition of military aviation may be impossible, can only be inferred ; but the inference seems ominously clear. Someone else objects that internationalization would retard the development of British Imperial aviation. The first answer is that it need not. The second and better answer is that the British Empire's highest function is to make itself a model for the world, and that with reasonable goodwill the co-operation and competence that has made the chain of planned aerodromes in British possessions on the Cairo-Cape rou possible should be equally realizable as between sovereign States, members of the League of Nations, in any continent of the world. What is impracticable in a static world may yet be practicable in a progressive one. The fatal danger is to fix all attention on the obstacles and forget the greatness of the goal to be achieved. The highest service this country can do to the world is to insist ceaselessly, and more forcibly and insistently than Lord Londonderry has yet done, on the tragic blow failure now would deal to the wavering hopes of humanity.
Previous page
