In the House of Commons on Wednesday the question of
aerial defence was raised by the Opposition. We cannot in the space at our disposal to-day go into the merits of the question in detail; but though we are prepared to admit that there may be exaggeration in some of the statements made by Colonel Seely's critics, we are bound to say that the dis- cussion leaves us with a sense that we are as a nation terribly behindhand. At the beginning, the War Office seems tc have taken up the attitude that there was very little in aviation, and when it did become alive to the need for action the problem was not tackled on the proper lines. No doubt more money is wanted, but that is not the real difficulty. What is wanted more than money is a careful thinking out of the whole problem. The formation of a Flying Corps and the provision of the necessary machines and plant cannot be achieved in a hurry. There must be experi- ment and there must be organization, and above all there must be the training of the personnel, and all this takes time Undoubtedly if war were to break out to-morrow we should be most seriously handicapped by our failure to take the air problem seriously and in time. It is, however, no use to cry over spilt milk. The essential thing now is to determine that if peace is maintained for another two years we shall be able at the end of that time to say, "We now have a Flying Corps equal to, if not better than, any in the world."
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