AIR AND GAS WAR.

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 1892, 24 May 1933, Page 7

AIR AND GAS WAR.

LECTURE BY SIB lAN HAMILTON EDINBURGH STUDENTS. Pacts, covenants, treaties, are signed easily enough, bat when it comes to one small concrete act —even a very partial disarmament or the giving of some control over eivil aviation to the League authorities —there is "nothing doing." The truth is no one, least of aU the signatories themselves, believes *in the sincerity of these who sign the paets, covenants, treaties and plans. "Any nation under present conditions can re-arm sub rosa. Not by big guns, by big tanks, by Zeppelins or big battleships; these arc expensive and only slowly to be ereatcd toys; no, but by eiv|l aeroplanes, with which she can fit herself out by the hivndred for the price of one battleship, and earn good money by them, pending the dawn of the Day. The air! Mars is going to take his seat, no longer in a train, but in a 'plane! The Battle of the Future. In a book of mine, called "The Soul aad Body of an Army," written shortly after the Armistice and published in 1921, I tried to picture the battle of the future in Europe. Here is one paragraph: "The more these vague outlines are considered the more they will fill up with flying figures on earth, sea and sky, whose motive is swiftness; i.c., the power to cope with the righting man's old enamies, spaee and time. "Take the diagram of the Battle of Jutland, battle cruisers racing parallel northwestwards and the ships of the line coming up; take that diagram off the sea and plank it down upon whatever continent yon like best; replace JtlKeoe's ships by heavy armoured tasks and Beatty's by light armoured racers: let whippets stand for the destroyers, plaster the sky with airships and aeroplanes; paint them there as thick as stars; do this and you will gain a truer impression of the crash tactics and high velocity strategies of the future. "We must tame the tank aud the aeroplane, they've got to be as familiar to us as taxis. Boys must run away to air as Lord Reading, Masefield and •tier famous men have run away to sea. There's money in the air: there's Empire in the air; news and vision in the air. There's life and death." Agitate for Your Lives. How, you may say, Sir lan Hamilton Treat on to urge, should our National Government leapf It cannot leap. No, but you can. You are young. You have still vision and initiative. Lots ef it; too raueh. Speak, write, agitate; ' for your lives, for the life of civilisation, I implore you. Say you insist Jrjßt the Disarmament Commission bringing some concrete act in regard to the sir service home with them. If we make what Dante calls the great refusal, Europe is ruined. The other nations all suspect one another, but they wDI stin aecept a strong lead from us; not from anyone else. If we gave that strong lead —I mean a passionately strong lead—the League of Nations might in course of time become themselves a real strong leader of the nations. If we refuse to grapple with this air problem now, in its infancy, within two or three years it win have got quite beyond human control. And then —where's all the use of your learning? So now, farewell, and —lose no time! Do something about it. I must also mention the dread escort to those civil aeroplanes, carrying chemicals and bacteria, which will follow the war 'planes as vultures follow eagles. These are the types of Zeppelin now being commissioned by the TUBA, to serve as battle cruisers and war "plane carriers of the air, having twiee the speed of existing seaborne battle cruisers. Answer to Our Fleet. Besides the machine guns, mounted •n the 'planes carried by the Zeppelin, she is armed with quick-firing cannon and gives her gunners a steadier shooting platform in bad weather than any water-borne warship. These new airships will have but little in common with the old Zeppelin of the war. These new Zeppelins are the real answer to England's battle fleet. Being filled with helium instead of hydrogen, they are, practically speaking, impervious to fire. Their margin of buoyancy is so great that they can get away with a shell hole or two quite easily. They arc quite capable of beating off a dozen enemy airplanes unless, in a determined to die mood, these charge in, head on, and ram. Even then the issue would not be certain, and do please remember the clouds. There is hardly a day in England when there is not a cloud in the sky. And an airship can take cover in a cloud, exactly as a big gun can be concealed in a wood. Quite a small cloud might hold a eouple of big airships of the new type. Imagine two young lovers wandering out into the garden. Contentedly she leans against him. He senses an unearthly beauty spread over land and sea. But from the sky where God P Himself is often sought—there, in that exquisite rose-coloured cloud, lurks a horror. From the spy-basket of an airship basilisk eyes are reconnoitring an Warthly paradise with intent to turn it into hell. "Yon Stand the Shot." This is the sort of a world you students arc going to "come out" in, unless a great effort is made during the next few days to control the course of events at Geneva. The blood which runs in your veins, whether Highland or Lowland, is strong blood, and, if, •wiag *• tfc« inertia and lack of imag-

illation of your rulers, the next ten days are wasted, and if, further, as a result, an Armada of airships should some day darken our northern skies, you stand the shot. And you students from overseas, also turely Edinburgh has adopted you? Bnt your good blood and your good education lias been given you to a higher purpose; it was meant to carry you to the forefront of peaceful endeavour. Whatever happens, you will need every ounce of it to exist in the world I picture after the failure of the Disarmament Conference, for, even if the very worst does not happen in your lifetime, that world will quickly begin to crystallise into very awkward compartments in which there will be but few sleeping berths reserved for firstclass passengers. Sir lan's Vision. My vision of the world with which, not having suffered enough, we arc now threatened, is one of mounting nationalism, mounting tariff walls and mounting overdrafts on God's patience. "But still the blood is strong, the heart is Highland, And we in dreams behold the Hebrides." Tf the air question is left unsettled the world is done. The air interests arc beginning to say that, with control, they will lose dividends. If no action at all is taken to control the air, there will not only be an intense competition at once started, but, worse than that, an atmosphere of war will be created which will be absolutely fatal to any economic conference worth having.