POLICING FROM THE AIR.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 230, 28 September 1934, Page 6

POLICING FROM THE AIR.

Critics of punitive and preventive? .air, expeditions, over places like the North-West Frontier of India, should read an article appearing in the last number of the "Royal Air Force Quarterly." The author is FlightLieutenant E. J. Kingston-MeC'loughry, and his article was the prize essay for the GordonShepherd Memorial last year. He draws a hard lino of distinction between the use of aircraft as an offensive weapon against civilians in a big European war, for instance, and as a primary army to support political administration of an undeveloped country like the North-West Frontier used for the purpose of preserving law and order. In the latter event, ho proves such air control is not only most economical and most efficient, but—the important point—the humanest method of accomplishing this important work. The writer gives a detailed comparison of such air control over the North-Wcst Frontier and in places like Iraq and the arid deserts of the Sudan, with the bloodstained history of the punitive columns employed on the ground, with the record of appalling hardship and often heavy losses from ambuscades, etc. He thinks that where such uncivilised peoples are concerned, their psychology is particularly adapted to air control, which has been specially effective in the impression made by the "broadcast voice from the air," or-"the roaring menace of an air demonstration overhead." • ■ SAFDA"R JANG. •