BRITAIN'S ARMING

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 69, 18 September 1937, Page 9

BRITAIN'S ARMING

APOLOGIES ARE OVER

SOURCE OF NATIONAL PRIDE

RECENT EXERCISES

The change that has taken place in the outlook of the British public in regard to war since the new era of power politics was ushered in by the Japanese adventure in Manchuria was at first effected very slowly, wrote the London .correspondent of the Melbourne "Age" on July 16. Five years ago Ministerial speeches still clung hopefully to their disarmament perorations, and the evidence they were able to produce of a determination to reduce armaments was regarded as a bull point for both home and foreign consumption. Hitler's assumption of power in Germany did little at first to disturb the Englishman's traditional complacency, and even the former's lightning blows at one feacur ; after another of the peace treaties were not universally regarded as menacing to European peace. The German plea for re-armament was felt U be merely a temporary manifestation of purely internal concern. An inferiority complex was being taken for a run. Germany was still a member of the League and at Geneva peace was still talked. Fine phrases were being spun about "equality within a regime of security" whenever the Fuhrer kicked over some fresh irritating imposition which Versailles fastened upon Germany. Nor did the early preparations by Italy for the Abyssinian campaign convince the British public that hopes of disarmament must temporarily be put aside. They still were part of the recognised stock in trade of the National Government right down to the 1935 election. The unsealing of Jips began only after the- Hoare-Laval fiasco, and even then, with great skill, the public were permitted only very slowly to realise what was in store for them. But gradually disarmament lost its charm for the public and Ministers allowed it to drop out of their vocabulary. Now . . . They never mention it. Their lips are now forbid to speak That once accustomed word. SUPPORT FOR RE-ARMAMENT. The astonishing feature of the transformation that has been effected in the intervening eighteen months is the lack of opposition which- it has encountered. England has put herself into a condition of steadily increasing preparedness for war with the full consent of enlightened public opinion. Even Labour could not withstand the tide which had set in, and its stalwart pacifists, headed by Mr. George Lansbury, who is still engaged on his missionary work for peace and disarmament, were driven into the wilderness. The old note of apology with which defence Ministers reluctantly announced the laying down of a new warship or progress with army mechanisation, or appealed to Parliament for an extra million or two for the Royal Air Force, gradually disappeared. It became a matter of pride to point to the growing strength of the fighting services. There was, in all conscience, plenty happening in the world to justify the change of front, and the public by now were not slow to detect it. By-election followed by-election,, and the .results confirmed the view tha< : the Government had not misjudged the volume.of support they enjoyed in the country for their determination to keep the fighting services up to scratch. Although five or six years ago Ministers may have thought these things, few of them would at that time have been found bold enough to go into the Rev. Dick Shepherd's old pulpit in St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, as did Lord' Halifax recently and roundly declare that he, was led to believe that the pursuit i of peace under.all conceivable condi- v tions might mean the acceptance of greater evils even than war, conducted ~ with all the devilish resources of the ±, twentieth century, and might, therefore, „ in itself be more reprehensible than a war seriously and solemnly undertaken in defence of vital principles that r would be denied and betrayed by a F refusal to break the peace. c TERRORS OF AIR ATTACK. * These things are symptomatic of the change of public opinion. The change itself has been effected perhaps most by the growing realisation that aviation places in the hands of a powerful and unscrupulous enemy a weapon, in face of which England is in a particularly vulnerable position. And this realisation has in turn been prompted and fostered by the visible signs of preparations to meet any such sudden attack. Almost any night in these days the sky around London is stabbed with tall pillars of'light from scores of powerful searchlights, while from overhead as it threads its way among the clouds, comes the throb and drone of an aeroplane. Every now and then the plane is brought vividly into view a as half a dozen beams of light concen- ti trate upon it and hold it while the crews manning unseen anti-aircraft v guns get its range. n No more effective propaganda for the c strengthening of the air defences could t] be imagined than these nightly displays. t . But there are other not less impressive a manifestations. The elaborate machin- t] cry that is being. set up to protect civilians against air attack and particularly against gas attack from the air, t( brings home even more vividly to the a public the urgency of preventing such w an appalling catastrophe. The Air f, Raid Precautions Department of the Home Office has been actively func- c tioning since 1935, and under its aus- a pices local authorities have been in- tl structed as to the sort of thing that is ti to be expected under conditions of ruthless war. Hundreds and thousands of handbooks and memoranda have n been published indicating precisely w what must be done to guard against c the effects of gas, high explosive, and n incendiary bombs. C ANTI-GAS MEASURES. * It must be admitted that the Governanent have not sought to exploit un- 1< duly the fears of the public in this o side of their work. On the contrary, tl they have been content to go forward ■with their preparations extremely quietly and such items of information as that 0,000,000 gas masks, which in time of need are to be distributed free, are being stored in three great depots near London, has only leaked out as a rule in reply to Parliamentary questions. Ten similar depots are arranged for the provinces and as the masks are now being turned out at a the rate of about 500,000 a week the p time will soon arrive when all of us will be in the proud position of being, a in certain circumstances, the potential s ' owners of one of these delightful ornaments. v

Not less alarming than the news about the gas masks is the instruction which is put at our disposal—occasionally by means of practical local demonstrations —as to how to prepare a refuge room against gas. An antigas school has been established near Bristol to train instructors who in due course will teach us these things, and a second school to turn out a stream of instructors is being set up in Yorkshire, Where candidates are put through lheir intensive course in about a week or so. The technical, machinery for

the prevention of air raids, including the balloon "curtain" and other devices fall within the "hush hush" category. They will not be divulged in detail, not even to satisfy the curiosity of anxious M.P.s.

JOINT MANOEUVRES

One awkward feature of these defensive devices is that it is impossible to test them under conditions in any way approximating to those which war would bring. In large scale manoeuvres, however, conditions closely resembling those likely to arise in war n time can be reproduced, and within 'i the past week they have been created if I all along the coast of the English c Channel to test the efficacy of the combined naval and air forces in dei'endIS ing merchantmen coming up channel 0 and the great south and south-west 1- ports of Portsmouth, Southampton, s and Plymouth. It is, perhaps, some comfort to know that our defences g against enemy attacks on merchant '" shipping have been proved effective c The "enemy" of the manoeuvres cone sisted of the cruiser Southampton and .1 a disguised raider represented by the i- Royal Fleet Auxiliary Prestol, supr posed to mount four 6in guns. The deb fenders consisted of the Newcastle, a [- sister-ship of the Southampton, an- > other similar cruiser represented by r the destroyer Brazen, the aircraft-car- •- rier Glorious with all her aircraft squad- - rons, and eight flying boats. Any Brir tish merchant vessels passing through the area were asked to co-operate to the extent of sending out a wireless call for help if "attacked," and flying a special signal after being "captured" or "sunk." The raider, in order to effect a "capture," had to remain in I the near neighbourhood of her prey for 45 minutes, representing the time needed to remove the occupants of the prize and sink her. H.M.S. Southampton had a brief career as a raider. Almost immediately after the defending forces left its base a call for help was received from the steamer Cordillera, and having been attacked with torpedoes and bombs by 19 aircraft from the Glorious, she was adjudged to have been sunk. The disguised raider Prestol had a longer life, by some three days, but, on the other hand, she only succeeded in making one capture, and in spite of low visibility the enemy was located by H.M.S. Newcastle, and "destroyed." The exercise was repeated during the next three days, and though both the Southampton and Prestol for over fortyeight hours eluded the defenders, both were in due course "destroyed," the former by gunfire and the latter by. air attack alone. ON A BIGGER SCALE. An even bigger scale exercise followed. The "enemy" fleet with 79 aeroplanes, conducted a three-day assault on the Channel ports, which were defended by a smaller fleet with the assistance of 146 aeroplanes assembled along the 150 miles of coast between Sussex and Land's End. It was the task of these aircraft to seek out the attacking Fleet and to dog its movements; to drive back the aircraft it might send against the home ports, to bomb the ships before.they came within firing distance, and to disable the submarine seeking to torpsdo the vessels, sharing in the defence of the coast. • It was almost inevitable that some of these invading aeroplanes should get through and find military and civil objectives despite the blacking out of £ Portsmouth and other towns, during the night, and in the reports issued later it was a'dmited that some "constructive" hits had in fact been scored. The joint naval, military, and air operations which have been on a scale never before attempted have, however, supplied the defence authorities with some useful lessons and on the whole they are not disappointed with the proof the exercises have afforded of j their ability to safeguard the naval r bases and protect the dockyards. It \ < is, for the experts to assess in clue j. course the precise value of those j exercises. The interesting point c which immediately emerges is that g they have aroused such widespread oublic interest. Manoeuvres at sea, on - land, or in the air a few years ago < would have been regarded as incidents r too remote from the lives of most of j us to awaken comment, but in the in- t terval our thoughts have more . and more' turned to the dangers of war t and the question of the efficacy of our t defences against attack. The recent- c manouevres have played a significant j part in the impressive propaganda directed towards awakening us still further to the urgency of perfecting ■the machinery of defence.