SUPPRESS FLYING

Evening Star, Issue 17921, 17 March 1922, Page 7

SUPPRESS FLYING

A PERIL TO HUMANITY

REDUCTION TO CAVEMAN LEVEL,

A. F. Provost Battcrsby writes to the London ‘ Obseivcr ’:—

Five years ago j’ou lot mo voice an ■ appeal in the ‘ Observer ’ for tho sup-1 pression of all aircraft when tho war | was over. Can you line! space for an- j otlier effort to rouso unimaginative J humanity to a consciousness of its ini- j ponding peril ? The Washington Conference has dealt I with war as it troubles taxation, but of 1 its threat to civilisation nothing has been said. The reduction of navies, or even the elimination of the submarine no more affect that threat than would a tax on saltpetre, and, though i tho conference has declared its endeavor to make war costly and dangerous, it has excluded from its survey the moans by which, for the first time in the history of warfare, the destruction of an enemy has been rendered inexpensive and secure. lot, to judge from the recently published views of distinguished soldiers, even the experts appear at last to bo realising that the nest war will he decided neither on land nor sea, and that it will bo waged, not ag' oist armies and , navies, but upon peace'id and unpre- ■ pared cities. What ' ncy scorn not i yet to have assimilated is the certainty of its being begun wimoui a declaration, and that its issue may he decided , before a single combatant has been seen.

The aeroplane has made possible the destruction within twenty-four hours of a score of cities, arsenals, dockyards, and military centres before any sort ot reprisal can be devised. It is vain to talk of an air service adequate to deal with such i contingency. There can be no such thing as adequacy if the enemy prove sufficiently capable and treacherous, and with the issues at stake, what else can ho expected? In the past war demanded vast, slow, costly, and obvious preparation, movements which, even if unforeseen, might bo met and countered, and a certain confinement of tho area of devastation. _ Now thiit the conversion of commercial aircraft to military uses can bo accomplished in j n few hours, a nation may he reduced to impotent panic in tho course of a j night, and at less than the cost of a j divisional skirmish. Flight thus offers i to an ill-disposed opponent an incentive | to belligerency altogether novel, and | presents to civilisation a menace from which no defence can bo found, for civic life is essentially dependent on the stability of tho city, and it is against the city that every blow from the air will bo struck.

“ Four or five thousand machines,” writes Admiral Bacon in the, ‘ Nineteenth Century,’ “ dropping deadly gas on our largo towns would create devastation and panic, and most likidy lead to a demand for peace at any price ” ; and Coiyonel Moorc-Brabazon, one of our earliest pilots, declares that “It may be regarded as the tragedy of air warfare that there, is practically no defence against a sudden air raid except the power of retaliation,” a retaliation, however, dependent on tho enemy’s failure to cripple its instruments in the course of his raid. Sir W. Joynson-Hicks, chairman of the Parliamentary Air Committee, has detailed more fully what we may have to face. “In the next war,” he said, “regiments of noiseless machines, flying from 200 to 250 miles an hour, at a height at which they will be invisible, will 'drop great bombs containing from 1,000 to 3,000 tons of T.N.T. . • • and a bomb of that size would blow whole streets of London to pieces.” So accurate has bombing become that an export has dropped three dummy bombs in succession down tho funnels of a warship from a height of some 6,000 ft, and a single bomb of to-day would work greater havoc than was wrought by all tho bombs dropped on London during the war, not to speak of what mav be done by gas and the germs of .pestilence, possibilities which, every month, tho chemist’s ingenuity makes more appalling. Of course, those interested in the exploiting of aircraft plead for a fanciful security obtained by millions spent on an air force and as a subsidy to commercial flying, but tho fact remains incontrovertible that protection from _ mortal injury to a nation by an air invasion in peace time cannot bo achieved by known means, and, even were an effective counter to bo invented, tho sleepless and ceaseless vigilance demanded would render its guardianship of no avail. No; if the world’s past is to be preserved to enrich its future, if mankind, in short, is to continue to live above ground, all our dreams of flight must bo abandoned, What of loss will that a-rnount to; what of value to the laco can bo expected of flying P So far, very little lias boon yielded, oven to knowledge, by our conquest of the air, not enough to balance a thousandth part of the misery inflicted; and in tho future, beyond the rapid carrying of wealthy people and then appurtenances, and perhaps, a few unimportant discoveries, is they anything to outweigh the probable reduction of humanity to the caveman’s level? As a sport, flying is played out already; exhilarating to learn, it soon becomes a boring business, Its possibilities as a scientific and mechanical toy arc stul enthralling; but can humanity afford to put such poisonous toys into its children’s hands? p We still have tho folly to talk of legitimate warfare, as though there could be any power on earth, once war is declared, to illegitimiso anything; an impotence so pitifully emphasised of late by the victor’s failure to inflict an adequate penalty even when war is future is waiting for us to safeguard it from an agony compared with which our recent experiences can scarcely count. Are wo for the sake ot ratifying a scientific curiosity, to expose our children to, the certainty‘ of inconceivable horrors, and to tho likelihood of conditions m which all that the past has yielded us shall be engulfed?