NAVY SCRAPPED

Evening Star, Issue 21890, 29 November 1934, Page 13

NAVY SCRAPPED

SOUTH AFRICAN POLICY RELIANCE UfM AIR F9R6E MECHANISED ARMY When the Fusion Cabinet ■was first formed in the South African Union a good deal of interest was aroused by the allocation of the portfolio of Defence to the young and ambitious Mr Oswald Pirow, who had been to a large extent the firebrand of the previous National Government, writes the South African correspondent of the Manchester ‘ Guardian.’ Mr Pirow’s ancestry is German, and there is no doubt that he has some of the qualities associated with the land of his forefathers. _ He is suspected of a leaning towards dictatorships, and he certainly has a robust faith in the superior virtues of the Aryan races, a faith which he put into practice when Minister of Justice by chartering an aeroplane and flying to 'Durban in order to take a personal part in the. raid in which the police, armed with tear-gas bombs, rounded up some hundreds of native tax defaulters in Durban and district. It was a stroke of genius that transferred Mr Pirow from the portfolio of Justice, for which his peculiar qualities were not the most suitable, to that of Defence, where they have found abundant scope for expression. Mr Pirow believes in the strong arm, and is probably unhampered by the scruples so common in the modern world in regard to the merits of militarism. Needless to say, a strong case can be put up for the pacifist attitude, more especially in a country remote from the centre of the world’s wars like South Africa. In attempting to discuss Mr Pirow’s ideas on defence we must, however, assume that we believe in armed intervention and in the duty of every country to be prepared to resist with the same methods of force any military or naval attack upon it. THE AIR FORCE. Starting from these premises, _ Mr Pirow has moved with unerring skill to his conclusions. He • has virtually scrapped the whole of the South African “ Navy,” letting no sentimental requests stand in the way of his clear conviction that South Africa can never hope to put up any kind of naval defence worthy of mention, and that for a small country with a limited income to spend millions of pounds on equipping ships which could be sunk m a quarter of an hour would not be heroic but simply foolish. With equal clearness Mr Pirow has moved. towards a vigorous policy of aerial defence. It is interesting and most significant that a policy of doubling the South African Air Force should synchronise with one of the abolishing of the South African Navy* An an

force, even a large air force, is within the financial resources of a small country in a way in which a navy is not, and it may confidently be expected that more and more the contribution towards Imperial defence on the part of the dominions will lie in the direction of air forces. Mr Pirow, as usual, has a clear grasp of the immediate practical issue of his time and situation. With the same absence of sentiment, historical mounted forces are being dismounted and mechanised, nor is Mr Pirow likely to fall into the error of relying unduly on the “ commando ” system, so dear to many of his colleagues for sentimental reasons. He knows that General He Wet was beaten in 1914 primarily because he did not realise that the' motor age had begun. The old general was the most valiant of Don Quixotes, but there is nothing quixotic about the present direction of Union defence policy. “AGITATORS.’’ Against whom will the Union’s aeroplanes be employed ? If one tries to answer that question, one is led to two possible conclusions, one of which would probably .please tho majority of Englishmen as much as the other would displease them. The first conclusion is that if war breaks out the Union, through its air force, will be ready to assist Great Britain and the other States of the Commonwealth. South Africa does not need an air force for her own defence. • The attacker is merely hypothetical, and Mr Pirow is not the kind of man to trouble himself about remote hypotheses. In spite of all that is being said to country audiences about the Union being no longer bound to assist Britain in times of war, the possibility of effective assistance in the case of such a crisis is as great as it was in 1914. The second conclusion is one which most Englishmen would find a little disquieting. Mr Pirow himself would be the first to assent to the statement that he is not prepared to stand “ any nonsense ” from native “ agitators, and it is clear that a mobile and efficient air force would be, humanly speaking, an invincible method of dealing with any native uprising in South Africa. Happily no such uprising seems likely at. the present moment, and happily, too. Mr Pirow is assisted by colleagues to-day whose views on the problems of colour are less vigorous and picturesque than his own. But the possibility remains and adds to the general atmosphere of vague disquiet which Mr Pirow has succeeded in arousing among various sections of opinion in spite of general admiration for his courage, efficiency, and clear headedness. militarV training.

Among those who have given expression to this sentiment of disquiet are many of the leaders of the trade union movement, for aeroplanes under the control of the vigorous minded can end most strikes. Trade unions look with perhaps even greater suspicion on Mr Pirow’s scheme of_ “ special service battalions,” in which unemployed youths are being given military training during their period of waiting to secure employment. The scheme has much to commend it, and the type of training is precisely what is most needed by South African boys of the particular type concerned, hut the tendency to give preference in employment to youths who have been in service of one •of the battalions is resented by many supporters of Labour, and some have an ineradicable suspicion of Mr Pirow’s motives, seeing in him, probably quit© wrongly, a potential South African Hitler.

If it is really worth while having a defence force in a country like South Africa, if we do not believe in taking up the purely pacifist attitude towards war, there can be no question that the Union Defence Department to-day is a marked improvement on the same department under the control of Colonel Creswell. No one is better' equipped than Mr Pirow for seeing that the Union Government possesses “the giant’s power,” while, at the same time, no one is better equipped than Mr Hofmeyr for seeing that it “ does not use it like a giant.” The fact that such different temperaments and schools of thought are at present working together in a Ministry of All the Talents gives one ground for confidence in spit© of fears and suspicions such as those here mentioned.