RIVAL AIR FLEETS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIV, Issue 722, 2 June 1923, Page 12

RIVAL AIR FLEETS.

needs OF GREAT BRITAIN.

LONDON, May 30

At a meeting of the Air League of the British Empire at the Masion House, Lord Birkenhead said, there was never a time when the country was more in need ol the security oi the

air. . , Lord Birkenhead added: “Britain has never been content to allow her existence and security to depend on the moods and friendship of a foreign Power. Those who believed iu our friendship with France should also remember that our ancestors never discharged their duty by relying on rosy hopes for the future. If the'Government Were challenged they ought to be able to say: ‘We guarantee you the safety of the country, and are not prepared to accept a state of affairs which means that London may be destroyed in 12 hours.” Admiral Mark Kerr said the present type of battleship “Hew like the devil from anything in the air or under the water.” It was entirely obsolete. A battleship in the last war might just as well have been at the bottom of the sea. Small air raids over London reduced our output 50 per cent. He shuddered to think of what would be the result of a concerted raid. A resolution was adopted that national security demands a one-power standard in the air and the fullest development of Imperial air routes and British aviation. —A. and N.Z. cable.