EMPIRE AIR FORCE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVIII, Issue 75, 25 February 1938, Page 9

EMPIRE AIR FORCE.

ONE UNIT SUGGESTED. HEADQUARTERS IN CANADA. LONDON, Jan. 31. Reviewing the book of the airman, Mr Norman McMillan, “The Chosen Instrument,” Mr Ward Price, in the Daily Mail, supports his advocacy of an Empire air force. Mr Ward Price points out that the Chinese and Spanish campaigns demonstrate the value of air forces as weapons, and agrees with Mr MacMillan that Britain has not yet found a man who is prepared to sweep the skies as Nelson swept the seas, showing that air war need not threaten Britain’s urban populations, but could be waged in distant skies. “The only large British town which cannot be reached in two hours from Geimany is Glasgow,” Mr Ward Price adds, “while from Italy, Edinburgh could be bombed in three and a-half hours. Germany is the most favoured nation in Europe for the employment of air power.. She can hit out in all directions; .one day against Britain and France, and the next day against Czechoslovakia and Russia.” Mr MacMillan deplores the fact that the naval and military outlook dominates Britain, to the detriment of the possibilities of air warfare. He advocates the reduction of machines to six types, capable of both bombing and fighting, and urges the prganisation of the British Commonwealth of Nations into one aerial defensive unit with headquarters, arsenal and factories in Canada, as the sole part of the Empire standing secure.