NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIV, Issue 16434, 10 January 1917, Page 6

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

AIR SERVICE REORGANISATION. The appointment of Commodore Godfrey Payne to the charge of the Royal Naval Air Service, with the rank of Air Lord and a seat on the Admiralty Board, follows closely upon the reorganisation of the Air Board, and the appointment of Lord Cowdray as clwirnian of that body, with Ministerial rank. Ibis suggests that j at long last the air service is being placed on a sound basis. Mr. Lloyd George and his Cabinet hare definitely set their faces against the policy of indecision which weakened the Administration of their I predecessors. The reorganised Air Board! will deal with the production of aeroplanes j upon orders from the two wings of the service. The production of engines will be controlled by a sincle head, and the manufacture of the machines by another. | Thus confusion will give place to method j and remove the feeling that the effort* of ( Britain to keep the control of the air were j beins hampered. The storm which raged j in the House of Commons in May last ■ brought to light sonw unpleasant facts, I which were not reassuring in a country i where the murderous raids of Zeppelins were becoming more and more frequent and daring. Apart from the criticism 1 that the British authorities had failed to keep ahead of the Germans in tho matter of improving the type of their machines and encouraging inventive genius, responsible critics, both inside and outside of Parliament, asserted that the Naval Air Service and the Royal Flying Corps had actually been in competition with one another in obtaining machines and material, and that the quality of control had created much friction, resulting in less of time and delay. As an instance of" this lack of unity it was stated that in pursuit of the policy to navahse the naval wing of the air service from top to bottom the speedometers in the machines, by which the rate of flight was regulated and the position of the aeroplane located, and which were originally made to record in miles, were converted to record in knots. The maps in use were in miles or kilometres, and the result was that pilots, perhaps in danger from a Fokker above or aircraft guns below, had to make an unnecessary calculation to verify their position. This was typical of numerous points of petty friction, which could have no other result than to weaken the British air service and to strengthen the enemy.

THE PORT OF LONDON. The annual report by the Port of London, dealing with the year ended March 31, 1916, says that there never was before such a year for trade in the port. To compare the actual quantity of goods handled in the port with that in pre-war times is not possible, as, with the exception of articles of food, the published returns of the Board of Trade do not include goods which at the time of importation were the property of His Majesty's Gov. ernment or the Governments of the allies. The published figures may be taken as broadly representing onlv the purely commercial transactions of the ports. They leave the enormous war business out of consideration For what they are worth, the returns show that the values of the total imports and exports, excluding coastwise goods, of the United Kingdom for the year 1915 were £1,335,823,979. Of this trade London's share was £496,853,942, or 37.2 per cent. In 1914 the respective figures were £1,222,830,636 and £396,190.333, or 32.4 per cent, fori London. Without allowing for the vast war trade not appearing in the returns, London's values have therefore increased by upwards of £100,600.000 in one year, and its percentage of the trade of the country has increased by 4.8. The augmentation of prices will obviously account for some of the increased value.