SPIRIT OF THE AIRMAN

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23773, 28 September 1940, Page 10

SPIRIT OF THE AIRMAN

There is inspiration in the message broadcast to the British people by Air Marshal W. A. Bishop, V.C., newly arrived in England from Canada. There is inspiration in the man himself and in his record. He was one of those young airmen who, in the last war, fought, in the first instance, against heavy odds, and eventually won supremacy in the skies for the Allied side. When Captain Bishop, as he then was, won the Victoria Cross, he was only 2.5, but was already a seasoned air fighter, with two other decorations for gallantry. At the end of his service he was credited with having shot down V2 enemy machines—and such scores were as rigidly checked then as they are now. Such were the achievements which he describes as "doing his humble best toward victory." Just as he and his youthful comrades of the Royal Air Force carried, with magnificent spirit, the burden of air warfare between 1914 and 1918, so enowliia.jitJbhe .controls,, keeping

watch and ward over the British Isles and striking blows of everincreasing weight ab enemy bases and strongholds. The manner in which those duties are being discharged is an unanswerable retort to charges, made not so long ago, of the decadence of modern youth. In time of peace with no special call to action sounding, the youth of British stock may have appeared casual and unthinking, but when the call was sounded the response came promptly and in full measure. Air Marshal Bishop describes the converging stream of aviators from all parts of the Empire receiving their final training in his own country before passing to the points of duty and of danger. This is something Jio other country in the world can match, and in it he rightly sees the portent of victory.