AIR SERVICES.

Colonist, Volume LXI, Issue 15024, 19 March 1919, Page 5

AIR SERVICES.

MILITARY AND CIVILIAN.

SPEECH BY MAJOR-GENERAL

SEELY.'

(Australian & N.Z. Cable Association.)

(Received March 18, 7.40 p.m.)

London, March 13

Major-General Seely, Under-Seere-tary. of State for Air, in the House of Commons, moved an air vote ;of £45,000,000 on account of the total estimate of £66,000,000, which he said would possibly be reduced when peace was signed. It would have been £200,000,000 if the war had continued. Great Britain started the war with six squadrons, and now had two hundred. She was building 4000, aeroplanes monthly when the armistice was signed. TChree thousand eight hundred of ours were missing during the war

period

Three millions sterling is earmarked for experiment and research in civil aviation. He believed that the "proportion of air to land and sea forces would constantly grow. Possibly a few years would make the present armies and fleets obsolete.

The possibilities of carrying mails between Cairo and India were extremely favourable. The Air Ministry proposed to concentrate its first efforts on this route.

Major-General Seely added that the whole of the Air Force research would remain at the service of civilian aviation.

"We are further advanced than, other nations as regarded civil aviation," he said. "Our next duty is to plan aerial routes at home and abroad. We have at last got a wireless telephone by which in the same operation we can send and receive messages. There are also many other extraordinary inventions made in war-time, including an apparatus for taking o series of photographs at a great height, giving a more; accurate survejr of the land below than could be obtained by months of ordinary survey. The Germans were first in the field in the direction of wireless, but we got the Germans' code and thereby knew exactly where to attack their fliers. We were able to direct machines from the ground with complete success."