The Timaru Herald SATURDAY, MARCH 23, 1935 MENACE IN THE AIR.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXIX, Issue 20065, 23 March 1935, Page 8

The Timaru Herald SATURDAY, MARCH 23, 1935 MENACE IN THE AIR.

“I think it is well for the man in the street to realise,” declared Mr Stanley Baldwin, in the course of a recent speech on armaments in relation to national defence, “that there is no power on earth that can protect him from being bombed, whatever people may tell him. The bomber will always get through.” Mr Baldwin, in his considered statement, voices the views of that school of thought which has come to the conclusion that there is no defence from air attacks except retaliation; indeed, Mr Baldwin’s conclusions are shared alike by layman and expert. Leading military and aviation- experts insist that the country that wishes to survive in a “war of areas” must, in scifpvotection, resort to countermeasures in order to oblige the enemy to desist from their action. Obviously this line of policy would impose on the world conditions of life that would inevitably become intolerable. Nevertheless, the advocates of retaliation ns the best means of defence are legion. Lord Rothermere, for instance, in

one of his articles written in The Sunday Pictorial about a year ago, in which he pleads for greater air forces with which to place the country in a “position to retaliate if attacked,” and which he heads “Armaments Mean Peace,” writes: “World conflicts come by blunder rather than by design Our pacifists assume that the aggressor is always the first to strike.”

Such a statement has complications as hearing upon the efficacy of retaliation, which the newspaper peer does not seem quite to have considered, since he goes on:

The most formidable weapon is now the aeroplane. It can strike a decisive blow before any other form of armament is ready. Yet of all arms the

aeroplane is the easiest to produce swiftly and secretly. The only effective deterrent to aerial aggression is the certainty of retaliation in kind. It is not armament, but disarmament, which is the sure cause of war, for it invites attack.

If then Lord Rothermere has accurately assessed the problem of lighting aircraft, the only hope of the world is to create giant air forces that will, throughout the twenty-four hours of the day, literally strain at the leash in readiness for aerial attacks. The menace of aircraft needs only to be stated to be realised. Mrs Amy Mollison thus puts the case very succinctly: “If the aggressor in the next war is strong enough and quick enough, the first mighty blow from the air will probably prove the deciding factor for victory. It will mean instant surrender or utter ruin. In the last war we were more or less unprepared, but we had means at hand to rectify our deficiencies. Factories were commissioned, labour mobilised and munitions and war material turned out as fast as humanly possible. There will be no time to prepare after the next declaration of war. In Europe there are thousands of long range bombers, perfectly capable of flying over England and destroying her factories, affecting the morale of the workers, and effectively crippling the country’s means of preparation..

All reports indicate that the science of aviation has progressed so extensively in recent years that even in thick cloud and fog pilots can fly blind to their objective, drop their bombs and return unseen. Apart then from disarmament, the countries of Europe have only one way of defence—reprisals in kind. In the new technique required in aerial tactics, the best defence is attack. Such a policy offers three major advantages: First: It will save machines from being blown to pieces in their hangars; Secondly: It may mean the enemy will have to call off fighter squadrons from other strategic points to defend their cities; and

Thirdly: It will help the morale of the people to know for a certainly that something is being done and that the enemy is suffering equally.

Enlightened peoples will shudder before such awful prospects. The opponents of this school of thought have repeatedly put the question: Retaliation for what? The only safe answer the peoples of the world can give is to endorse the moving appeal made by the Leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons, when he said that Britain and the other enlightened countries should face the issues of the day and, in realising that aerial warfare threatens the whole future of mankind, they should invite the nations to lay on the altar of disarmament, the whole business of aerial warfare.