LESSONS OF THE AIR RACE

Waikato Times, Volume 116, Issue 19430, 3 December 1934, Page 6

LESSONS OF THE AIR RACE

“The Air Ministry created for defence is no more qualified to promote British progress in civil aviation is the Admiralty to supervise the British mercantile marine,” states’Mr J. L. Garvin, writing in the Observer on the results of the Melbourne Centenary Air Race. “The Board of Trade would be a far better authority in this connection. As Scott and Black with their Comet have shown again, we have all the latent resources we could desire iu respect of human stuff and scientific capacity. Yet by comparison with several other countries, even with little Holland, our long-distance services are too limited and too slow. Since Parmentier and Moll have reached Melbourne with their ‘ flying hotel,’ the Dutch have ordered ten more of the ‘ American Douglas ’ craft.

“We can match any example in larger designs as in smaller, but only on condition that our manufacturers receive equal encouragement. It is useless to complain of foreign subsidies. They are there; they will stay there for a long while to come; and meanwhile they have to be met, as in the case of our mercantile marine, unless we are to be run out of the air even on the main Empire routes, just as our tramp tonnage was in peril of being run off the seas.

“ Two conclusions stand out. First, instead of mixing up things that differ, we must emancipate civil aviation from the present terms of its dependence on the Air Ministry. Ministerial supervision and stimulus can be better -exerted by different means. Secondly, we must provide the requisite equality of public support. We are convinced that it can be done with relatively little increase of the nation’s total charges. It- may he said, and with too much truth, that the present tendency is to subsidise everything. There is the more need for the Cabinet to undertake a searching examination of the whole subject; to look into all its branches;'to reconsider relative values; to decide what we are hound to face; and to redistribute some of the expenditure. >

“ Nothing is more important than that the costs of agricultural policy shall be squared in a reasoned manner with the costs of other vital and inescapable measures, national and Imperial. If our existing circumstances were those of inexhaustible wealth and featherAveight taxation, Ave might indeed subsidise everything. Public funds, for instance, might nourish abounding quantities of patriotic beetroot. But in vieAv of coming necessities, like fair support to our tramp tonnage and adequate development of our civil aviation, Ave are thoroughly convinced that most of tRo millions iioav lavished on sugar beet Avjll have to be othenvise devoted. Financial revision has become an absolute necessity in vieAv of the comparative calls.