BRITISH AIR FORCE

Hokitika Guardian, 9 March 1929, Page 5

BRITISH AIR FORCE

GOVERNMENT ATTACK ED

(Australian Press Association) (United Service).

LONDON, March 7

In the Commons

AI inisfei

Hoare, in answer to a question, said that the increase in the petrol price would cost the Air Force £OIO weekly.

Lieut.-Colonel .Moore Brabiizon (Conservative), a former member or the Government, bitterly attacked the Air Ministry. He said that Mr Baldwin, after last election, said that he had the finest youth of the country behind him. but all that be bad done with those youth was to break their hearts. Mr Baldwin bad also said that be was going to hack his way through vested interests. Did not Sir Samuc Hoare realise that the greatest vented interests that were opposing him were the War Office and the Admiralty. Who, at present, he asked, could toll how much the Army and the Navy could lie reduced if the Air Estimates were to he increased by ten millions? The House of Commons should certainly, have the chance of discussing all of the defence estimates together Lieutenant Colonel Moore Brabnzon, continuing, said that by a stroke of genius Mr Churchill bad leit Iraq to the charge of the Air Force, who now were on the Sudan-1 ndian frontier and were offering a chance of economy. He remarked: “1 really sometimes think that the Government is out foi a fall! It may be, in their great wisdom, that, they think that trie next Government should he a Labour Goveminent, and that it will not do much harm, and that then they themselves will soon return. That is the only explanation of Sir Wm Joynson Hicks’s speeches. .Mr A. W. S. Cunningham Reid (Conservative, Warrington) complained that the senior fighting forces were comfortably “dug in,’ and they refused to leani anything from the war, or to give way an inch to modern conditions. They bad carefully forgotten bow the Londoners nightly had to go to the collars and the tubes to avoid bombs. Britain had only twen-ty-one commercial aeroplanes. Trance and Germany had ’250 each. Germany find eighteen thousand miles of air routes, and France had 12,500 miles, while Britain had only 1080 miles. By spending' more on the Air Force, he said, and less on the Army and the Navy, both the Exchequer and national security would benefit. Captain Wedgewood Bonn (Labour) said that the real problem- was. to promote civil aviation and to prevent it being turned to the accursed purposes of war. If they were going on the processes ol .war, Germany undoubtedly had the air leadership of Europe, owing to her numbers of aeroplanes, her accumulation of stores, and her practical pilots. The only way to disjoin Germany, he s:iid, was to disarm Europe. Sir Philip Sassoon, Bart (Conseivative. Hytlie), replying to the Labour Party’s amendment in favour of aerial disarmament, pointed out that drastic reductions made after the war had caused Britain, from being the first air power in the world, to become the fifth. No further reductions bn Britain’s part would influence other nations that at present were extending their Air Forces.