WOMEN AS AVIATORS

Levin Daily Chronicle, 21 September 1918, Page 4

WOMEN AS AVIATORS

AN UNTAVOUBABLE VIEW. Doubtless a number of ardent young women.-who are out for adventure at any price have now seen themselves in imagination attired in the coquettish kit of the Eoyal Air Force gallantly dropping bomjjs on Berlin, or possibly even landing with a mass of others, and abducting the Kaiser from German headquarters from under the very nose of a staff petrified by mingled astonishment and admiration (writes Mr C. G. Grey in the '.'Daily Express," commenting on a Parliamentary utterance regarding women as aviators). As a matter of fact, flying is not a woman's job. Admittedly there have been women who could fly quite well, but in 10 years' intimate and constant connection with aviation I can only xejnember_three women who eouldrby any strctch of imagination Toe called good pilots, and they were «2together exceptional in every way. -. The rest were'like the average. woman car-driver. They had excellent eyes and excellent hands,, but they always lost their heads in. a sudden emergency. To put it more ov less metaphorically, they always let go tho wheel' and grabbed their hats whenever a gust hit them. No doubt, by a process of very careful elimination it would be possible to discover several hundreds of woine*. in the British Islas who would make very, f excellent pilots but.those hundreds" would be the exceptions to the rest, I just as-the three already , mentioned j were the exception of several dozen, | and the question arises whether the finding of those few hundred capable women would justify the cost of weeding them out from the thousands of enthusiastic young Women who would apply for the job. This cost would not be merely a matter of money, because money does not count in war-time, especially when it is somebody else's money. The cost would be the waste of precious time and material,, in the machines smashed by incompetent learners, and in the lives of the prospective mothers of the next generation.. In peace-time it might be all very well for a well-to-do woman to keep a nice, I quiet, comfortable aeroplane for t her | own private flying, or it might be very nice for the pilot of a fast two-seater fitted with dual controls to hand over I the control to his best girl when tak--1 ing her for a cross-country trip, and at i a safe altitude; but there certainly I docs not seem the slightest reason, still | less any necessity, for women pilots' m wartime. *