The Sun MONDAY, AUGUST 20, 1928 PEACE AND AIR PERILS

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 437, 20 August 1928, Page 8

The Sun MONDAY, AUGUST 20, 1928 PEACE AND AIR PERILS

THE new terror for the British nation is the imaginative destruction of London by hostile air fleets and the quick suffocation of the city’s huddled millions of inhabitants by poisonous gas. This horror is painted luridly in cabled news to-day by military experts and enthusiasts with something of the glee that inspires maniacs in a wild career of devastation. The picture has been presented to the Empire as the logical outline of the lessons taught last week by the mimic air warfare over London.

The evidence of the highly successful battle has convinced the appraising authorities that, if the conflict had been acts of Avar, half of London at least would have been in ruins-, while the area across the Thames would have been gas-logged with such density as to carry on a favourable south-west wind death and desolation to millions of helpless people. Apparently the raiding eagles won, as no doubt they were intended to win, so that it might he demonstrated to a peace-loving nation, which is cordially sending plenipotentiary representatives to Paris this month to sign an international treaty renouncing war as a barbarous instrument of arbitration, that the capital of the world’s greatest Empire is at the mercy of European air fleets. And already there is a resentful outcry about Great Britain’s characteristic unpreparedness for attack from the air. A peer of the realm, who served in the Royal Air Force during the world war, leads the chorus of lamentation and denunciatory comment on the farcical character of the recent air manoeuvres. Thus the Earl of Halsbury deliberately warns the nation that it is in deadly peri!. If the peril of air warfare on England be as deadly as the flying peer foresees, where is its source and whence its direction? Which nation is Great Britain’s potential enemy in the air, and by what process of reason does Lord Halsbury or anybody else just now visualise an aggressive declaration of war imperilling the safety of London’s West End? Germany has no air force and is forbidden from establishing one. It is true that Great Britain, for home defence purposes, has a relatively meagre air force, costing a trivial £16,000,000 a year. It maintains only eleven and a-half squadrons, or about 140 machines. This does seem ludicrous in comparison with the air forces of other nations near and far. France has a formidable force with 1,500 aircraft and 200 fighting and observation squadrons. Italy has the same number of Hying machines and plans to raise the aggregate to 4,500 in the near future. Soviet Russia has a mighty air force—on paper—though actually the Red Bolsheviks have about 500 efficient machines and many German instructors. The United States also has a strong air force, and aims at having 1,000 naval machines maintained in immediate readiness, hut it has not yet got a thousand Lindbarghs. In the event of an outbreak of war against Great Britain from a European source, London, beyond doubt, would be in deadly peril. But is there any likelihood of France or Italy, or even Soviet Russia, declaring war on the British Empire? As leading British statesmen have said from their hearts, not merely in glib lip-service, war between France and the British nation throughout the Empire is unthinkable. Italy and Russia would have to fiy a long way before their bombing planes menaced Mayfair and the stately mansions of the West End. Why should there be so much wild talk about the prospect of war more terrible than the conflict that beggared nations and mocked Christianity a decade or so ago? To-day, the whole world seeks peace and prays for it, because every sane mah who looks at the results of the worst war in history realises that war is the murderous game of fi mad world. And while the prayers of prelates and people ascend to the God of Peace and great nations’ statesmen hasten to make a pact outlawing war, military, naval, and air warfare experts yell for armaments, so that, in the interests of world peace, all nations should be armed to the teeth. In the old days the plea was armaments for war; now it has becomq a demand for armaments fox’ peace. The position is either an absurdity or a brazen exercise of international hypocrisy.

SOUTH AFRICA ONE UP

JUDGED by New Zealand standards, the victory of the Springboks in the third Rugby test at Port Elizabeth on Saturday leaves no room for unsatisfying arguments about the value of potted goals and penalty kicks as a match-winning factor in big football. After the unprecedented crop of goals in the first two tests, it came as a mild surprise to find all the points in Saturday’s match scored by tries and conversions. The game, too, seems to have been quite different from the two previous matches, which were dominated by “safety first” tactics. On Saturday, wearisome scrummaging and incessant line-kicking gave way to a splendid display of the best features of the Rugby game. South Africa is to he warmly congratulated on its brilliant and decisive victory. New Zealand made a good fight, but was beaten by a better side. There remains a slender chance that the All Blacks can win the fourth test by a sufficiently convincing margin to claim equality with South Africa on the results of the present series of matches. But the Points Register—34 to 13—is heavily against them, and it would be unwise to build up any extravagant hopes of a complete reversal of form in the deciding match at Capetown on Saturday week.