COSTLY ECONOMY

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 730, 1 August 1929, Page 8

COSTLY ECONOMY

ABOARD the cruiser Tourville, as she lies at the Central "Wharf, can be seen two modern and powerful aircraft. Had the Tourville been in New Zealand waters on a hostile instead of a friendly mission, she could, while, still far out at sea, have sent her seaplanes over Auckland to bomb a defenceless city. The possibility of such an invasion, of course, is extremely remote, but it cannot altogether be ignored, and the very presence of the. Tourville with her modern and dangerous auxiliaries lends interest to the statement of the Prime Minister that “aerial defence must wait.”.

Apparently the Government’s sole immediate contribution to the development of aviation is to be a licence for an Art Union! Vet it is only a few weeks since the Minister of Defence was going the rounds of potential airports and heralding either by implication or in so many words the dawn of a golden age of air development. Like so many of his colleagues, he was evidently speaking “out of his turn,” and expectations of a generous policy toward aviation are henceforth dashed by the short-sighted pronouncement of his leader. One of the Prime Minister’s chief objections to aviation seems to he its cost:. He seems to consider that neither private nor public economy can be served by an attempt to develop wings. But a policy that leaves large and populous parts of the country without any sort of air defences, and open to attack from the auxiliary machines of vessels belonging to foreign Powers, is liable in the final reckoning to be a very costly form of economy. Airminded people throughout the Dominion will be deeply disappointed at the Prime Minister’s attitude, which seems not only to foreshadow an actual reduction in the allowance to the existing air force, but also to imply that the official aid by which many towns hoped to provide airports will he curtailed. Air development cannot come without landing-grounds, and hence private flying will he seriously discouraged. The country will find itself without an efficient organised force and also without trained civilian flyers on whom to call in case of need. The £500,000 which the Government is spending on the present system of training is not a large sum and could well be supplemented. In any case, it might as well not be spent at all if the territorial army is not to have efficient support in the air. Every ex-soldier knows the terrible plight of the poor “footsloggers” when they are without the support of fighting planes. The Government grudges a few thousand toward the development of an air force, and yet one of its members, defending the huge prospective expenditure on the South Island Main Trunk railway, recently voiced the amiable platitude that the line would be "useful for defence”!