AMERICA AND THE AIR PROBLEM.

Taranaki Daily News, 24 July 1918, Page 7

AMERICA AND THE AIR PROBLEM.

WHY HER EFFORT IS DELAYED. THE RIGHT HELP AT THE RIGHT TIME. Mr. Edward Price Bell, who has rendered so many services to the Allies before and since America came into the war, and is one of the authorities best fitted to speak on the subject, explains in the article below the facts about America's war preparations, especially with regard to aircraft, about which disquieting statements lave recently ibeen made. London, April 28. What is the position as regards America and the air problem? It has been stated that as lato as it month ago America had sent only one fighting aeroplane to France. It has been affirmed in London within the past twenty-four hours that even yet "scarcely a single American fighting plane has been delivered in France." It has been asserted, further, that the United States' would have in Franco less than forty fighting planes 'by next August. Let us accept these extreme statements as true. Then what is the position?

America, as I suppose most will agree, is a great metallurgic, engineering, and manufacturing country. It may not have all the "hustle" some pert sons have imagined, but T presume it is not much slower than are other nations. Now, does it not strike you as reinarkahl?, as suggesting some very special explanation, that a great metallurgic, engineering, and manufacturing nation should have taken a year to make one fighting aeroplane, and should require a year and a-half to make less than forty?

To the extreme statements mentioned above T have objected, and to them I still object. I do not object to them in the least out of any nationalist sentiment; I object to them because, in their bah! and unrelated state, they convey a complete misapprehension of the situation. They make it appear that nothing whatever baa boon done to mount a great American offensive in the air. They ignore our thousands of trained and ready pilots—pilots carefully trained by Britons, Frenchmen, Italians) and .Americans—and our immense constructional and mechanical preparation in France for large operations in the air. They not only do this; subtly they undermine confidence in everything American in the war—tend to make your people forgot; our soldiers and .'iailors, their number, their spirit, our Dreadnoughts, submarines, destroyers, U-boat chasers, and whatever else we are and mean touching the great conflict, f have been asked how it is I own think of extreme criticism of the methods and mistakes of the Washington Administration as a good tiling in America, but not a good thing m Britain. My answer is that wo need the enkindmg effect of extreme estimates of our failures, wh le you need at least a balanced view of the case.

We are a long way from the war; yon are close to it—in the very firing-line, 'i on .have had your failures, your merciless criticism, your profound national awakening. As anyone who has visited your great shipyards and factories well knows, that you are doing all that is humanly possible. You need now, in my judgment, not a one-sided view of American frailties and failures, but a sustaining hope—T feel absolutely certain, not n. delusive hope—that in due time we shall come to the succour of civilisation with irresistible force, and that your toil and grief and sacrifice shall not have been in vain. THE BEST TYPE. Xow for the reason of America's apparent occupation for a year or more in the manufacture of one—or ''scarcely a single"- fighting aeroplane. Let us admit at once that the .land of reputed "hustle" is, indeed, behindhand in the actual building of war-pianos. Why? Well, her backwardness in *the actual budding of wai'planes, whatever else may be said of it, is not accidental; it is deliberate. "Hustle'' or no "hustle" has nothing to do with it; it is' entirely a matter of judgment and of policy—whether of good judgment and of good policy is a question of opinion, and one that probably time alone can answer. America has been waiting to build—yet trying to make sure of building in good time—those particular types of fighting planes which European experience should indicate as the machines l.kely to be the best at. the time when America would be able to play her really great part in the war. It was the official view in Washington that there was no reason for hurry in I his particular matter. Britain and Trance had enough of planes of the existing types for immediate needs. Mr. Churchill has just stated in the House cf Commons that the manufacture of British aeroplanes is in advance of the development of squadrons in organisation and of trained pilots. Why, then, "hould America have concentrated upon anything but the building of the best plane that could be designed for the later stages of the war?

PLANS HEADY LAST JUTA". Our Air Board was ready as far back as July 4. last with its plans for warplane construction Having regard to the comparative non-urgency of the demand for machines at that time, the War Department, fearing the best had not been provided for, held things up, while a commission was rushed to Europe and back By this commission change.-! were recommended, ami new drawings were made. Scarcely bad these been completed when a cable from Europe caused our engineers to make another set of drawings. This third set was finally .discarded for a fourth, and all the while our manufacturers, with their great accumulations of material, and thoir tens of thousands of assembled mechanics, were waiting for the word "Go!'' This won! was withheld by the War Department, and withheld for these two reasons: (I) That the demand for pianos in Europe was not greater than the combined Allied capacities, and (2) that it was still uncertain whether we bad obtained the plans embodying the latest lessons of European experience for planes that probably would have the highest efficiency at the actual time of America's powerful participation in the war. Would it not have been deplorable if the Allies and America, at the time of .America's great effort against the GerImans, had found themselves in possession of a superfluity of old-tpye machines in face of a crying neefssitfl... i or

new-typo machines? Moreover, the. shipping situation has not been such as to warrant us, with a discerning sense of our interests, or of the interests of anyone associated with us in this enterprise, in using precious tonnago for the transportation of planes not only not actually needed, but for which we had not had time to construct tiie huge aviation bases required in France. All along, as everyone knows, there has been a necessity, from the point of view of every nation fighting for liberty in this war, that everything possible should be done to use every ton of shipping afloat to meet that particular need of the Allies which was most urgent at the moment, whether-for raw materials, munitions, food, or men. To have used tonnage prematurely for American aeroplanes would have been, it seems to me, indefensible.

THE NEEDS OF THE MOMENT,

From the beginning of the war, even when we were neutral—it always has been my profound conviction that we never should have been neutral, certainly never should have been neutral so long—wo helped the Allies all we could. When they wanted guns and shells, to the best of our ability we gave them these. When they wanted food, wo gave them food. When they wanted money, we gave them money. When, after we were in the war, they wanted men, we gave them men. If they had asked us to rush aeroplanes, I daresay we should have rushed these, just as President Wilson immediately granted the request for the brigading of American soldiers with British and FrencJi divisions. Since the need of the Allies has been our law, why should it have been different in the matter of aeroplanes ?

While any taint of boasting is utterly remote from our minds, we have the pilots, and we shall have the planes--find planes, as nearly as possible, of Ihe right types—when we are ready to make our distinctive effort. And when 'his time shall come, as I feel everyone Mioiild remember, 'depends not wholly upon us,; we have placed our troops and all they possess absolutely at the disposal of the Allied command.

THE NEXT PHASE. America's military part as yet, to be imre, is auxiliary. Her own hour has not struck. What we see now in the •.yar, from t!ie # point of view of the Allies, as it seems to me, is the great defensive phase, critical, heavy, bloody. But the day surely is coming when we shall have, from the point of view of the Allies, the great offensive phase, possibly more critical, heavier, bloodier. It is in this great offensive phase that America hopes to make her real contribution to the cause. It is in this phase Hint she hopes to use her battle-planes, .'.mcrica does not expect to do it all in this phase; far from it. But she expects, with Britain on guard in the .N'orth, and France on guard in the centre, to thrust a spearhead into Germany that will draw so many German divisions in this direction that what is now the German West front will become, in a sense, the German right flank. And when this flank exposes itself attractively to' the British and the Frencn, I think we shall find the British, the French, and the Americans supported, in their varying degrees of weight, by their magnificent comrades of other nationalities, striking with that totality of force which will mean the world's deliverance from the unspeakable Hun. This war must be won: we cannot say it too often. It can be won only by fighting. So-called political offensives—though, even now, one hesitates, in all conceivable contingencies, to conn* sel utter despair of them—so-called political offensives, thus far, where they have not resulted in farce and mockery, have resulted in colossal and tragic disaster and ignominy. Tn such a struggle as this—such a struggle against such a foe—there is an ine.vorable demand for infinite fortitude and patience and scorn of all else but victor)-. We must not complain of delays, if such delays are caused by sound scientific, strategic, and practical considerations. We must leave our greatest minds free, I think, to marshal our combined resources in a way that will measure out our all against the Hun, so that his last ounce of energy and power will fail before ours fails.

We have no strength to waste. . We can indulge no vanities, national or military, that cost strength. The cause requires as economical a use of men as possible, and requires of these men absolutely all there is in them. Two men must not be set to do one man's job. On the contrary, at least in some cases, one mah must be set to do two, three; half a dozen's men's jobs. This bitter cruelty of a bitterly cruel situation we recently have seen imperishably illustrated by British and French officers and men on the West front. I dare!>ay we shall see much more of it, for by such methods, such sacrifices, shall the armies of freedom win.