Civil Aviation as a Factor in National Security.
The picture I have drawn may appear highly coloured for the reason that no country is likely for some time to possess sufficiently large air forces to obtain a decisive victory, or at any rate an uncontested superiority, at the outbreak of war. Though in air, as in every other form of warfare, attack is more effective than defence, we cannot afford to keep our air forces up to war strength in peace any more than our Army or Navy.
The problem, from a military point of view, is therefore to ensure an adequate reserve and to maintain our capacity for expansion to meet emergencies. The number of units maintained at war establishment should be the absolute minimum for safety and of the type immediately required on mobilization, i.e. long-range bombing and naval reconnaissance squadrons. The remainder should be in cadre form. We can, of course, maintain a fixed number of machines and pilots in reserve for every one on the active list, but, although some such system is necessary, on a large scale it is open to many and serious objections. First of all, even on a cadre basis, it means keeping inactive at considerable cost a number of machines which may never be used and which, however carefully stored, quickly deteriorate. Knowledge of aeronautics is still slender and improvements are made so continuously that machines may become obsolete within a few months. Moreover, the growth of service aviation in peace must tend to become artificial and conventional rather than natural, and this will react on design and construction, which will be cramped, both technically and financially, within the limits imposed by service requirements.
It is obvious therefore that the capacity of the construction industry to expand cannot be fostered by service aviation alone; furthermore, in the event of another war of attrition, expansion will be more essential than any amount of machine reserve power immediately available, and in the event of a war of short duration that power will win which has the greatest preponderance of machines, service or civil, fit to take the air. The asphyxiation of a large enemy city, if within range, can be done by night-flying commercial machines, and it would require a defending force of great numerical superiority for its successful defence.
Whether, therefore, from this point of view, or others, which I will mention later, another solution must be found, and this lies in the development of civil aviation. An analogy in the Navy and the Mercantile Marine has long been apparent. "Sea power," says Mahan, "is based upon a flourishing industry." Substitute "air" for "sea" and the analogy is still true. The Navy owed its origin to our mercantile enterprise and to-day it depends upon the Mercantile Marine for its reserve power of men and material. In the same way must air power be built up on commercial air supremacy. If we accept Mahan, or the dictum of any other great naval or military historian or strategist, a service air force by itself is not air power, and after a brief if brilliant flash must wither if reserves are not immediately at hand. A large commercial air fleet will provide, not only a reserve of men and machines, but it will keep in existence an aircraft industry, with its designing and constructional staffs, capable of quick and wide expansion in emergency; and such an industry will not be employed on the design of contrivances for use in a possible war, but on meeting the practical requirements of everyday air transport and navigation.
Thus a natural, practical and healthy, as opposed to a stereotyped and artificial, growth will be ensured. Our naval supremacy is largely attributable to the interest which the people as a whole have traditionally taken in naval policy; in other words, to the fact that we are a seafaring nation. Similarly air supremacy can only be secured if the air-sense of the man in the street is fostered, and aviation is not confined to military operations, but becomes a part of everyday life. At the present time commercial aviation is far too small to play the part of reservoir to the Royal Air Force—an object which must constitute one of the principal claims for support of the nucleus already in existence.
Civil Aviation as an Instrument of Imperial Progress.
Civil aviation, however, has not only an indirect military, but, with its superiority in speed over other means of transport, a direct commercial utility. The nation which first substitutes aircraft for other means of transport will be more than half-way towards the supremacy of the air. Moreover, as the Roman Empire was built upon its roads and as the foundations of the British Empire have hitherto rested upon its shipping, as steam, the cable and wireless have each in turn been harnessed to the work of speeding up communications, so to-day, with the opening of a new era of Imperial co-operation and consultation, this new means of transport by air, with a speed hitherto undreamed of, must be utilized for communication and commerce between the various portions of the Empire.
A comparison of the French and British attitudes towards civil aviation clearly demonstrates the two policies I have mentioned. Both France and England grant subsidies—France the very much larger sum—but the great difference lies in the objects aimed at. French policy is fostering civil aviation as a part of its military policy and, a portion of the subsidy being given to machines fulfilling service requirements, there is a strong tendency for French civil aviation to be military air power camouflaged. British policy, on the other hand, should aim at fostering civil aviation primarily as a commercial concern and believes that air commerce is the basis of air power as a whole. We are prepared to face the tendency of military and civil machines to diverge if that divergence is essential to the commercial machine.
An alternative to the British policy of maintaining a small air force and fostering commercial aviation as a reserve is the Canadian plan of a small air force training school and a civil Government flying service with such objects as forest patrol, survey and coastguard duties, the work being carried out on repayment for Government departments, provincial governments and private corporations. The former method, allowing of independent commercial expansion, is better suited to British mentality and requirements, but its success will depend on a genuine endeavour to make commercial aviation the real and vital basis of our air power. Experience in commercial operation cannot be gained by the exploitation of air routes or the carriage of mails or passengers under Service auspices. It is only by running transport services, as far as possible under private management, that operational data can be obtained, economies effected, and the design of strictly commercial machines improved.