Aviation in Peace and War

by Sir Frederick Hugh Sykes

Civil aviation is not, however, merely a method of amplifying service air power. It has a vast potential value of its own. Communications shape human destinies. The evolution of our civilization bears strongly the marks of the systems which at various stages have made the intercourse of men and ideas possible. Its history is one of endeavour to extend the limits imposed upon human living and mobility in each of the great phases through which it has passed.

There was the phase of the coracle and the roller-wheeled vehicle, stretching back into the roadless mists of unrecorded time; of roads which gradually linked the important areas of the Roman Empire; of inland and coastal waterways; of ocean traffic, and its huge advance with the discovery of steam-power, which brought England to the fore.

With each phase the world shrinks smaller and the mists of the unknown recede. The development of human mobility is the greatest marvel of the present age. We can hardly realize that it was only the other day, as these things go—in 1819, just a hundred years before the same feat was accomplished by air-that the first sailing ship fitted with auxiliary steam (and not until 1828 that a real steamship) crossed the Atlantic.

Strain and competition are increasing. Trains vie with ships; motor transport with trains. Telephones, wireless, cables, and flying are speeding up communications to a degree undreamed of a few years ago. If the air is to be a prime factor in the world-phase to come, how will the British Empire be affected? Stretching from Great Britain to Australia and the Pacific Ocean, the Empire depends more than any other political and commercial organization on the most modern and speedy communications, and as each of its portions assumes greater responsibility there is greater need for co-operation, the distribution of information, and the personal contact of statesmen and business men. "The old order changeth, yielding place to new"; and in communications the new order is air transport.

Equally important is the international aspect. To-day we are deeply concerned with the maintenance of peace, and this can be achieved, not so much by the action of Governments, or the efforts of the League of Nations, as by the personal association of individuals of one nation with those of another, and an increasing recognition of common interests. I conceive that civil aviation, by reducing the time factor of intercommunication, will tend to bring peoples into closer touch with each other and will make for mutual understanding. The Peace Treaty provided for an Air Convention for the international control of civil aviation. The Convention has been signed by all the Allied nations which took part in the war, and I hope other countries will shortly be included. As soon as the Convention has been ratified, the International Commission of Air Navigation will be established, and for the first time the world will see the international control of a great transport service. I believe this will prove an important practical step towards international co-operation and goodwill.

We have no excuse for ignorance of the effects of Imperial and international co-operation. The war gave us an example of what the British Empire can do, provided its combined knowledge and effort is brought to bear for one great purpose; and in no respect was this better exemplified than in the utilization and scientific development of aviation. The world-position of the Empire as a whole is still the best. Commerce and communications are its bonds, and, if we are so determined, it is in our power to shape the destinies of the future.

A definite advance has been made since the Armistice and, if all goes well, a very much greater one will be made during the next two or three years, and in ten years mercantile air services will be operating on a self-supporting basis. The science and concentration employed in the war must be made to serve the requirements of peace. Readiness for, and success in, war are vital when war is unavoidable, but in peace it is civil and commercial activity which is vital.

As in its infancy it seemed incredible to those responsible for the direction of the older services that the air would be their most valuable partner; as, during the war, they grudged its logical development to strike widely where they could not reach, and tried to tether it closely to them, so now in peace the air is struggling to attain the apotheosis of communication.

In the phase of world commerce of which we are on the threshold, science, brain-power, energy, and faith must, and increasingly will, be harnessed to the work of perfecting air communication so that human mobility can be increased, knowledge interchanged, and the fruits of production distributed throughout the world.

As a soldier I have of course dwelt on the possibility of war in the future and of the part which aviation would play in it, but it would be a great mistake—though I think that mistake is constantly made—to suppose that soldiers look forward with equanimity to the prospect of war. On the contrary, soldiers, more even than civilians, if this be possible, realize the horrors of war and recognize that the great task rests upon the statesmen of all nations, and upon humanity itself, of taking whatever steps can be taken to prevent its recurrence.