The story of the British air service in the days before the War is so
characteristically English that I must give a few lines to it if only to
make quite clear the realisation of what we have done to meet the new
dangers which, as usual, caught us unprepared.
We exhibited as a nation a most regrettable reluctance to comprehend the
value of the aeroplane and the airship as a means of making war.
We failed utterly to grasp the fact that with the coming of the
aeroplane a new factor had entered into military science, just as, in
the early days of the submarine, we neglected the new invention until we
had lagged behind other nations to an extent that, under different
circumstances, might well have proved disastrous. We made a few feeble
and futile efforts in aeroplane construction; we dallied tentatively
with airships of a microscopic pattern. The flying wing of the Army was
half starved, and the advice and remonstrances of the men who had really
studied and understood the subject were cold-shouldered by the
authorities to whom everything new and revolutionary was--and too often
is--anathema.
I have studied the progress of aviation from the time when I acted as a
judge at the first Aviation Meeting held in this country--on Doncaster
racecourse. It may perhaps be remembered that in the early days of
flying, when the _Daily Mail_ offered a prize of 10,000 pounds for the
first flight from London to Manchester, a misguided evening journal
derisively offered a prize of a million pounds for the first man who
flew, I think, ten miles.
No doubt the sneer was inspired partly by professional jealousy of the
_Daily Mail_, but it revealed, in very striking fashion, the mental
attitude, shared unfortunately by our military authorities, of those who
refused to see in the new arm anything more than a very complicated,
useless, and dangerous toy.
Time has slipped along since Sommer, Le Blon, and Cody flew at
Doncaster; the pioneers of aviation persisted in their efforts, and
within three years of the _Daily Mail's_ offer being made the prize had
been won. Tremendous progress was made in every department of flying,
and the keener students of military affairs realised that in the
aeroplane there had arrived a weapon, both of offence and defence, which
would go far to revolutionise warfare as it had been understood in the
past.
None the less, our Army lagged far behind the rest of the world. Either
the War authorities were not sufficiently insistent, or the Treasury
turned a deaf ear to their appeals for money for the development of the
new science.
The result was that while our French friends and our German enemies--for
they were our enemies even then, as we have now good reason to know--
were pushing ahead with aerial investigation and securing a lead which
might well have been fatal to us, the British air service languished in
comparative neglect. It is certainly hardly too much to say that but
for the assistance given by the _Daily Mail_ flying in England would
have been utterly and totally neglected. The result was what might have
been expected, and the outcome was characteristically British.
When the War broke out we were in a condition of decided inferiority to
the French fliers--that perhaps mattered little, as we were fighting on
the same side--and very much behindhand in relation to Germany, which
mattered a great deal. We had to make up in quality--and of the quality
of our airmen there was happily no question--what we lacked in
equipment. We were entirely without airships comparable in any way to
the Zeppelins, and we had nothing like the number of the German
"Tauben." Most happily for us the quality of our airmen proved far
beyond anything which Germany possesses, and in the matter of men we
took at once, and have since held, a commanding lead.
It was not long before the value of the new arm was signally
demonstrated. In all probability the fate of the British Army in the
early days of the War was decided by air reconnaissance. It was one of
the air scouts who discovered the enormous concentration of German
troops before Sir John French's army, and thus gave the timely warning
which made the great retreat from Mons a possibility.
What followed reproduced in striking fashion the early history of the
submarine, and proved very clearly that our deficiencies in the matter
of aircraft were not due to any defect in personnel or energy or
inventiveness. Striking advances were made when the obvious
requirements of the War became manifest.
Money, of course, had to be poured out like water, and no doubt we spent
a great deal more than would have been necessary had we made due
preparation in time of peace. But, at any rate, thanks to the British
genius for improvisation, the work was done. Men and machines were soon
forthcoming in ever-increasing numbers, and it was not many months
before Sir John French was able to announce that our airmen had
established a definite personal ascendency over the airmen of the enemy.
That ascendency has been fully maintained.
Man for man and machine for machine we lead the Germans in the matter of
flight, so far at least as the aeroplane is concerned. German losses in
aerial conflict have been very much heavier than our own, a fact that is
not surprising when the personal equation is taken into consideration.
In natural daring and personal initiative--two of the qualities
indispensable to the successful airman--the French and the British
characters are far superior to the German. We can look forward with
complete confidence to any comparison that can be made between the rival
air services so far as the heavier-than-air machines are concerned.
A good deal has been said lately about the new German Fokker machine,
and there has been a good deal of loose talk as to its formidable
possibilities. As a matter of fact, its wonders appear to have been
very much exaggerated, for it is only a powerful engine put into an
obsolete type of French machine. It is not without significance that it
is designed for purely defensive purposes, and is absolutely forbidden
to cross the German lines under any circumstances whatever. It is a
very small, very heavily engined monoplane, carrying a formidable gun,
and for short distances capable of very swift climbing and very high
speed.
For its own special purpose it is undoubtedly a first-class engine of
war, but that it has met its match in the British and French
battle-planes was clearly shown during a recent raid on Freiburg.
During that raid, a great part of which was over enemy territory, the
fighting machines which acted as escorts to the bombers fought no fewer
than ten battles with the Fokkers and Aviatiks; and when we remember
that the only aeroplane of the Allies to be lost out of the entire
squadron was compelled to descend through engine trouble, we can easily
understand that highly exaggerated reports as to the efficiency of the
rule-of-thumb Fokker had by some means got into circulation. In all
probability they arose from the comparatively numerous victims among our
flying men claimed by the German official news just after the Fokker
made its appearance. But the reason for the seeming disproportion in
numbers was very simple. We were constantly the attacking party; in
other words, our airmen were constantly over the German lines, while the
Germans, as far as they could, gave our lines a very wide berth. The
following figures, quoted in the House of Commons by Mr Tennant, are
illuminating. They relate to four weeks' fighting on the Western front,
practically all of which had taken place in German territory:
British machines lost, 13.
Enemy machines brought down, 9.
Enemy machines probably brought down, 2.
British bombing raids, 6.
Enemy bombing raids, 13.
British machines used, 138.
Enemy machines used, about 20.
Machines flown across enemy lines, 1227.
Enemy machines flown across our lines (estimated), 310.
Now we need not go farther than these figures to see that the apparently
heavier British losses are due not to any superiority on the German
side, but to the enormously greater risks taken by our men. They are
constantly flying over the German lines, whereas the German airman
appears--probably with good reason--to keep to the comparative safety of
his own territory, where he is protected by the German anti-aircraft
guns. And that when it comes to actual combat in the air the British
battle-plane has little to fear from the Fokker is shown by the
experience of one of our airmen who single-handed fought a duel with
three Fokkers and brought them all down. Moreover, we have always to
remember that when a battle is fought the defeated Fokker comes to earth
in German territory, and we cannot definitely count it as destroyed,
whereas if one of our machines is brought down the Germans are always as
sure of it as we are.
Another factor which shows how great an advantage we have over the enemy
in the matter of the air service is revealed by the comparative failure
of German bombing attacks and the havoc that has been wrought by the
French and British squadrons. Leaving the Zeppelin raids for the moment
out of the question, there can be no difference of opinion that the
Allies' air raids have been enormously the more destructive, not in the
matter of the sacrifice of civilian life--pre-eminence in that regard is
easily claimed by the Huns--but in the havoc wrought on military
objectives.
When we turn to the dirigible airship--the lighter-than-air machine--the
comparison at first sight seems hopelessly against us. We have nothing
that can be compared to the Zeppelin in either speed or power of
destruction. We have, it is true, a number of airships of different
types, but experience so far has not shown that they are of great, if of
any, practical value. Our military authorities have deliberately pinned
their faith to the aeroplane, and so far as this War is concerned it
would appear that we are hopelessly outclassed in the matter of
airships.
But we must not allow ourselves to be deceived by appearances. We must
not fail to take into consideration the fact that so far as its real
military value is concerned the Zeppelin has shown itself to be an
absolute and costly failure. This may seem at first sight a hard saying
when we think of the many victims of the Zeppelin raids, of the women
and little children slaughtered, of the civilians murdered in midnight
raids whose lives against any opponents with the slightest regard for
the laws of war or for their own good name would have been absolutely
safe.
But the facts cannot be disputed. The Zeppelin is a murder machine pure
and simple. Its military value is absolutely negligible, and the
destruction it has wrought has been of no military significance
whatever. Out of all the victims it has claimed during its frequent
nocturnal expeditions here and in France, only the barest handful have
been soldiers, and on none of the raids has any military base sustained
the slightest damage. Moreover, it has failed in its avowed object of
terrorising; neither our own people nor the French have been weakened--
rather have they been strengthened--in their determination to carry on
the War to the only issue consistent with the future existence of
civilisation. The only real and tangible results of the Zeppelin raids
from a military point of view have been to cover the Germans with a
stigma of crime and murder for which they will pay dearly in the future,
and to make the Allies more than ever determined to root out the nest of
vermin which for so long has troubled Europe. They have done more,
perhaps, than anything else except the infamous submarine campaign to
convince the civilised world that so long as Germany retains her power
of mischief there will be no peace for the nations at large.
There is no disguising the fact, however, that, for what it is worth,
the Zeppelin for the moment holds the field.
We have not yet succeeded in discovering any means either of keeping the
raiders away when the conditions are favourable for their visits, or of
dealing effectively with them when their presence is detected.
Undoubtedly the problem is a very difficult one. Zeppelins can fly so
high that gunfire is practically ineffective against them, as has been
proved in the raids on both Paris and London; the one recently brought
down by the French was flying much lower than usual. They are able to
take very effective cover behind any clouds that may be about, and the
difficulties by which the aeroplanes are faced in locating and attacking
them at night appear to be well-nigh insuperable under present
conditions. In time, perhaps, we shall have fleets of powerful
aeroplanes which will be able to take the air and not merely rise
swiftly to the height at which the Zeppelin flies, but remain aloft all
night, if need be, until the dangers inseparable from a landing in the
dark have disappeared.
But it must not be forgotten that the very factors which give the
Zeppelin its invulnerability against attack practically destroy its
value as a fighting machine. No one--not even the commanders of the
Zeppelins themselves--would pretend that, flying at a height of 12,000
feet or so on a dark and cloudy night, they can say with certainty where
they are, or that they can drop their murderous bombs with any sure hope
of hitting an object which would be their justification from a military
point of view. They simply wait until they think they are over an
inhabited area, and then drop their bombs in the hope of killing as many
people as possible, or, perhaps, luckily striking some material object
and doing real damage. That is not war as the civilised world
understands it, but simply anarchism.
A distinguished writer recently expressed the opinion that as the
Germans were essentially a practical people they would not waste effort
by dropping at haphazard bombs which they had been at such pains to
carry to this country, and that they must therefore be genuinely under
the impression that they were doing real military damage. But their
whole record in the War entirely disposes of this theory. We know quite
well--the Germans have told us so, and their acts have borne out their
words--that the policy of "frightfulness" commends itself to their
judgment. Their one idea is to terrify; they hope to do enough damage
and kill enough people to bring about in England a movement for peace.
Nothing but defeat will convince them that they are wrong.
And this consideration brings me naturally to another--the subject of
reprisals. If we cannot stop the Zeppelins coming or deal with them
adequately when they are here, can we teach the Germans a lesson which
will convince them that two can play at the game of "frightfulness," and
that in the long run we can play that game better than they can
themselves? I think we can, and I think we should.
It has been one of the most striking characteristics of the career of
Lord Rosebery that on more than one occasion he has put into terse and
vigorous expression the opinions of the great majority of the English
people. With all his apparent detachment, Lord Rosebery has a wonderful
understanding of what England is saying, and still more what it is
thinking, and the reader will call to mind more than one occasion on
which the nebulous and only half-expressed thought of England has been
suddenly crystallised in the clearest fashion through the mouth of Lord
Rosebery. This has unmistakably been the case in the matter of the
Zeppelin raids.
In a recent letter to _The Times_, dated February 3, Lord Rosebery put
the English point of view with his customary clearness and directness.
He wrote:
This last Zeppelin raid has cleared the air. There may be
difficulties from the aircraft point of view in reprisals. I am not
behind the scenes, and I do not know. But as regards policy there can
be none. We have too long displayed a passive and excessive patience.
We all remember Grey's noble lines, "To scatter plenty o'er a smiling
land." For "plenty" read "bombs" and you have the Prussian ideal. To
scatter bombs over a countryside, to destroy indiscriminately the
mansion and the cottage, the church and the school, to murder
unoffending civilians, women, children, and sucklings in their beds--
these are the noble aspirations of Prussian chivalry, acclaimed by
their nation as deeds of merit and daring.
Let them realise their triumph. Let us bring it directly to their
hearts and homes. Let us unsparingly mete out their measure to
themselves. Nothing else will make them realise their glories. And
the blood of any who may suffer will rest on their Government, not on
ours.
I am firmly convinced that in that letter Lord Rosebery expressed not
merely what the great mass of the English people are thinking and saying
to-day, but that he expressed a great and real truth.
In the early days of the War it was the fashion here in England to
affect to believe that we were at war not with the German people--
represented by the pro-Germans in our midst as a kindly, harmless, and
industrious lot of folks--but with the mysterious "military caste" who
were supposed to have usurped all authority, and to be driving the
delightful German people at large into the commission of all kinds of
bestial outrages which were entirely foreign to their wholly delightful
nature. I should imagine that fiction has long gone by the board. We
have seen the "delightful" German nation sent into paroxysms of inhuman
glee by such outrages as the sinking of the "Lusitania"; we have seen
them time and again savagely gloating over the slaughter of men, women,
and children by their murderous Zeppelins; and if those savage outbursts
of delight have done nothing else, we have at least to thank them for
teaching us the lesson that we are at war with the entire German nation,
and that between that nation and the civilised world there is a great
gulf fixed which in our time at least will not be bridged over.
Do we owe any consideration to such a nation? Do we owe to them any of
the chivalry and honourable forbearance which we have shown, not once,
but a thousand times, in our long contests with civilised adversaries on
a hundred fields in all parts of the world? Are our hands to be tied
and our people to suffer through our adherence to creeds of warfare
which the Huns evidently regard--as they regard Christianity itself--as
a lot of worn-out shibboleths?
I say emphatically "No," and I say the time has come when we should take
steps, in Lord Rosebery's words, to bring home the triumphs of the
Zeppelins to German hearts and German homes.
It is too much the fashion in this country to look upon the German as a
stolid individual with nerves of steel, who is not to be shaken from his
serenity by any of the trials which would bear hardly upon ordinary
mortals. There never was a greater mistake. I am quite ready to admit
that the German can look unmoved upon a great deal of suffering in other
people--that is a characteristic of bullies of all nations; and if the
German has not shown himself to be a super-man, he has at least
convinced the world that he is the super-bully _in excelsis_. And the
only argument that appeals to him is force, naked and unashamed. In his
heart of hearts he knows it. That is why he believes that England
to-day is cowering in impotent terror under the menace of the Zeppelins,
because he knows that is exactly what he would be doing himself if the
positions were reversed, and he cannot understand other people who are
built on very different lines. We know how one of the early raids on
Freiburg produced an instant panic flight of every German who could
afford to get away from a district which had suddenly become
"unhealthy."
Now we have it in our power to reproduce that panic in a dozen German
towns within easy reach of our lines in France. And we know something
of the real effects of a bombardment by one of the Allied squadrons. In
the recent raid on Petrich only fourteen French aeroplanes took part.
Yet the Bulgarians officially admitted that they sustained a thousand
casualties--far more than we have suffered in the twenty odd Zeppelin
raids on England.
Surely it is high time we made it clearly known that any repetition of
the bombardment of an unfortified area would be followed by reprisals of
the most merciless nature. We can imagine what the effect would be of a
big British or French squadron of aeroplanes pelting the German frontier
towns with a hail of high explosive and incendiary shells. Assuredly
the Zeppelin raids on England would seem futile in comparison. And just
as assuredly it would bring home to the German nation as nothing else
ever will that the policy of "frightfulness" in which they have elected
to indulge is one which will call down upon them a richly deserved
punishment. I believe that, speaking generally, the entire world would
approve of our action if we decided to take such measures of reprisals
as German crimes call for. The responsibility would be Germany's, not
ours. We have fought, as our French Allies have fought, with clean
hands.
I believe that stern punishment of this nature is the only possible
means of putting an end to the German campaign of murder, and it is for
that reason that I advocate it without the slightest hesitation or
compunction. The idea of those who believe that reprisals are called
for is not to punish the Germans so much as to convince them of the
error of their ways and to protect our own people. I believe that our
air squadrons could set up such a reign of terror in the Rhine towns
that even in Germany the demand for the only possible measure of
protection--the cessation of the air raids on unfortified places in
France and England--would become irresistible. The German Government
may continue to delude the German people about events that are happening
outside Germany; they could not by any possibility hide the facts if the
air war were effectively carried on to German soil.
Further, I firmly believe that half a dozen smashing aerial attacks upon
German towns and cities would do more to put a stop to Germany's
unending infraction of all the laws of civilised warfare than the futile
notes and protests of President Wilson have effected in a twelvemonth.
It will be objected by those who seek to make war in kid gloves that if
we carry out these raids German women and children must inevitably
suffer. I do not shrink from the conclusion, though I regret the
necessity which has been forced upon us by the Germans themselves. I am
not at all ashamed to say that one little English baby dead in the arms
of its weeping mother, killed not by the accident of warfare, but of
set, savage, and deliberate purpose, far outweighs in my mind any
sentimental or humanitarian considerations for our enemies. We should
have no ground of complaint if the Germans confined their raids to
proper military objects; and if, in the course of those raids, civilians
were accidentally killed, that would be one of the penalties of being at
war, and we should be justified in asking our people to bear their
sorrows with what fortitude they could. The case is widely different
when men, women, and children are slain in a foul campaign of insensate
murder; and I say again that in self-defence we are entitled to throw
mere sentiment to the winds and protect ourselves by any means in our
power. And the best means of protection we have against these murderous
raids is to hit the Hun in the same way, to give him a taste of his own
medicine; in the words of Lord Rosebery, to bring his triumph directly
to his heart and his home. Thus, and thus only, we shall convince the
German people, and through them the German militarists, that in the long
last it does not pay to outrage the conscience of civilisation.
To sum up, I think it is certainly true to say that in the domain of the
air the Allies have established and can maintain a definite superiority
over the enemy. That they have established it is plain; that they can
maintain it is, I think, equally plain, because they have the larger
resources, and because successful aerial work calls for the exercise of
qualities which both the French and the English possess in a far more
marked degree than do the Germans. Our air raids have been far more
destructive from the military point of view than anything the enemy has
been able to accomplish; they have been better devised and more capably
carried out by men who were better fitted for the task they had in hand.
It remains to be seen whether the German superiority in the
lighter-than-air machines will give them any real advantage.
At present all the arguments point to the greater value of the aeroplane
upon which the Allies have pinned their faith. In any case, it is too
late, probably, for us to take up the question of airship construction
with any hope of making effective use of it during the present War, and
we must do the best we can with what we believe to be the superior
weapon. My own view is that on the whole the superiority of the Allies
is fully assured, and that now and to the end the credit of winning the
War in the air will and must remain with us.