By CHARLES KINGSTON By CAPTAIN VICTOR A. CAZALET, M.P. Is the Power of the Papacy Growing? By H. E. M. STUTFIELD Queensland's Dilemma By BRISBANE Napoleon II By J. CYRIL M. EDWARDS Scandinavia Revisited-Sweden "Anglophobia Americana " Euclid, the Car By L. J. MAXSE By JOHN F. MILLBANK By the HON. MRS. GODFREY PHILLIMORE From Peking to Mongolia By CAPTAIN WILMOT P. M. RUSSELL, M.C. Heart Burial By J. HARRIS STONE Life in the Desert By SIR THOMAS COMYN-PLATT By LIEUT.-COL. NEWMAN CRAIG, D.S.O. Foreign Policy and the Liberals Correspondence Section A Mayoral Speech by the Hon. Lady Hulse FEBRUARY 1928 Episodes of the Month Our Increasing National Debt: A Challenge The Commons and the Prayer Book By T. B. JOHNSTON By J. H. HARLEY A Forest Tragedy By F. D. Barnjum Correspondence Section MARCH 1928 Episodes of the Month The Mexican Murder Gang By CAPT. FRANCIS MCCULLAGH, M.C. "The War Guilt " By THE HON. MRS. LYTTELTON GELL Mutual Trade By F. L. McDOUGALL A Yorkshireman in France "What is Known as the Lloyd George Literary Kickshaws Eating One's Way Around the United By MRS. WILLIAMS-ELLIS Dental Hygiene By DR. LIVINGSTONE (Director of the Dental School, King's College Hospital) Flight and the Reign of Law By COMMANDER B. ACWORTH, R.N., D.S.O. The Settler in South Africa By MISS DOROTHY FAIRBRIDGE By H. A. WALTON By MRS. L. A. GODFREE The Mind of the Bird By T. A. CowARD A Further Word for "The Toad Under the Harrow" By L. J. MAXSE Mechanical Music By WILLIAM BOOSEY Sinhaji By A. C. G. HASTINGS Scandinavia Revisited-Finland By LIEUT.-COL. NEWMAN CRAIG, D.S.O. The Transport Problem in Australia By SIR GEORGE C. BUCHANAN, K.C.I.E. Correspondence Section The Southern Irish Loyalists. By the Duke of Price 3s. net. National Review" Office, 8 John Street, Adelphi, London, W.C.2 THE NATIONAL REVIEW No. 542. APRIL 1928 London in EPISODES OF THE MONTH THE enterprise of our brilliant and popular visitor, the King of Afghanistan, in flying over the Metropolis, naturally aroused immense interest. It was an important, as well as a sensational, event, as it afforded those who believe that the future of this country, as of every other country, depends on our acquiring" Air Sense " and building aircraft an opportunity they were quick to seize to review the position and to emphasize British weakness as an Air Power. In an elaborate special article on "Air Defence "Air Defence" by "Our Aeronautical Correspondent," enforced by a leading article on "Defence by Air," The Times (March 22nd) set out the facts in a manner that would be described as "alarmist " in a less sober and responsible organ. Its exposition may doubtless be regarded as embodying the semi-official views of the Air Ministry, whose orators "make no bones " make no bones" about their conviction that Armies and Navies are " back numbers," as the wars of the future will be decided aloft. Being imbued with that faith, they naturally and properly hold that Armies and Navies cannot be too small, nor Air Forces too large. Indeed, if they be right we should forthwith scrap the Fleet and the fragment of the Army that post-war statesmanship has left us and add our Naval and Military Estimates to those of the Air Ministry, which would thus rise from £16,000,000 to £120,000,000. Whether that would satisfy aerial "fans" we cannot say, because the Command of the Air, unlike Command of the Sea, has no limits, except the firmament, and there would always be fresh worlds to conquer and further dangers to guard against. It is sufficient for the moment that London is in peril, according to the VOL. XCI 11 Aeronautical Correspondent of The Times, whose apprehensions are shared by his colleagues in Printing House Square, including a level-headed editor. This is somewhat serious, all the more as such fears animate a powerful section of the Government, as well as a great body of newspapers. Unless we wake up we are liable to be blotted out at almost any moment. That is substantially the moral drawn by The Times from the daring of the King of Afghanistan, whose flight is the peg on which this forecast is founded. In the event of its proving sound, it supplies an additional reason for the hearty welcome of all classes to His Majesty for awakening us to some sense of realities. The Air THE last war, which was not so many years ago, was not decided in the air, but on sea and on land, with the air as a useful adjunct. As an offensive arm, aviation must be pronounced a failure from 1914 to 1918, despite prodigious efforts by the enemy against the Allies as by the Allies against the Fatherland. At the time, as everything that happens in the air is liable to be exaggerated, the Germans believed that their Zeppelins were annihilating the cities of England and shattering the moral of the British people, that Woolwich Arsenal existed no more, that London was a mass of ruins, while the Grand Fleet cowered in harbour lest it should be blown sky-high from aeroplanes. So we, and doubtless our Allies, were encouraged to imagine that similar things had happened to Germany. But when the fog of war cleared away, it became apparent that the rôle of aerial offensive on either side was relatively, almost ridiculously, small. Not one single town was destroyed by air raids, nor was any battleship on any sea put out of action. London was constantly bombed by aeroplanes, and on one occasion a Zeppelin appeared to be sitting over Piccadilly Circus, which by every calculation should have been obliterated. As a matter of fact, it only left a hole in the roadway and a certain amount of broken glass. These were doubtless miraculous escapes-indeed there were so many such miracles as to raise doubts as to the efficacy of bombing aeroplanes. |