THE INCREASE IN THE AIR FORCE [To the Editor of
THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—Seldom hitherto have I found myself in agreement with Major Attlee and never with Sir Stafford Cripps. But, judging from the brief epitome in The Times of their speeches in the House on the proposed increase in the Air Force, I feel that they lilt the right nail on the head when holding that a " pooling of forces through the League was the only true answer to the admitted menace of a powerful and suspected non-League power, and that if collective security was a reality we could rely on the air forces of other countries, and, therefore, if the joint air forces were compared with the force of a potential aggressor we had no need to have an expanded air foree of our own. Expansion could be no defence, since there was no defence against air attack. The Opposition was being asked to sign a blank cheque to achieve a futile parity." Surely our policy, as the nation that wields the greatest moral power in the League and the world, should be merely to keep our armaments up to the minimum required 'to enable us to fulfil our obligations of collective action under the League of Nations, and to trust for our national defence to the League. To choose the moment when Hitler has held out an obvious olive branch to announce our intended
tremendous increase in our Air Force, seems as gross a psychological error as any for which we have so constantly and rightly blamed Germany. Would it not have been wiser to announce that in view of Hitler's speech we had decided to stay our hand for the present and postpone the increase of our forces in the hopes of getting the leading nations once more to come to some mutual agreement about total or, partial disarmament ? The Government's action seems one of the severest stabs in the back the League of Nations has received from its friends. Such action, if persisted in, must inevitably drive many supporters of the League like myself, though confirmed anti-Socialists, to abstain from voting for the National Government at the next election.—Yours faithfully,
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