"Little Dark Scum"

Behind the Franco-British-Belgian staff talks in London last week loomed the large, disquieting question of just how potent the French air force really is.

One answer was recently given in the British magazine, The Aeroplane, by its expert, temperish editor and founder, Charles Grey Grey. As editor of the standard handbook, Jane's All the World's Aircraft, Mr. Grey is also the world's No. 1 air authority. As a trained engineer fascinated by the science of war, he is emphatically anti-French and pro-German. He opened his opinion of France's air establishment with a wild blast against France's case against Germany at the London Locarno Conference.

The German Government in Realmleader Hitler's proposals, Editor Grey felt, had been "full of peace and good will towards men" and, despite the fact that it is "at least an equal of any nation represented and definitely the superior of all but one [Britain]," it had been put into "the position of the prisoner in the dock facing a hostile jury. ..."

Editor Grey was enraged at France's supposed intention of sending French Moroccan troops to police the Rhineland. Cried he, "A typical example of French feminine mentality! . . . Suppose that France had demanded that we should allow niggers and Moors in French uniforms to garrison Margate, Dover, Folkestone, Eastbourne, Seaford, Brighton and Worthing. . . . As a purely ethnological fact one might argue that the fair-haired, blue-eyed Berbers of Morocco, and the Riffs, who are in fact the last remnants of the Teutonic Vandal Kingdom of Northern Africa, are better white men than the little dark scum of Southern France. . . ."

Getting down to facts, Editor Grey wrote: "The new generation, so to speak, of French bombers is a complete washout. . . . The French single-seat fighters are a washout also. . . . Year after year at the French Aero Show we have been shown the same high-speed French single-seat fighters. We have been told quietly that they were only there for show and that the real things were at Villacoublay or Buc, just being tried out and just about to do wonderful things. But these wonderful machines have never appeared. . . . Our information, which is quite reliable, is that not one of the new French bombers can do more than 150 m.p.h. and most of them do not do anything like as much.

"Up against the new Heinkels [German] and the new Savoias [Italian], let alone our new Bristols, Faireys and Hawkers and Armstrongs, the French Air Force is a joke. . . ."

This was too strong for the French Government to let pass. It instructed its Ambassador at London to protest Aeroplane's wild slanders to the British Foreign Office. In the House of Commons Foreign Secretary Eden replied to a question: "On examining the article, I found that it contained a number of allegations of an offensive nature against France which were quite unfounded. ... I deplore such unfounded statements about friendly nations, which can only be regarded as mischievous and harmful to good international relations."

A contrary opinion concerning the French air force was given last November by the Journal of the German Association for League of Nations Questions. Then it totted up France's first-line planes at 2,061, noted 3,339 second-line planes and 1,043 first-line planes being built. Effective total: 6,000. It went on to show "proof of the successful efforts made by France in connection with military aviation" and concluded "French security at the present time is just as reliably assured in the air as it is, thanks to the French armaments, on land and at sea."

Editor Grey's own Jane's All the World's Aircraft for 1935 says: "One of the greatest difficulties with which we have had to contend ... is the steady growth of a policy of secrecy on the part of the Navy, Army and Air Service Authorities of all nations." He lists the present French air force effectives available for European service at 1,127; the British at 1,093.

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