Slap & Slap

In Australia's tiny eleven-year-old capital, Canberra, British Air Marshal Sir Edward Ellington, Inspector-General of the Royal Air Force, was recently invited by the Australian Government to inspect the Commonwealth's proud fighting air arm. Sir Edward came, saw and last week issued a pants-slapping report.

Shocked were most Australians when Air Marshal Sir Edward charged that the Dominion's high proportion of air accidents is due to disobedience of orders or bad flying discipline; that Australia's prized fighting plane, the Wirraways, similar to the U. S. Army's North American BT 9, possesses insufficient speed for a modern fighter and is fit only for a temporary expedient or a training ship: that all Australia's service squadrons are below strength in men and oncers.

In London. Foreign Office heads worried lest Sir Edward's attack offend Australia at the moment when Britain is striving desperately to maintain Dominion acceptance of her own foreign policy. Next day their fears were relieved. Out came the Australian Prime Minister, bluff Joseph A. Lyons, with one of the most vigorous backslaps for British Prime Minister Chamberlain's foreign policy ever delivered. To newshawks Prime Minister Lyons declared that his Cabinet had decided to express to Great Britain its complete confidence in steps and methods adopted by the British Government for a peaceful settlement of the Czechoslovak-Sudeten German dispute (see p. 29).

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