London, Lord Trenchard, former Marshal of the Royal Air - Force, in his maiden speech in the House of Lotds to-day, called attention to the importance of an adequate and efficient air force to the British Empire, He referred to the statenient recently made by the Under-Secretary for Air that, to-day, France had a first line strength of 1,800 aeroplanes, Italy 1,100, America 900 sind Great Britain'770. That meant Britain was the fourth anion the Powers in air strength.
This fact, Lord Trenchard declared, required very earnest consideration, We were to-day as dependent for the security of the Empire upon air power as we were upon the Navy.
Lotd Thomson, Secretray of State for Air, said that the elements in Power were an. air force of sufficient strength to carry out the Policy of the country, air comniunications sufficiently developed, an air transport system nourished and fed by an adequate aircraft
developed 59 of "aeronautical industry last highly research, No means of purely passive defence, he continued, had been devised for dealing with attacks from the their most careful attention to the subject. The Prime Minister, he said, was taking an active part as the head of the Committee of Imperial Defence.
Turning to the question of air disarmament, Lord 'Thomson 3 that we had' never claimed even tone power standard in the air. Air disarmament was one of the bigges problems that lay ahead, If air development went on, there was no town in this country which safe from bombing. His own view that no country could possess power that was not a progressive and highly developed country. The countries which could possess air-power were very few and they were, fortunately, demo-erotically governed. Without thei political ce-operation and _agreement, there was, however, no prospect of disarmament, in a strict sense, in air matters—Wireless, through Reuter.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.