Ipswich High School - Tiger Yearbook (Ipswich, MA)

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TIGER ‘43 seems that there are five conditions which must be written into the peace. They are: 1 . Post-war air map must be drawn according to geographical principles, and not according to the Wilsonian principles of self deter- mination. 2. Except in cases of national security, all nations should be entitled to access to the air above other nations. Certain restricted areas may have to be set aside. It would be pos- sible to have certain channels set off for traffic over a country. 3. One or several powers should have control over certain areas such as Greenland, Iceland, and some of the Pacific islands. 4. Eor reasons of military security, the world’s air traffic should be divided among the United Nations.. That would mean tempor- arily excluding Germany and Japan to rule out the possibility of their using commercial lines to build up a military machine. 5. The United States should encourage competition with the var- ious countries. One of these three systems — freedom of the sea, freedom of the air, or a combination of both — will determine the future of aviation. It will take serious thinking on the part of airmen and statesmen alike. Should the wrong system be chosen, aviation could be a failure. Should the right one be chosen, a world unknown to the present past will be opened. Be- cause of the rapid transportation af- forded by the airplane, the peoples of other countries will be brought closer to the United States. They will begin to understand each other better, and one of the primary causes of war will disappear. The airplane has been a terrible instrument of destruction: but it can be and will be, we fervent- ly hope, an instrument of great good in the future. NEW HORIZONS ‘Peace bath her victories no less re- nowned than war” Milton There are two possible outcomes to this war: either we win it or the Axis does. If the latter triumphs, there is but one alternative: the pre- scription for world order, or rather disorder, as conceived by Herr Hitler and his associates, wherein there is one master race presiding over cor- ruptible (so they believe) , inferior peoples. On the other hand, if the United Nations are victorious, there are two alter natives: either pre-war conditions will be reinaugurated after slightly revising the relations between the nation states: or an effort will be made to work out some solution to the problems of obtaining political 17

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TIGER ‘43 would not be a handicap, for wc would be able to land at international airports in Africa and Europe. There ■would be no privileged countries at these airports; and so everyone would have an equal chance for trade. With the airways extending into globe-girdling corporations, there would be a tendency for government subsidation because of the huge oper- ating expense of such a project. No individual or groups of individuals would be able to pay for even half of it. This would lead to subsidy iwars and monopolies. We could, as some European countries do, allocate different areas to different lines so that expenses for each wouldn’t be so great. We would, in any case, try to make them as self-sufficient as pos- sible. Since the United States would be competing with Europe, the com- petition would be very .stiff; but since when has an American shrunk from competition? If the other coun- tries wished to start a subsidy war, we could play the same game but with the chips stacked higher on our side of the table. “Sovereignty of the air’’ also has its advantages. In a recent speech, Vice-President Henry Wallace said in part, “Freedom of the air will be to the future as freedom of the seas was to the past.’’ The United States, however, did not fare so well with this “freedom of the seas’’. Our ports were choked with sleek liners from Britain and France and ugly tramp steamers from Japan and Germany. Our merchant marine languished and almost died. Before the first World War, over sixty-two per cent of our freight was carried in foreign ships. After the war, in the late twenties and thirties, our tonnage had reached second place, although still only half as large as England’s. Labor from these foreign coun- tries worked for lower wages than American sailors and so they were able to underbid us. The same thing could happen again in the construc- tion of airports and other facilities and in the manufacture of the planes themselves, although a higher tech- nical skill is needed in the construc- tion of planes than in the building of ships. If the sovereignty of the air doctrine were observed, each country would have an equal chance of re- ceiving concessions from another country whose cities presented pos- sibilities for bases. Again, we would have competition, although not as intense as the one previously men- tioned. It is evident, then, that we do not want either extreme freedom or sovereignty of the skies. The assump- tion should be that the air shall be a reasonably free ocean of commerce in w ' hich all nations shall participate according to their responsibilities and technical skills. Toward this end, it 16

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TIGER ‘43 security and economic and social jus- tice, even though by trial and error. The difference between the two choices would mean the difference be- tween losing and winning the peace- between putting Humpty Dumpty back on his wall and resuming the turmoil of 1939, or profiting by the mistakes of Versailles. The pattern we take after the war depends upon the attention we give the problem now. Change based on the utilization of past experiences is the keynote of the second alternative. The Greeks said that war is the father of change — and change can be for good or evil or a combination of both. If we have the courage and intelligence not to fear wise changes, we can make this v ar give us a better America and a better world. Change in the political sphere would be directed toward greater in- ternational cooperation. Even in a highly interdependent world, it might be possible by sufficiently dras- tic planning to maintain a state of isolationism: but the outcome is im- probable. “Isolation and neutrality have been tested and found wanting. “ Says Russell Davenport: “Cain never received an answer to his outraged question, ‘Am I my brother’s keep- er?’ But the answer is: ‘You are.’’’ An international trend is preferable: it is not, as the ever-active isolationist would have us believe, mere idealis- tic raving. International cooperation would involve closer union and more sym- pathetic understanding between the United Nations, especially in the case of Russia and China: the prevention of a psychology of revenge: and the rehabilitation of the agriculture, economy, and health of Europe. Costly? Yes, but less costly than an- other huge war — the inevitable re- sult of social and economic unrest. Federation of weak nations is another phase of international co- operation. Realizing that small coun- tries offer temptations to aggressors, the exiled governments of Poland and Czechoslovakia have already made a pact of union. Federal union in Europe would be desirable from the British viewpoint because it will facilitate traveling conditions on the continent. Federation can be successfully undertaken to a certain extent: but nationalism which has been given an added impetus by the war unfort- unately cannot now be abolished. But to offset European nationalism and imperialism, national indepen- dence would be gradually extended to Asia. Backward nations, now rapidly becoming modernized, will not much longer suffer domination by some distant power. This necessarily im- plies the end of imperialism — a wel- come change. As one writer expressed 18