THE SPITFIRE. Two more contrasting Flight views of the Spitfire.

The night impression ot its Merlin engine being run up has a certain grim beauty.

FRENCH

OUTPUT
The " boss " having become Monsieur V Administrates, the elements of risk and personal responsibility to his shareholders have been eliminated. The people under his orders are very rightly considered now as fonctionnaires, and the average Latin civil servant is not very anxious about getting action or quick results. There is at piesent a tendency in the French Press to make Nationalisation an excuse for agitating for the construction of an arsenal from which all parts, mass-produced under State control, could be distributed among the factories. Practically every section of the "Press admits that any further delay in producing aircraft will put France in considerable danger. M. Guy la Chambre, the piesent Air Minister, is most anxious to speed up production Prototypes are not too bad ; in fact, some of them, like the Morane 405 and Potez 63, were good even two years ago But two years of the late Ministry had passed without any of them being delivered to the armie de
I'air.

Speeding-up in Spite oj Nationalisation Difficulties

T is always very difficult to know the truth about the French aircraft industry, because the French papers tend to present matters in very different lights according to whether they belong to the Lett or the Right. The Left, under the inspiration oi such politicians as ex-pilot Bossoutrot, has always tried to establish that everything in French aviation was perfect Simultaneously, the papers of the Right have clamoured that the state into which M. Pierre Cot had thrown the industry was indescribable. Let us (writes an observer who is closely in touch with the situation) try to form an impartial opinion. The two years spent by M. Cot at the head of the industry undeniably produced some painful results. The blame has been put on the Nationalisation of the French usines and on the 40-houi week. There is no doubt that the Bill introducing these changes came prematurely and hampered the French industry a great deal French factories working 37J hours a week produced 40 machines, while German concerns working about 60 hours produced 400. Lately most of the French factories have not worked at all. Nationalisation, as such, has been claimed as a very definite advantage for French constructors. Many people at the time of its introduction pitied those who it seemed would be dispossessed of factories which had taken them twenty years to build up ; hut it this was so in one or two cases some other owners of large concerns did not, as was widely believed, lose every sou in the transaction. Far from it. Most of them remained seated in the same old armchair ; they were handling, for the State, the very same matters. Their finances seemed little impaired Reconstruction, amalgamation, and the different rearrangements of "ways and means" took place more superficially than deeply, and it is still too early to speculate on the final result. But the general impression is not good. On the whole, it has been a parallel case with what happened i n Sweden, where the "co-operatives" replaced personal ownership The system may work very well in Sweden, but it does not seem to fit in so well in Latin countries

In the opinion ot qualified judges it would seem that nationalisation and the application of the brake by the Communist workers, have not influenced deliveries so much as the ever-present, ever-active, constantly watchful committees and commissions which have made it their business to see that no aeroplane comes out without 500 signatures, 200 stamps, and 1,048 sheets of blue paper, all signed and duly approved It will be the duty of M La Chambre to see that a Morane or a Potez gets its wings in exchange for a thousand sheets of blue paper and only five signatures. That he has understood his obligation^ is shown by the fact that the Nieuport 161 has been weighed by night shifts and that the Morane ^oj tete de sSrie is, after two years of indifference on the part of M. Cot, to be dflivered at once to the squadrons at Rheuns It is a thousand pities that such strikes as the Gnome-Rhone affair which occurred recently and which went on without excuseor intervention from the Governmentshould have delayed matters again, and everyone feels the need for a strong hand.