ng commenced officially on August 26th, 1919,
and gradually expanded, both in the United Kingdom and on the Continent,
especially during the summer of 1920. France, aided by considerable
subsidies, conducted services from Paris to London, Brussels and
Strasburg, from Toulouse to Montpelier and across Spain to Casablanca in
Morocco; Belgium, from Brussels to London and Paris; Holland, from
Amsterdam to London; Germany, in spite of the restrictions placed upon
her, entered the field as a competitor and her aircraft flew regularly
from Berlin to Copenhagen and Bremen, and from Bremen to Amsterdam. On
the American Continent, the United States Post Office ran mail services
from New York to Washington, Chicago, and San Francisco, with extensions
from Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis, and St. Louis.

For reasons which I shall give, there were no internal services in the
United Kingdom, but there were four companies operating air lines from
London to Paris, one of which held the contract for the carriage of
mails. There were also air mail services between London and Brussels and
Amsterdam. The mileage flown and the number of passengers and the weight
of goods carried were considerable, while the number of letters steadily
increased, especially on the Amsterdam service; and an efficiency of 76
per cent., 94 per cent., and 84 per cent. was obtained on the
London-Paris, London-Brussels, and London-Amsterdam services
respectively.

It must be remembered that these results were obtained without any
direct assistance on the part of the State, such as was given by the
French Government to air-transport companies in the form of subsidies.
British economic policy is traditionally opposed to subsidies, believing
that enterprise can be healthily built up on private initiative.
Therefore, until 1921 civil aviation had to content itself with the
indirect assistance of the State, which consisted mainly in the
adjustment of international flying; the laying-out and equipment of
aerodromes on the air routes; the provision of wireless communication
and meteorological information; research and the collection and issue of
general information concerning aviation.

This indirect assistance, however, proved inadequate to maintain the
progress achieved during 1920, and therefore the maintenance of air
services by means of temporary direct financial assistance had to be
arranged.

I have already pointed out the difficulty against which commercial
av