AIR REPRISALS

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3122, 28 June 1917, Page 5

AIR REPRISALS

BRITISH POLICY DEFENDED (Rec. Juno 27, G. 35 p.m.) London, June 2G. In the Hoiise of Lords, the Earl of Derbv (Secretary of Slate for War), dealing with the question of air reprisals, said that he could authoritatively state that for every bomb that was dropped behind our lines we dropped a hundred behind the German lines. The bombing was done by us with a military object, and ho thought the whole of the country would associate itself with the suggestion that wo" should not mutate the brutality of the Germans. "The military authorities," he said, "must be allowed to use the aeroplanes in the way they think fit in order to bring the war to a successful conclusion. We do not want to see this war waged with kid gloves. We must hit back, but,it must be left to the military authorities to decide where and when. The Government has given tho military authorities an absolutely free hand to use the aircraft. Everything possible is being done to secure the defence of the country against, the enemy s aircraft, with the closest' possible co-opera-tion of the Army and Navy. At a conference of the military and civil authorities it was .decided that to give warning of raids might do more harm than good. Regarding reprisals, the idea of an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, tho massacring of women and children, -was absolutely repulsive to tlie British nation."—Renter. .