BRITAIN'S ORDEAL

Dominion, Volume 38, Issue 21, 19 October 1944, Page 4

BRITAIN'S ORDEAL

In the last few days infomration has been released for the first time as to the actual losses of life and property, as well as the number of people injured, in provincial cities of the British Isles during the German “blitz” air raids. So far, four reports have been issued, in respect to Coventry, Hull, Plymouth and Bristol—the cities which appear to' have suffered the most destructive and deadly attacks in proportion to their size and population. This, however, is only the beginning of the grim story, for scores of other cities and towns were heavily hit. Bath, Exeter, Norwich, Liverpool, Portsmouth, Southampton, Newcastle and Ipswich are only a few of the names of English places mentioned from time to time in the news as having been made Luftwaffe targets; and in addition there is the multitude of smaller centres bombed in the course of random terror attacks, or deliberate attempts to destroy the beauty spots and historic buildings of the Home Country—attempts which the Germans were candid enough to describe as “Baedeker raids-,” and which extended to almost every part of the British Isles.

It is not necessary, however, to wait until the list is complete in order to gain—more clearly than ever—an understanding of the people’s ordeal in the long months when the Huns were exultantly on the offensive in the air. The figures for the four hardest-hit cities outside the metropolis of London are sufficiently impressive when it is realized that they total nearly 5000 people killed, nearly 8000 people injured and 239,000 houses (excluding those of Bristol, the figures for which have not been given) destroyed or damaged. In the case of Hull only one house in nine escaped damage, and no fewer than 152,000 people were rendered homeless —nearly one-third of this number being bombed out of their habitations in two terrible nights of May, 1941. These facts now belong to history, and can be studied with some degree of detachment. Thanks to the splendid British emergency services and the remarkable reconstruction programme, which was put in hand even while the bombs were dropping nightly, much of the remediable suffering and hardship is already past. But the scars remain on the lives of the people and on the British landscape, and it is right that attention should be directed to them today when Germany is undergoing the retribution so thoroughly earned for her by her ruthless air force. They are reminders of a national experience of which British peoples in countries far removed from the danger zones had no real conception, but who can now take a very deep pride in the memory of the calm confidence and deceptively cheerful understatement with which the Motherland informed the world of her 1940-41 ordeal.