Evening Post. FRIDAY, AUGUST 30, 1940. TWO WAYS IN AIR WAR

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 53, 30 August 1940, Page 6

Evening Post. FRIDAY, AUGUST 30, 1940. TWO WAYS IN AIR WAR

The air warfare between Britain and the Axis Powers rages as furiously as ever. Operations are almost continuous over the twenty-four hours. While German planes are over Britain ranging as far as neutral Eire, British planes have intensified their attacks from Norway in the north, not far from the Arctic Circle, to Abyssinia and Italian Somaliland, not much further from the Equator. It is in the character of the raiding that the difference lies between Britain and her enemies. The British airmen have never at any time in their long and brilliant recordmuch longer and far more brilliant than that of the enemy—departed from their considered policy of reserving their efforts always for definite military objectives. They have never dropped their bombs at random on the off-chance of doing military damage, but with far more likelihood of hitting civilians, their homes, | and buildings like churches, hospitals, and theatres, or of missing the mark altogether, as the Germans and Italians have done and are doing more and more. If there is any pur- i pose in this wider extension of what has always been a characteristic of German methods of warfare, it is to terrorise the civil population of Britain. This deliberate policy may have worked in the Nazis' Contin* ental conquests, but it fe not working and will not work against the British people. The London "Daily Telegraph" puts the position clearly:

Germany and her rulers were shown in 1917> and 1918 the different effect of night raids upon the German and the British morale. It appears that Nazism has now no choice but to risk a repetition of that deadly lesson.

Those who, in this country and' elsewhere, clamour for a retaliation! by Britain in kind for the indiscriminate Nazi raids on London and other British cities should realise that the policy pursued by Britain is far more effective than Germany's in winning the war. In the first place, the damage done by enemy attacks to military objectives in Britain is, by the testimony of independent neutral observers, slight, while casualties among the civil population and harm to civil property have been minimised by an A.R.P. service which, by all accounts, is most efficient. Similarly, the spirit of the people is completely unshaken. The London correspondent of a Swiss newspaper states that the increasing air attacks on London have "a strange effect on the population; the greater the number of raids, the calmer the people's demeanour." He adds that all the bojnbs dropped have, fallen far from military objectives. Contrast this with the accounts of the British raids over Germany, including Berlin. These raids are carefully planned, with definite objectives, and are carried out by our airmen with methodical and systematic attention to detail. The objectives include power stations, munition works, aircraft factories, oil refineries and storage depots, naval bases and armaments, and communications of all kinds. These are the sources of Germany's military strength, and there is everything to show that they have been gravely impaired by the skilful and devoted operations of the R.A.F., with surprisingly little loss on our side. It is in this way wars are won, and not by attacking civilians.