ATHENS, CAIRO, ROME

Evening Post, Volume CXXXI, Issue 92, 19 April 1941, Page 8

ATHENS, CAIRO, ROME

In the course of their barbarous

bombing attacks on cities in enemy countries the Axis Powers, particularly Germany, have spared none. First, Warsaw and the cities of Poland, then Rotterdam, then the capital and provincial cities of Britain, and, lastly, Belgrade, the capital of Yugoslavia, have all suffered from. barbarous tactics of terrorism from the air with no.other object but terrorism. Warsaw, Rotterdam, and ,Belgrade were virtually undefended and in the ordinary practice of war should have been treated as "open" cities. Paris, so declared by the French in the Nazi sweep across northern France last year, was: spared because the Germans needed it intact for the control of the territories they had occupied. London and the provincial cities and towns of Britain were defended and the raiders forced to pay toll in loss of aircraft for the damage inflicted. Britain simultaneously struck back at • the Axis war machine in raids on genuine military objectives which, it is generally admitted, have done far more damage to the enemy's war machine than their raids have done to ours.

But there are three great cities within range of air attack which are far more than national capitals and belong to the world as much as to the countries in which they are situated. These are Athens and Rome, the eternal cities of the classical world, with their precious monuments and memories of antiquity, the fountain sources of Western civilisation and the early homes of Christianity , with which they are still associated. The third city is Cairo, a holy city of the Moslem world and the repository of the relics of Ancient Egypt. It is because these cities are such that the British Government has officially announced that if Athens or Cairo is bombed, the British will proceed to bomb Rome. Any operations to that end would naturally spare the Vatican City, but it is pointed out that it has come to the knowledge of the British Government that the Italian Government has in its possession captured British air bombs which it is prepared to use on the Vatican City in order to create odium against the British. The exposure of this trick in advance is a sufficient warning against the use of such propaganda and may prove a deterrent to the Axis Powers against further alienation of world opinion by sheer barbarism in air warfare.