R.A.F. IN RAID PLAN

Evening Post, Volume CXXXI, Issue 93, 21 April 1941, Page 8

R.A.F. IN RAID PLAN

GERMAN TALK OF REPRISALS

LONDON, April 19

The announcement of the Home Secretary, Mr. Herbert Morrison, that Britain has her air plans, which will be carried out notwithstanding hysterical Nazi noises about reprisals, is warmly welcomed in the Press this morning. Mr. Morrison made it clear that the Royal Air Force will adhere to its practice of bombing according to a carefully, prepared programme aimed at crippling the enemy war potential, and will not bomb for the purposes of reprisal or retaliation.

The "Daily Mail" expresses ' relief that the British Government has not succumbed to the lure of the German reprisals campaign, which is intended to lead them into waste of Royal Air Force effort. The common-sense way to bomb, the newspaper thinks, is to attack the centres of supply, manufacture, and communication, and it underlines the fact that Thursday's Berlin raid was according to this plan.

The "Daily Telegraph," approving the main points of the Government's declaration, particularly welcomes the insistence on the fact that no amount of so-called reprisal bombing by the Germans will deter the Royal Air Force from carrying out its scientifically planned programme, including the raiding of targets of value to the enemy war effort in Berlin, when the master plan required it.

The newspaper also praises the Government's intention not to be induced to divert the Air Force from its most effective plans to a less effective war of reprisals.

Recalling the systematic use of the Luftwaffe by Hitler to terrorise Governments by the indiscriminate slaughter of their civilian populations and the wholesale destruction of cities, with their historic and cultural monuments, "The Times'' regards the object of the present announcement by the Government as "to deter the enemy from a newly-contemplated crime." "Everyone who understands what Athens and Greece have meant to the Western world," "The Times" added, "pray that the warning will prove effective."

The whole Press expresses indignation at the foul enemy machination revealed in yesterday's official declaration' of the Italians' intention to bomb Vatican City with British bombs should a British raid on Rome take place.