AIR BOMBING AND ITS COMPLICATIONS.

Evening Star, Issue 21523, 22 September 1933, Page 8

AIR BOMBING AND ITS COMPLICATIONS.

It is important to distinguish between two sets of minor military operations that have been in progress on the Indian frontier. Towards the end of July Upper Mohmands, whose home is in Afghanistan, crossed their frontier to raid clans protected by the Indian Government, incidentally burning two villages. It was not open to the Indian Government to seek to restrain their incursions by sending aeroplanes to bomb their villages, so a brigade was sent to protect the harassed tribes. With a very little fighting the invaders have been brought to a less martial mind and persuaded to return to their own country. The other centre of disturbance, Bajaur, lies some thirty miles further to the north, is on Indian territory, and hardly accessible except to aeroplanes. A pretender to the Afghan throne, with two fellow-con-spirators, had been welcomed by some of the tribesmen there, and was understood to be working for an invasion of Afghanistan. The Afghan Government requested that their activities should be checked, and British aeroplanes, after giving warning, bombed tho village of Kotkai. The noise of that bombing has had loud reverberations in England. Mr Lansbury excelled himself in declaring “ the stones of our cities will cry everlasting shame on all Christians and Christian churches unless without a moment’s delay they denounco this action, and in the name of our religion repudiate this outrage against God and humanity.” The Mohmands, probably, would have been the first to, marvel at that outburst. No massacre was perpetrated. Kotkai was a collection of mud huts, capable of being built again in a week or two. According to the best information nobody was in it when it was destroyed. Its '1 population is less than a hundred. The almost complete absence of protests in India seemed to imply general concurrence in the view of the Calcutta ‘ Statesman,’ which stated that if troops had been employed they would have had to bombard every village where their advance was resisted, and the losses would probably have been heavy on. both sides. The Tirnh campaign, in this region, of which the capture of the Unrgni Heights by the

Gordon Highlanders was a resounding episode, cost nearly 700 British and more native lives. That is the case made tor aena police bombing on the Indian frontier, as against the older process of expeditionary forces. In this case the expeditionary force may have done better than the bombers. It secured its objectives with very little loss. There is no word that the Afghan conspirators have been apprehended, though their friends in this border district may be fewet in future. But the real case against air bombing, one that, granting the assumptions of those making it, would be irrefutable, has been made by the British Government’s reluctance to prohibit it, in such circumstances as those of India, at the Disarmament Conference. It is argued as if concern for this means of discipline in one remote area may yet shatter the chances for a general prohibition of air bombardments, or the chances of the Disarmament Conference arriving at any decisions at all. If that were a danger there would be no gainsaying the verdict of Mr Robert Bernays, M.P.; “ Surely it is insanity to weigh the police considerations on the cxtieinities of the Empire beside the safety of the Empire itself at its heart. London is the most vulnerable city in the world.” The British Government certainly will "ive way if such results should be threatened by its attitude. Unfortunately there are a dozen States altogether that wish to make reservations against the prohibition of air bombing, and the Disarmament Conference has worse deadlocks confronting it. An interesting extension of the controversy has been provided by Admiral Mark Kerr, who contends that air bombing at sea should not be abolished unless submarines are also done away with. “ During the war,” he has pointed out, “ not a single merchant vessel was sunk at sea that was escorted by aeroplanes, seaplanes, or flying boats. Whenever a U-boat saw an air escort she made no attempt to attack the convoy. The other side of that argument is that, out of 207 submarines that were sunk during the war, only seven were destroyed by aircraft.