LONDONERS UNMOVED

Evening Star, Issue 25070, 11 January 1944, Page 4

LONDONERS UNMOVED

GERMAN REPRISAL THREATS Londoners are undisturbed to-day by Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels's threat of reprisals on the " Thamesside criminals" in retaliation for the mass bombings of Berlin (writes a, London correspondent of the ' Christian Science Monitor'). ■■ To them it looks more like a " pep talk lor the wilting Germans than an actual forecast of future events. Not that they are complacent here. '-The memory of the blitz is still too vivid for that. . . But London has great anti-aircraft defences and civil defence services which are being continually tightened up with a view to meeting a resumption or German attacks. Discussion of whether there will be any serious resumption of bombing or whether the use of some new weapon like longrange shelling by. rocket guns will materalise is lively, however. HOME FRONT ENCOURAGED. As soon as the Anglo-American forces are lighting a full-scale battlfe in the west, it is felt that the Germans will be less than ever able to divert their energies to a bombing policy which has already failed them once. The second front is now considered sufficiently near to give rceasonable confidence to the home front about renewed bombing of, anything except a spasmodic pattern. The same argument applies to the suggestion that the Germans' reprisals will be by long-range rocket guns. Moreover, more details are now coming to light to emphasise what a tremendous long-term and hard uphill fight it has been for Britain to launch its own bombing plan. It has been a four-year job, and there is no serious reason to believe that the Germans have had any corresponding plan under way since their bombing petered out in 1941 WARDENS ON THE JOB. But to meet any emergency, the task of perfecting the training of Britain's army of A.'ll.P. personnel goes on uninterrupted. Thousands of voluntary wardens throughout the country to-day take part in exercises and attend lectures as conscientiously as ever 1 started attending poison gas lectures in the early summer of 1939. This week, in a little Surry village on the outskirts of London, we are having expert instruction on getting casualties out of bombed buildings and reporting details back to headquarters. On two occasions when our village was bombed we put our theory into practice in grim circumstances. All over London there stand to-day great static water tanks and other up-to-date improvements which have never been used because they weren't constructed until after the London blitz. But they and the A.IJ..P. and antiaircraft defences are the answer to Dr Goebbels's threat There is confidence here that they ran meet any reprisals the Germans can launch at this stage of the war.