Untitled

Hokitika Guardian, 20 September 1937, Page 4

Speaking on the general question of passive defence and the relative power of the defence and attack in the air, Mr Winston Churchill said in the House of Commons that, important as it was it would not he possible to find security merely by development of passive defence. They could not roof the world in and they could not provide protection everywhere. They must rely in the first place upon the deterrent of counter-measures and guns, large associations of nations

which, if I*iey were properly armed, would restrain the aggressor from violent outrage from the air. They must rely on flic quick stroke. If one could he sure that 10 years or seven years of peace lay before the world, he would hazard the opinion that the ground would master the air and the problem of the marauding aeroplane, slaughtering indiscriminately the civil population, not merely attacking the focal point, and seeking to blackmail nations out of their liberties by an act of mass terrorism, would have passed away as a menace from the civilised world. The next seven or eight years would be years of great anxiety and crisis for the world. It might well he that the continuation of civilisation might depend on whether peace could 1m? maintained until the power of defending all communities from these indiscriminate and piratical attacks against the civil population had been fuliy reckoned-