LONDON REPLIES

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXIII, 9 December 1940, Page 6

LONDON REPLIES

What is the mood of our people under the stress of the battles over London? To deny that they suffer is, of course, to mock at their suffering. Nobody enjoys being bombed. But the private or personal accounts that reach us here I of damage done, of loss, of injury, do not waste emotion in self-pity. The mood is expressed not so much in “See what they’ve done to us!” as in “Give the blankers a taste of their own stuff!” in other words, the spirit of indignation. not of lamentation. This is the reverse of all that the Nazi louts anticipated. They anticipated terror. They got a stiffening of resistance. We swear to be level with them. We unite in an even stronger determination to wipe these baboons out of the air—so that they may never again defile the life of man and create chaos out of the decencies of civilisation. So resolving, we hold on, we stand firm—knowing that our day will surely come; the day when we shall strike back with all the skill and force of our undaunted airmen. We continue with our carefully aimed bombing of Nazi nerve centres. They boast that they are striking at the heart of the British Empire. The heart is not a part of the Nazi anatomy. Therefore they cannot diagnose the strength and force of ours. This terrorism of theirs relieves their own terror of slow but certain defeat. The beasts must have their meal of I massacre. They needed encouragement. ] They get their sensation out of bombed 1 hospitals. A blazing hospital is better tun to them than any so-called “military objective.” There’s a sharper sauce of “terror” about a smashed hospital! (Recent leading article, “Daily Mirror,” London.)