AERIAL BOMBING

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21520, 17 June 1933, Page 15

AERIAL BOMBING

Sir, —I notice the two letters in Wednesday's Herald in justification of aerial bombing. Your correspondents miss mv point. I hold, that this crime of aerial bombing is a terrible menace to Western civilisation. Even if it is right to destroy villages in Afghanistan and elsewhere, it is not expedient. Nearly every crime can plead some justification, but it would be an ill day for great commercial cities if, in another "great war," they could be destroyed with unimaginable loss of life under the plea that they had been warned, and were centres of armament manufactures. As to warning Afrides, etc., your readers may remember that when the Lusitania was destroyed warnings were inserted in the American papers before she sailed, of what was intended, but this did not stop the crime. As I said previously, excluding for the moment the moral question, the' social danger is so great that no plea of military convenience should be allowed to justify the existence of so frightful a menace to the very continuance of civilisation. There I might leave the matter and rest my case, and neither of jour correspondents have given, or can give, a valid answer. But there is something more. Whether bombing Afghans, or Afrides or Arabs, whether destroying London, or a Pathan village, the act is a crime. All war is criminal and this infamy of bombing is the darkest of all its crimes. I know that some soldiers can always be found to justify these things, but indeed soldiers are a bad guide in morals. Nor will I enter into any argument as to the character of Afrides and Pathans. In my judgment we are not called upon to bomb their villages, and be the judge and executioner in our own cause. As I see it, we have no right in India at all. "The fool has his eyes on the ends of the earth." But 1 desire to lift this matter on to a higher plane We call ourselves a Christian nation. I entreat every Christian then to stand yp to-day for the love and mercy and peace which Christ proclaimed. J. Morris, Hamilton.