A GRIM OBJECT-LESSON

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22580, 19 November 1936, Page 10

A GRIM OBJECT-LESSON

The circumstantial accounts of the plight of Madrid under aerial bombing can scarcely fail to make the world aware of the terrors of this kind of warfare. It requires very little imagination to perceive the meaning of this news, with its record of loss of life and destruction of buildings. A special poignancy of horror is given by the knowledge that the lives of the innocent and helpless, even those of little children, have been sacrificed, and that churches and hospitals, together with magnificent palaces containing priceless treasures of art, have suffered incendiary attack. This dreadful experience is not confined to Madrid —in recent months it has descended on other Spanish cities — but its concentration on the capital, as the opposing hosts fight for possession, focuses universal attention. Ways of countering this sort of assault have been contrived and they have had some success in this instance of sad necessity, but these facts cannot hide either the terrible nature of the experience or the extensive risk of devastation. Whatever be the outcome of the struggle or whoever is to be blamed for it, the turning of streets into rivers of fire and the ascending of clouds of smoke visible for miles must create a vivid sense of what war under these conditions really means. The recent warnings of this development as inevitable in future wars are being impressed by a grim object-lesson, and it seems that no perfecting of defensive measures can remove altogether the danger of such suffering and loss. The twin lessons of these days—the need for adequate defence and the urgency of promoting international peace—are being painfully taught.