THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS WEDNESDAY, JUNE, 1, 1938 AERIAL BOMBING

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23052, 1 June 1938, Page 12

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS WEDNESDAY, JUNE, 1, 1938 AERIAL BOMBING

Questions in the House of Commons on aerial bombing have done more than reflect the dismay of the British public at news from Spain and the Far East of heavy civilian casualties inflicted by this agency. They have given voice to a world-wide concern about the increasing resort to this particularly brutal development in modem warfare. The development is twofold: the invention of a new weapon and the use of it in attacks on non-combatants. In both respects there is a return to methods belonging to a crude age, destitute of chivalry. Cavemen must have learned very early the hostile art of hurling rocks from a height. Extend the distance of fall, fill the rock with explosive or otherwise noxious material, so that direct demolition or scattering of the stony shell in vicious fragments or spreading of poison or fire is achieved on impact, ana you have the aerial bomb of present evil repute. Add the element of assault upon the defenceless, unable to counter the descending missile, and the relationship to primitive conflict is shamefully close. However viewed, the picture is not a pretty one. Even the subtleties of science cannot redeem it. How recent this return to savagery really is can be seen in a revealing fact: the New (Oxford) English Dictionary, in its many-volumed registering of growth in language, is innocent of "bomber," for this word, as the name of a special type of aircraft, was unknown in 1888, when the portion devoted to the letter B was completed. Nearer still is the fact that only toward the close of the Great War was there any effective attention to the making of such missiles and the equipping of aeroplanes with means to drop them; the armistice came barely in time to prevent sinister trial of the acquisition on a large scale. No clearer commentary on the failure to honour conventions designed to mitigate the horrors of war could be written in events.

Nowadays the perfecting of this bludgeonly agency is being pursued with infernal zeal. Most of the work, alike on machines and projectiles, is significantly secret. None of the Powers is without practical interest in it, and therefore certain results of experiments can be recited without much risk of error. Conclusions gained from them are appalling enough without much exercise of imagination. A well-known authority, Brigadier-General Groves, put some things on record in 1928. "The largest bomb yet dropped from an aeroplane," he said, "weighs 40001b. This bomb was dropped in an experimental test in America, and the following account of the results is illuminating: 'The explosions tfirew a dense cloud of earth to a height of 1000 feet; the crater averaged 64 feet in diameter, with a depth of 19 feet below the original level, and a rim about five feet high ; the volume displaced was 1000 cubic yards.' . • • The immensity of this explosion may be pictured when it is remembered that 1000 feet is twice the height of St. Paul's Cathedral." To have dropped such a bomb in a city street between high buildings would probably have extended the area of destruction and death, to a radius of several hundi'ed yards, disorganising essential services, such as water, light, heating and transport, in wide surrounding zones. Fires would start. Hundreds of people would be crushed, dismembered, blown to pieces. That estimate of the terrible effects of one 40001b. bomb was expertly given 10 years ago. Since then human ingenuity has contrived to make the marshalling of a multiplied attack terrible beyond possibility of calculation. Spain and China have lately furnished evidence less appalling than may be experienced in many countries without warning.

Not long ago it was the fashion to say that the new agencies available for war would by their very dreadfulness supply an invincible argument for peace. Little store can be set now by that counsel of comfort. A generation that has seen a growingly flagrant disregard of agreements to ban "dreadfulness" in various forms cannot reasonably put faith in hopes with no better parentage than fear and desire. When Germany made the first move toward re-armament it was by creating a skeleton personnel for an air force. The significance of that, as of the Nazi Government's adroit bargaining with Britain for a free hand in that activity, can no longer be missed. It brewed, as Mr. Baldwin's anxious words about frontiers proved, a peek of trouble. His successor, facing the House of Commons, is constrained to speak about the difficulties of achieving a remedial international agreement. They are real and serious. Talk of prohibition of all aircraft is delusive : their actual arid potential service to good and necessary ends is too great to be sacrificed. Means to prevent the convertibility of commercial aircraft into raiding weapons involve complicated technical problems. "Overnight conversion" is demonstrably less easy than some seem to think, but so long as men fly there will be a risk of brigandage in the skies. The best approach to the need for international control is by way of stricter observance of the principle that aerial bombardment of military objectives should alone be countenanced. This throws thought back to the dispiriting realisation that wars are made by the scorners of covenants, but statesmanship is committed by harsh facts to pursue the attempt. To shudder at them is not enough.