BARBAROUS AIR RAIDS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23057, 7 June 1938, Page 10

BARBAROUS AIR RAIDS

Side by side continue the murderous bombing of open towns and the sharp reproof of it by leading Powers. The wanton slaughter of civilians—women and children as well as men—goes on with unabated fury in East and West, in utter disregard of humanitarian principles and military precepts laid down by international agreement. A new theory of war seems to have been invented by the Japanese in China and the insurgents in Spain. Instead of devoting belligerent attention to combatants, whose defeat would bring about the submission of noncombatants in the ordinary course of events, these assailants seek to instil fear into defending armies by massacre of the defenceless. If this is not new, it is a return to the barbarism from which the modern world hoped it had won free. To the swelling chorus of protest the voice of the United States is now officially added in a formal statement of most direct character. This is a significant wave in a rising tide of disgust and indignation. It is a time for plain speech and more than plain speech. Every fresh instance of sheer brutality increases the repugnance felt toward the high command of the Japanese campaign and the Spanish insurgent cause backed unashamedly by Italy and Germany. In the latter case there have been promises of amendment, but they have proved to be worth nothing. How much longer are mere words to be wasted on the perpetrators of these enormities and on the Powers standing Bponsor for them? Once upon a time—it was in 1877—the massacre of hapless Bulgarians changed, at the stern insistence of Gladstone, the course of British foreign policy; and the sinking of the Lusitania so stirred the conscience of the American people and others in recent days that they became solemnly pledged to achieve Germany's downfall. What is now happening may serve so to simplify the painful position that the protests will be enforced by severe measures. International agreement can, as in the case of Mediterranean piracy, devise and apply such measures.