AIR BOMBING

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22710, 24 October 1935, Page 20

AIR BOMBING

STATEMENT BY NOTED SCIENTISTS DEFENSIVE PRECAUTIONS IMPOSSIBLE. (From Our Own Correspondent) (By Air Mail) LONDON, September 21. A rather surprising document has been issued by a group of distinguished scientists, who argue that all practicable precautions against bombing from the air must he inadequate, and therefore it is more or less futile and psychologically dangerous to organise any precautions at all. The group includes Sir F. Gowland Hopkins, F.R.S., president of the British Association, 1933; Julian Huxley; Sir Daniel Hall, F.R.S., late chief scientific adviser to the Ministry of Agriculture; Bertrand Russell, F.R.S.; and Frederick Soddy, professor of chemistry at Oxford. -They express their alarm at the tendency of civilised countries to accept the use of aircraft for unrestricted bomb ana gas attack on civil populations. This barbarous perversion of science and industry, they maintain, must lead to the breakdown of civilised life. The scientists go on to say: "In our opinion nothing snort of the complete abolition of aerial bombing and of bombing aircraft can prevent this result. " The method —implicit in the British Government's air expansion programme —of countering air attack by means of reprisals carries its own condemnation. " The acceptance of this principle by our own Government has already increased the general apprehension of air attacks in Western Europe. Active defence by interceptor aircraft and antiaircraft guns can admittedly only result in casualties in the attacking force without preventing more than a small fraction of the possible damage. " The measures of passive defence actually proposed by the Government are grossly inadequate, though they arc calculated to produce a dangerous illusion of security. " The only passive defence likely to be technically efficacious is the construction of armoured gas-proof shelters and the provision of closed-circuit oxygen gas masks and complete vesicant-proof suits for the whole population. " Not only would this be impracticable because of the enormous cost involved, but it would he an intolerable burden on the population and destroj' all the possibilities for a better life which science, rightly applied, can offer." COUNSEL OF DESPAIR. Critics of this document, which has been issued by the National Peace Council, call it a counsel of despair, and note how quickly the writers pass from science to politics. The precautions suggested by the Government have the backing of some respectable scientific talent, they point out. "It seems probable," says The Times, " that the distinguished signatories of the present document have been appalled, as more humble folk are appalled, by the possibility that science may be the destroyer instead of the saviour of mankind." The signatories also lay the blame on the British Government for failure to abolish bombing. " The fable that the Government prevented the adoption of a convention abolishing bombing," adds The Times, " is comparable only to the other fable that they opposed the abolition of submarines."