ATTACKS ON OPEN TOWNS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23595, 3 September 1938, Page 12

ATTACKS ON OPEN TOWNS

The report of the Commission which has investigated the bombing of open towns in Nationalist Spain allows no doubt that aerial attacks have been conducted by the insurgents—or - their Fascist supporters—upon nonmilitary objectives. This fact will cause no surprise/ What may seem surprising, however, is that, to judge by the cabled reports of the commission's findings, the number of bombing raids in which indiscriminate bombing was established is comparatively smail. The assumption would seem to be that the commission has accepted as proven only attacks that were beyond a shadow of doubt aimed at the civilian population, or at objectives which were beyond suspicion of being military in character. Thus the very conservatism of its findings strengthens the report as an indictment of the rebels' . cynical disregard for the conduct of the civil war as one between armed and equipped forces/ The truth is that in Spain, as in China, where bombings of civil populations are a regular practice, and the use of gas "at critical moments" in Japanese attacks is reported, the developments in the air machine since 1918 have been seized upon to introduce a new form of horror into war. The theory that the civilian population of an attacked country has become a main military objective is accepted. Only a cautious thought to the humanitarian force of world opinion deters the modern aggressor States from openly admitting the application of it. And the effect of expressions of indignation at the bombing of open towns has been to persuade the militant nations to restrain the impetuosity of their air forces, not to persuade them to refrain from an outlawed and terrible form of warfare. Only one circumstance in this new phase of destructiveness appears to call for comment, apart from its uncivilised and contemptible brutality. That is, that j the degree of terrorisation induced in civilian populations subjected to bombing seems to be less than might be imagined. % It has been suggested that in Nationalist Spain constant bombing has, in fact, tempered the morale of the people, spurring them to greater powers of endurance.and . resistance, and this may conceivably be true. But it is at an unutterably tragic price that man must pay to be hardened to resist aggression, if the spoliation of his cities, and the massacre of women and children from the air, are part of it. And the democratic peoples of the world must be confirmed in their distrust of the political system that permits such barbarism to prevail, in which the desire for conquest triumphs over every consideration of decency.