WARNING TO THE WORLD

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 17951, 1 December 1932, Page 8

WARNING TO THE WORLD

MENACE FROM THE AIR AIR FORCE V.C.’S COMMENT LONDON, Nov. 20. Visualising the terrifying effects of future aerial raids by bombers, compared with which the war-time machines were almost experimental, Col. William Bishop declares that in tin' next war huge populated areas will iie laid waste like fields devoured by locustn. Officially credited with 'having In-ought down 72 Herman planes during tin! war and with having engaged in inure than 170 air battles, Colonel Bishop - was awarded the V.C., the D.S.O. and bar, the M.C., andD.F.C., the Croix de Guerre with two palms, the special medallion of the. British Air Fleet Committee, the gold medal of tin' Aero 'Club of France ami the special war medal of the Aero Club of America—so .lie should know what he is talking about. Long lines of bombers, he says, will await the moment when war is declared. Then a hundred pilots will shout “.Contact!” Their engines will burst inio a shattering roar, and within a few moments of that fatal zero hour tin' hundred machines will be rushing to rain tons of incendiary bombs on a panic-stricken enemy capital, obliterating the whole streets, while tlie gases will spread a further pall of: death. The raiders probably will be brought down, but the war will have, been won by bringing the civilian population to its knees. “I am no sensation-monger,” he says, “but 1 believe that gases are now being manufactured that will be capable of wiping man from the face or the earth.” ‘‘ XO USE Vi’R IXGI NO It ANDS ” “The Government must bodlv face the danger from the air,” writes Alt 1 Winston Churchill in an article in the Daily Mail, commenting on Mr Baldwin’s striking speech in the House of. Commons' on November Ei. “It is useless,” lie says, “bewailing tin 1 evils and perils which have been obvious since 11. G. Wells wrote ‘The War in the Air’ 20 years ago.

“The man in the street is entitled tii ask Ministers if they believe am oflier war is coming in which air attack may be fatal to Britain and Civilisation, and What they are going to do about ir.

“It is no use old men monopolising power, wringing their hands and declaring that younger men who have never been consulted will be responsible for the State’s destruction. “If Geneva fails, let the Government and Parliament place the Air Force in such a condition of power and elhcicncy that it won’t be worth anyone’s while to attempt to kill our women and children in the hope of blackmailing us into surrender.”