The Rangitikei Advocate. TWO EDITIONS DAILY. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 12, 1917. AERIAL RETALIATION.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XLI, Issue 11366, 12 October 1917, Page 4

The Rangitikei Advocate. TWO EDITIONS DAILY. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 12, 1917. AERIAL RETALIATION.

—<& NOW tliat the British Government has at last boon goaded into a policy of reprisals bj' German aerial atrocities it will he interesting to note whether the Germans will abandon the raids on the prinmay ho lost than gained —whether pleasure of murdering a certain number of English women and children might not ho outbalanced by the anguish which would he caused to them by an over -measure of British retaliation. It is possible, though not probable. The merest modicum of sane caution would seem to indicate to them that having at last aroused a fierce spirit of retaliation in the English people by a long and sanguinary series of atrocities, which have been tamely suffered without striking back, it’would to refrain from further murder raids lest a worse thing befall them. They would then bo able to exult over much butchery which has cost them nothing. We do not imagine, however, that they will be able to withstand the temptation. They have tasted the blood of the helpless and l uoffensive, and cannot control their appetite for more. All the languages of the world do not contain a sufficient vocabulary of execration or contumely to cause them to be ashamed of their ghoulish methods. There is only one kind of protest to which they will defer and that is a revenge so complete and terrible that they will thenceforth regard the bombing of open towns with horr or.

That conclusion has been gradually forced upon the most humane sections of the people throughout the whole Empire. They see that they are shut up to two alternatives. Thc\y must retaliate, and that effectively, or be content to tamely submit to aerial atrocities which will be cumulatively horrible. For during the last few months, the attacks upon England have not only been increasingly frequent, hut have been carried out by larger and larger forces, indicating that the Germans regard the wholesale murder of non-combatants as one of the prime and essential methods ofwinning the war. Nor do we believe that the humane sensibilities of the world would he shocked by retaliation. The people of all nations who presume to ho judges of their neighbours must admit that England has suffered enough to entitle it to strike hack, and especially because there would he a world of moral difference between the' objects of the British and the Gormans in their operations. The Gorman is out for murder and destruction. British retaliation would have for its one essential object the preservation of British women and children from German implacable malevolence and savagely. For, stripped of all dialectical verbiage, it means tliat some Gorman town must ho laid in ruins to demonstrate that wo can play the game of the Bottomless Pit as well as they if ’wo are goaded to it by years of provoca. ti on.

The rank and file of the community have long clamoured for retaliation upon the Germans, hut have been now and then hushed to acquiescence by official assurances which now, however, have served their turn and no longer retain their sedative value. They have been given comparative figures to show that there are far more people killed in street accidents in a year iu London than have been slaughtered by t)ie Huns in England through the medium of aerial raids. As a purely statistical fact, it may, perhaps, be very comforting to a philosophically minded statistician. But to ho offered as a comfort to a man who has seen his house destroyed and his wife and children killed or mutilated for life by a German high explosive shell it scarcely seems to be quite adequate to the occasion. The attempts of Bildad the Shuhite at comforting Job would be infinitely more relevant to the trouble. It seems to us, too, that the terror of the Germans at the British threat to hit hack, which is exhibited in their drill to attain celerity in taking cover, might offer a most significant conclusion to tho war authorities in England. Some parts of England appear now to bo thickly planted with anti-aircraf t guns and largo numbers of flying machines are hold ready merely for the purpose of nullifying German aerial attacks. These would be vastly more useful on tho fighting fronts. It is very likely that, except at places like Essen and "WiLielmshafeu, the Germans, not anticipating raids, have neither planes nor guns. They are at liberty to con- 1

j centrate their guns at the front and to utilise their flying machines for I raids. The turning of the British worm would probably reverse the situation. The fear of reprisals by the Allies would cause the Ger mans to withdraw great numbers of their anti-aircraft guns and aeroplanes from the front for the protection of their cities, which would very appreciably weaken their guu power at the front and provide their machines with an occupation less to the taste of their occupants than bombing - Knglish towns — that of defending their own.