BUCKINGHAM PALACE BOMBING

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21217, 13 September 1940, Page 4

BUCKINGHAM PALACE BOMBING

Whether the time-bomb that exploded in the garden of Buckingham Palace was deliberately aimed or whether it fell there as a result of indiscriminate raiding, the effect on the people of Britain will be immediate. If anything is calculated to stir them to action it is a brutal attack unon the Royal Family, which represents the heart and core of the British Empire. The reverberations of that explosion will be heard in Germany, and it might well be the most expensive bomb that a German aeroplane ever dropped. It will not terrorise the British people but will galvanise them into more determined resistance than ever.

By a fortunate chance the Royal Family was absent from Buckingham Palace when the bomb was dropped, but that was no excuse for the enemy, who. if he did not deliberately aim the bomb at the palace, did the next worst thing and let his bombs fall without a care where they might strike. It was, too, the most ghastly of all bombs, timed to explode after an unknown delay. That fact also was fortunate, for it allowed time for the complete evacuation of the palace before the explosion caused such serious damage. Loss of life or serious injury could otherwise scarcely have been avoided. It so happened that the private quarters of the King and Queen received the full force of the blast, and the whole Empire will be grateful that Their Majesties were elsewhere. The reception accorded the King when he came to the palace to view the wreckage left no doubt about the effect of the outrage on the people of London. Danger to the Royal Family draws the bonds of common'loyalty more closely about sovereign and subject. Committing such an outrage, the enemy probably did not realise that he was helping to seal his own doom, for wherever Britons read of the incident they will resolve anew that this barbarism must be smashed. Those who man British warships, guns or aeroplanes will remember the bombing of Buckingham Palace. Those who make shells or grow foodstuffs or perform the hundred and one other tasks that the Empire asks of them will put a little extra energy into the work in hand.