The Padre’s Column The Bombing of Towns

Observation Post, Volume 1, Issue 19, 25 September 1942, Page 2

The Padre’s Column The Bombing of Towns

i The following extract from a- British ! 1 publication called ‘ ‘ The Christian ! News-Letter” concerns a very import- '' ant subject — anything, no mat- ' : ter how ruthless is permissible in war, 1 or whether the line between clean ano " j dirty lighting must be drawn. hr. ! |J. 11. Oldham, the writer of this j article says: ‘ ‘ The challenge is one which Chris- ' i tians are bound to face ,for the simple ! I reason that we cannot take for granted ’ that what the national cause demands, jor seems to demand, is something to I ; which the Christian conscience can • ? consent. Christians owe allegiance to ■ a higher authority than the nation. Ali j our actions, individual and ' national j have to be brought to the bar of an impartial and searching divine judg- j ment. Unless we are prepared, even ) in wartime, to examine our conduct in the light of the laws of God, we may as well let Christianity go and swallow at a gulp the Nazi creed. ■ Professor Macgregor reminds me I that it was said, in the News-Letter j that the deliberate killing of non-com-batants is murder, and argues that | ‘‘if what happened in Lubeck and Cologne is not the deliberate killing of non-combatants, then words have no meaning. ’ ’ The problem is a real One, but it does not seem to me to have been rightly formulated. We cannot consider 1 Lubeck and Cologne in isolation from ■the total context of the war. We can- ■ not leave out of the picture the un-~ imaginable horrors on an unimaginable scale which the Axis Powers have perpetrated. Lubeck and Rostock are : ports vital to the enemy for the supply 'of his armies in Russia, Finland and 'Norway., What they have suffered is immeasurably less than the devastation and suffering which the Germans have 1 caused in Russia. If the bombing of their -ports and industries is the necessary, or most effective, means of putting an end to the greater cruelty, it may be, among the choices that are actually , upon us in the waging of war, the one 'to be preferred on grounds of humanity. The Pacifist has no convincing answer to the question by what practical means the unspeakable cruelties 'of lawless and brutal men may be restrained, and the enslavement of the peoples of Europe prevented, except by force of arms. . ■ j ‘ ‘ Sir Archibald Sinclair, in reply to a recent question in. the House of Com- ■ mons, .stated that the policy of His Majesty’s Government in -regard to bombing is unchanged. It is to destroy the enemy capacity to make war by bombing his war factories, means of transport and military stores, wherever they may be found. If the intention is to destroy the enemy’s capacity for making war, the incidental and. undesired .killing of non-combat-ants, even if it be on a large scale, cannot rightly be described as deliberate. The real line is between action directed to a genuine military objective and action which goes beyond it and is merely wanton destruction. It is a line that is by no means easy to maintain and much is at stake in holding 1 to it. * ( i “It will make the whole difference to £ the future whether we control war and , make it the instrument of a genuinely |, human purpose or whether we surrender j to its blind fury so that war controls |, us. No one who has delighted in human I j skill and craftsmanship can feel any- ; ( ■ thing but regret at the destruction of j j the architectural glories of Lubeck. ( Works of art are not a national but a £ universal possession. Not the Germans i £ only, but the world is poorer for their £ destruction; the loss is ours as well as' J theirs. The Nazis boast that our own £ historic monuments will soon become ; K only historic memories. Let them 'be i .vandals, if they will. -Let us remain, ; if we can, civilised and sane, loathing £ the insanity of ruthless destruction j and retaining our reverence for the c monuments of human labour and skill, , “When we pass from the sphere of i civilisation to the deeper level of re- r ligion, the problem becomes far more t acute. It is the question of the in- y fliction of torture and death on the i relatively innocent. I take the case 6 of children because their case is so un- c answerably clear. As with works of I art, there is something universal in the 1 c innocence of children. When Jesus q took a little child and set him in. the. a midst, no one can suppose that it would s have made the smallest difference to 0 His action if it had been a German or j a Japanese child, the . Germans and , f Japanese being what they are to-day. i. c We have to recall these things even in , meeting, asked about this Brother' I Ignatious. i 1 With the easy technique of the re- ' porter, he gained a lot of information, and he concluded his questioning with one query: ‘‘What was Bro. Ignatious ’s name in private life?” he asked. “Well,” replied the old man, “it was a name that the Brother seldom used in full, and you may appreciate it when I tell you that it was Tamalaine Vetruvious Snubbins.” Re S wenUaway, thinking hard. Hero or coward ALt&WEfc <TUIM.L LIBRARY WELLINGTON, NEW ZEALAND

wartime —most of all in wartimei muse they enshrine values with which ;he whole future of mankind is bound ip. To cast them from us is to be rtterly' damned. ’ To rain bombs from the air that will destroy, maim and torture children is an act of which the consequences are ievilish. Ido not deny that it may oe a necessary act, in order that the children of the world may be saved in .he future, from still greater sufferings md yet more deadly injuries to their sous. — But it is an act which only that notive can keep from searing our souls. “How far the laying waste of towns s inseparable from attacks on military sargets, either because these targets ire mixed up with dwelling-houses, or because the intensification of ground lefences makes precision of aim impracticable, is a question requiring for ts answer a knowledge of strategy and nilitary technique possessed only by .hose responsible for the conduct of the var. What is demanded by the moral ssues involved is that the necessity ihould be scrutinised with especial ;are. “These are not sentimental questions >ut of tune with , the realism of war. fhere is a real danger that, unless we ire all the time alive to them, we mav ■ ■uccumb to the drag of the evil we are ipposing and become increasingly lehumanised and brutalised and, there- , ore, less capable of • creating a true ' civilisation.” I