LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2494, 22 June 1915, Page 10

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

GERMANY IN FLAMES. Sir, —Germany carefully waited until her last grain harvest was scoured before declaring war; we should leave her as little grain harvest to secure this season as possible; she grows nearly ontugh grain for her cwn use; Austria more than enough, and ihey are depending on the harvest now approaching maturity for the bulk of their food supply. Let the red flames destroy their ripening grain fields, and involve in. dostiuction their thatched farm buildings, and hay and straw stacks, and their farm stock will also fail them through shortage of winter feed. With air services such as iiritain, France, and Italy are possessed of, and can and are very rapidly adding to, it is quite practicable to drop millions of liro balls among the grain ;fields of Germany and Austria; the'climate generally is very dry in July, and the ripanea fields would rapidly be destroyed by fire, and no adequate defence would bo possible. Lord Kitchener's drastic, but deliberate, methods in the Transvaal, where whole countrysides were devastated, so that no shelter might be left to the enemy, should be applied to Germany thoroughly, not deliberately, but with awful and terrible haste, now rendered possible by our air services. No heavy, awkward loads of bombs are required, merely iron bolts with half a pound or so of cotton waste soaked in naphtha or petroleum fastened round them, and with from 20 to CO-second time-fuses fixed, to lire the cotton on reaching the ground. A thousand aeroplanes, manned by daring, reckless drivers, engaged in a special fire service for three weeks, woufd go far to burn the. heart out of Germany. Let Britain, France, and Italy spend five millions of pounds on new machines and fixing existing aeroplanes, and on bases in the North Sea, and on huge bonuses to special fire pilots, and they could possibly end the war before another winter comes. The use of poison gases, and the wholesale deliberate drowning of noncombatants by Germany, leaves her no right to complain, and considering that she robbed Belgium of nearly all her food supplies, and left her dependent on the outside world for food to keep her people from stark starvation, iti would be but righteous retribution for the robber nation to suffer in the same way. That Germany and Austria would endeavour;to follow suit/ is certain, but tie Allies can import any amount of overseas grain, and can beep all such Bupplies from their enemies. Britain is also much less open to such fire attack than Germany, and only grows enough grain for a few weeks' consumption. Hungary is much more vulnerable than Italy, and France has the best defensive air service of them all. The Karlsruhe air raid has just demonstrated how aeroplanes can penetrate the enemy country, and 23 of them hover over a far inland German town ! for 105 minutes, and all return safely except one.—l am, etc., ST. ANDREWS.