GUARDIAN OF FIFTEEN MILLION PEOPLE

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 204, 17 May 1918, Page 5

GUARDIAN OF FIFTEEN MILLION PEOPLE

THE CHIEF OP THE LONDON AIR

DEFENCES,

Thero is a man in London to-day with a never-ending duty, and upon his broad shoulders rests the .csponsibility of tho safety of the livss of fifteen million people. At any instant night or day lie must be ready to act. The safety of tho people depends upon the quickness of his action. Ho is Major-General Edward Bailey Ashmoi-s; C.li., M.V.0., C.M.G., chief of the London Air Defences. By training ho is gunner and airman too. In a barely furnished office this tall, blue-eved *,old;«r, with a calm, determined face—an auto-rut • f the old Amiy school in dress aud speech—plans against the Hun. Day -ind night he is never away from thu telephone which links him up -with tho cordon of defences lie Las mi cunningly drawn. It takes but a few short minutes for a Gotha to approach London from tho mista of :ho North ."-Va, and during a raid General Ashmore takes sole charge of the chess-briai'd of the defences. While tho guns ara booming ho is "somewhere ir. tho operating roi.-r.i" dosely following on his maps tho conr3e of tho raiders.

General Ashmore carries his forty-six years lightly. He has seen torvico with the guns in South Africa, whoro he was severely wounded, and he went to France with the E.F.C. at the outbreak of war. There is no trace of war-weari-ness in his alert figure. Tho morning .iftor a trying night raid finds him at his office ready for a fast drive of inspection around tho defences long before most people have read the official communique. He knows all his guns and all his gunners, and he talks with affectionate pride of his night fliers who have "reached the highest attainments in airmanship." With every word he lets fall General Ashmore unconsciously 6bows his supreme .confidence in tho ability of British airmen and guns to beat the raiders. "The Germans don't like coming now," he says. If there are any timorouß folk in London, they would do well to talk with General Ashmore. One leaves him with the feeling of the man who, imagining himself to bo suffering from some incurable disease, has visited the specialist only to be told that his .complaint is nothing more serious than indigestion. Ho believes in annoying the Hun, and says that nothing can annoy or discourage the "stout hearts"—for it takes a stout-hearted airman to tacklo London theso times-of the German Flying Corps more than to know that 'he nvueh-sought-after moral effect is a, "negative quantity.". Everything about, the man— the maps on the wall, the plain flat desk cleared of papers, the simple furniturespeaks of preparation and efficiency. "No defence," he says, "can make it certain that a single raider in a combined attack will be prevented from getting through, but I don't envy him his job, and now, night or day, the more machines the Germans send the more they are likely to lose.