Evening Post. TUESDAY, JUNE 1, 1937 BOMBS AND REPRISALS

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 128, 1 June 1937, Page 8

Evening Post. TUESDAY, JUNE 1, 1937 BOMBS AND REPRISALS

Who first fired—the aeroplanes of the German warship Deutschland— is ib dispute. But even a slight examination of the novel experiment now in progress—an international control thrown round a country torn by civil war, and ringing that country by sea and land—indicates the extreme likcliness that aeroplane bombs may fall on or near any control warship. The bombs may be dropped by either Spanish Government or Spanish rebel forces; and the aeroplanist may act" in error, thinking the' control warship to be an enemy warship. It is also possible that, in a civil war, and in a period of hasty recruitment, some , aerial adventurer of ilnknown origin may be, enlisted who may have received material inducement to bomb the wars Kip of a Great Power, with the purpose of converting a civil war into one of wider proportions. It needs' very little imagination to picture the motives of such an international murderer. And an aeroplane age improves the opportunities of precipitating war by such means, because an' aeroplanist looking for targets is under no fire orders. He is his own law. A world war may turn not only^n his honesty but on his judgment. Of course, a wider war need not arise if a bombing incident is treated diplomatically, but it is here that the point of greatest danger is touched. By her reprisal tactics, applied rapidly on her own "independent" judgment, Germany brings international powder right up against any match struck by some responsible or irresponsible aeroplanist. Germany does not mince matters. She calls her reprisal tactics by that name. Last Christmas she provided ■an example, by seizing Spanish Government merchantmen in reprisal for the detention of the German steamer Pal os, accused hy the Spanish Government of carrying contraband. Reprisal morality (eye for eye, tooth for t^oth) has now dictated that the bombirig of the. German warship Deutschland in Ibiza Harbour shall be immediately followed by German naval bombardment of the coastal town Almeria, from which town comes a report of 19 d<jad to offset the 22 dead on the Deutschland. From these facts it is clear that a crime or a mistake by a Spanish aeroplanist can set up a series of reprisals, leading with increasing momentum to the very crime against civilisation that the control system was created to avoid. The implications of the air/warfare. age, plus reprisal tactics, are only beginning fo be understood. They seem to present a ; new ' and terrifying approach to war, placing, mankind more than ever at tiie mercy of irresponsible acts and "independent" retaliations.

,It will be remembered that in February, at; Valencia, something from the air burst on the quarterdeck of the, British battleship Royal Oak, and splinters superficially injured the Captain, the Commander, and others.. That looked, on the face of it, like a very direct hit. But the explosive turned out to be not a bomb from an aeroplane but an anti-air-craft shell, the,apparent purpose of which had been'to hit a raiding rebel aeroplane and not a Brjtish quarterdeck. Such was the official explanation; there was no talk of,reprisals; the matter was forgotten. But this and other incidents served as a warning, of which recent eventSj involving Italian and German warships, provide the realisation. Given a retaliation mentality, the control warships will hardly fail to find material for reprisals, because reprisals leave no time for investigation as to the actual facts of the bombing—whether done in ignorance or otherwise, or whether ,(as in the Royal Oak case) it really happened at all. A ring of warships below, and a number of aerial cruisers overhead, plus bad visibility or bad intent, provide a war-risk which has now shaken the international control system to its foundations. Both Germany and Italy, it is cabled, will withdraw their warships I from it, unless guarantee against recurrence of bombing is given. And what guarantee can the Non-inter-vention Committee give concerning units not under its control, and possibly under no effective. control whatever? Not only the facts, but also their bearings in international law, are hazy and arguable. The great experiment is being tried of a cordon of warships of various nations, operating outside the three-mile limit, and trying to prevent the passage to Spain of water-borne prohibited supplies. These warships are not all the time on control duty outside the three-mile limit. At times they go into port. If they are in a Spanish Government port and are attacked by rebel aeroplanes, or if they are in a rebel port and are attacked by Spanish Government aeroplanes, can they be deemed to be, at that moment, part of the international control system, and what (if any) are the responsibilities of the controlling

body? Lawyers could argue endlessly about that; but meanwhile Germany bombs Almeria. Ready for legal battle as for the other kind, German officials insist that the Deutschland had a right to berth in Ibiza Harbour because under the control "system ships off control duty have a Fight to enter the three-mile zone and anchor where they deem fit. To which Paris diplomats reply that the Deutschland, when in Ibiza Harbour, was not executing control functions and was not under the guidance of the control committee. . The legal voices will continue to be heard if they are not drowned in the roar of guns.' ; ' The European background of-the visit of Messrs. Savage, Nash, and Armstrong to London and Geneva is now more interesting than ever. They have all the advantages of a "closeup" view. They must see that a big collective plan like the control ring —the development of hundreds of thinking brains, and now participated in by thousands •of workers and by immense naval forces, at huge cost .—-may be undermined and perhaps brought to naught by five minutes' bombing. We do not know what the effect of the German reprisals spirit may be on the minds of the three Ministers and Mr. Jordan, but surely they will detect the vast difference between European: experiments and the internal facts of our own democratic institutions. The parallel drawn between police work' in a democracy and international police work does not in practice exist. And if the German baton at Almeria has flattened out that misconception:, it may possibly have accomplished a minimum of good.