COMPLETE FAILURE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 254, 24 September 1940, Page 7

COMPLETE FAILURE.

NAZI AIR TERRORISM

SMALL MILITARY GAINS.

(British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, Sept. 22. The Nazi method of carrying out aerial bombardments over a wide area by single machines or small formations undoubtedly imposes a severe strain on the civil population and ne~ cessarily causes damage, but by its very naturo the military gains are small. , T . In a large area such as .London, which has grown up gradually and absorbed what once were satellite towns and villages, “military targets” (in the broadest sense of , the term) are inevitably scattered throughout the residential and commercial areas. Consequently, of the number of bombs indiscriminately dropped some are bound to land on such places, as gasworks and factories as well as nospitals, and railway stations, though the greatest number have burst oil what forms the highest proportion of the target’s surface —roads and streets. CHANGING TACTICS.

The latter, of course, cause damage in varying degree to trie surrounding uuiidings, the vast majority, of w'nicu when mt sustain damage which from a military point of view is not commensurate with the cost incurred in hitting it. It is probably lor this reason that the German High Command —knowing that its pilots are unlikely to reacn that. high degree or individual efficiency and* courage which distinguishes the lloyal Air . Force pilots and crews and enables them to deliver one after another successful attacks on genuine military objectives —has regarded and probably still regards its night air operations as militarily ineffective. , The German technique is a crushing, blow delivered by mass formations, and the German High Command has shown by its two efforts that it would it it could apply this method to mass daylight attacks. Both of these endeavours, however, have been signally defeated by the E.A.F., and while the Luftwaffe chiefs are thinking out a third set of daylight mass tactics the night bombing seems to be regarded- as a cheap (so far as their losses are concerned) and harassing alternative. BOOMERANG EFFECT. The attack on civilian morale is, however, a well-tried weapon in. the political armoury of the Nazi. Hitherto disruption from within has been found to be sufficiently effective, specially if accompanied by some measure of physical brutality, the latter being increased proportionately to the inability of the “ideological” subversion to bring about the requisite state of internal confusion. In applying their methods to Britain, the Nazis have found but poor soil for their seeds of discord; the British people, whatever may be their individual political views, are for practical purposes unanimous in their hearty dislike of Nazi doctrines and their determination to resist them, and their ideals of freedom are too deeply rooted. . , . , Consequently the weapon of physical fear is employed in endeavours to break down the resistance by nervous exhaustion. Just as the mass air attacks failed and the endeavour t° produce internal discord met with no success, so does it appear that the weapon of terror is. not cmly. blunting its own edge, but is itsell^/terf^lies-counter-weapon which will utterly, des trov and root out from the world for ever the malignant growth of Nazi practice.