REPRISALS MUST COME.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 257, 27 September 1940, Page 6

REPRISALS MUST COME.

Ox Monday evening the Royal Air Force delivered smashing blows against Berlin, striking only at strictly military objectives. , Enormous damage was done to gas works, railway yards, electric power stations, and aerodromes. At the same time other very important objectives in Germany, now familiar in the news, received their regular strafe. On Tuesday and Wednesday nights Berlin again felt the force of the R.A.F. bombers when once more military objectives were sought out and attacked. In this matter Britain is following a careful policy, but Hitler, who must have been furious over Monday night’s strafing, has again thrown all pretence of striking at similar objectives in Britain to the wind. A most devastating attack on Central London came on Tuesday night and another example of Nazi frightfulness is recorded. The Nazis make no attempt to drop then bombs against a military point, and the toll of civilians and buildings mounts higher each day. In these circumstances there is an imperative demand in Britain foi reprisals. If in the Nazi conception a city is a military objective and civilians who live near docks, railways, and other amenities must take the consequences, then the people of Berlin must be placed in the same peril. There can be no total warfare' against London and none against Beilin. Hitler has proved to the world that his aerial warfare is directed against the civilian morale of Britain’s great capital city and lie is determined to blast it to destruction with all that it holds. This is nothing short of mass murder, and so long as the people of Berlin remain immune from similar attacks they will be told of how tlieir Fuehrer is beating England to her knees. But one or more severe attacks on Central Berlin and there will come to these people the grim realisation that total warfare is the most ghastly business yet devised and they themselves will not relish it. Raids on Berlin corresponding to those devised against London mig lit well have the result ot bringing the war to a quicker conclusion. However much British people revolt against mass murder of the Nazi type, Germany cannot be permitted to believe that reprisals are entirely foreign to their nature.