Contrasts

NZ Truth, Issue 1188, 6 September 1928, Page 6

Contrasts

WITH flags fluttering from the mastheads of the principal cities of the Empire, and with Lord Mayors/ and high officials making speeches to the glory of a peace pact, it strikes a note of stark hideousness to read of Britain's war, m the air.

With seemingly commendable thoroughness the defence authorities have been testing London's vulnerability to air attack. The results demonstrate that determined flyers prepared to take all. risks have a good chance of landing gas bombs m the city. They also show that an alert, arid well-equipped defence is very likely to account' for 50 per cent, or more of the flyers. It might even account for all of them. The certainty is that men who make air attacks on large cities musti if such attacks are launched m . the future, take greater risks than war has known hitherto.

What, have not been tested are the ghastly possibilities- of bombs which, . -the inventors claim, are deadly enough to blot out life m London, or Sydney, or "Wellington, New Zealand.

The bare prospect of such a thing makes; the 'Peace. Pact all the. more necessary.