Britain's Rising Anger

Southland Times, Issue 24243, 28 September 1940, Page 4

Britain's Rising Anger

THE psychological reactions of Londoners to the indiscriminate bombing of their city are receiving attention in the cable and wireless messages. According to one report, “the citizens of the metropolis, who are proverbially kindly natured and little prone to anger, are now growing indignant at the lack of any pretence of decency on the part of the Germans in their hideous campaign against the civilian population.” Nobody can deny that there is the fullest justification for anger. The destruction of life and property is not accidental. German pilots do not attack military objectives in the heart of London, but unload their bombs at any point beyond the antiaircraft barrage. Rows of workers’ homes, old churches and buildings that are like the shrines of English history, have been demolished with an impartial ruthlessness. Where partiality has been shown, it has emphasized a desire to unsettle the foundations of English civilization. The deliberate attacks on Buckingham Palace were aimed at something more than the home of the King. Other incidents, on the outskirts of London and in country towns, have included the machine-gunning of civilians, even of children. Such methods are stimulating an anger that must profoundly influence the British people in their attitude towards the present struggle. There was a foretaste of it when the British Expeditionary Force returned from France. Soldiers who had witnessed the exploitation of terror on country roads crowded with refugees spoke of the enemy with a cold disgust. Since then they have watched the Germans trying hard to terrorize the women and children of England. Nerves grow taut under the strain of constant air raids, and men are

less inclined or able to think in any except realistic terms. Londoners have been told that reprisals are bad policy; but every new report of reckless bombing, every new blow which falls close to their own homes, makes them feel with an intense conviction that Berlin should be given the same rough treatment. It can scarcely be an accident of air strategy that there have been more frequent and heavier raids on Berlin during the past few days. People who watch these developments from a safe distance may hesitate to express decided opinions, for they know that only those who are sharing the danger and the hardship have any real right to sit in judgment. But it is difficult not to feel that in provoking anger and hatred against themselves the Nazis are shaping dark problems for the postwar world. Liberal thinkers everywhere have based their hopes for the future on a just peace settlement. They have said many times that there must be no second Treaty of Versailles. Yet it is too much to ask of human nature to expect British people to forget the brutality and the cruelty of these days when at last the ordeal is over. Although English intellectuals are still talking of peace aims it is harder to hear their voices against the aerial bombardment of London. Hitler started more than he dreamed of when he gave the orders which released the revolutionary forces of Nazism.