AIR REPRISALS

Taihape Daily Times, 21 December 1917, Page 6

AIR REPRISALS

The intention of the British Government to carry ant “reprisals” was" made by General Smuts, a member of the War Cabinet, in a speech in London on October 4th. General' Smuts said the raids on England were only very occasionally, as if by mistake, directed at places of militafyimportance. “I imagine their object in all this calculated brutality has been two-fold,” he continued. “First to strike terror into the hearts of the civilian population, and to destroy their morale by every means, however abominable. Secondly, to force us to take machines back from the front for home defence. In both objects they have miserably failed. There is not in London or in the country a single machine taken back from the front for home defence, and the national temper, instead of weakening, is on the contrary hardening under the strain of these terrors and abominations. Ever since the battle of the Somme we have had clear military superiority in the air, and on a small scale we could have followed that up by bombing enemy centres as the enemy have bombed London and other places in this country. But we felt that we should prepare for an air offensive on a large scale, and we were anxious to avoid adding further horrors to this war. But we are dealing with an enemy whose culture has not carried him beyond the rudiments of the Mosaic law, and to whom you can only apply the maxim of ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. On that principle we are now most reluctantly forced to apply to him the bombing policy which he has applied to us. We shall do our best to avoid the German abominations, and

in an air offensive against the military and industrial centres of the enemy we shall use every endeavour to spare as far as is humanly possible the innocent and the defenceless. But it is inevitable that in any extended aerial offensive into the enemy territory they shall to some extent also suffer, and I can only express my deepest regret at these developments which have been forced upon us. It is almost unberaablo to think that another chapter of horrors must be added to tho awful story, But we can only plead that it has not been our doing, and that the blame must rest on an enemy who aparently recognses no law, human or Divine, ’ w ho knows no pity or restraint, who sang Te Deums over the sinking of the Lusitania, and to whom tho maiming and slaughtering of innocent women and children appears a legitimate form of warfare.’