BOMB THE HUN TOWNS.

Taranaki Daily News, 25 September 1917, Page 3

BOMB THE HUN TOWNS.

DAILY MAIL'S APPEAL. "The absence of definite news that our air services have become an offensive against German towns has evidently caused some public uneasiness (says a Daily Mail letter). "There unfortunately -are dayß when the enemy, and not the British Government, acta on Cromwell's doctrine: 'A word and a blow, but the blow- first.' A meeting of the London Mayors was held recently to consider the question. At the next meeting of the City Corporation a resolution is to be submitted requesting the Government to arrange for proper warning when hostile aircraft approach, and to adopt and carry out 'a wide and comprehensive system of reprisals.' "The effective method of protecting our large towns, and in particular our. poor districts, which happen to lie nearer to the enemy, is to attack the Germans in their own homes. Instead £f doing that we have all through permitted them to attack us, and East London and Thanet have suffered to please the sentimentalists. To those who honestly and sincerely oppose operations against German towns -we would give this word of counsel: their duty, it seems to us, if they hold these views, is to go and live in the area constantly attacked or threatened—in East London, in Thanet, or on the eastern County seaboard. Such action would set a noble example, n-jfi be of pecuniary benefit to districts which have suffered very cruelly from the sentimental policy. REASOX FOP. REPRISALS. "There are two overwhelmingly strong arguments in favor of vigorous attack on German towns. The first is that it is, »s we have said, the best means of. protecting our people at home. That they can be left entirely unprotected, that munition factories and works can be abandoned to German bombing attacks,. we do not suppose even the sentimentalists would suggest. Therefore, their policy means bringing back machines from our- front for pure passive defence. It means that the people of this country •take.all the risks and the enemy obtains,; all the advantage. The second argument is that to abjure attack on German towns at once sets free large German forces fpr the German front. The 'Berliner Tageblatt' has pointed out:— The measures of air defence taken in ' England demand a considerable per. isonnel and much material. Numberless defence stations have be?n createn which require the attention of many thousands of officers and men, including the crews needed for handling the guns and manipulating the searchlights. AH these are detained in Great Britain by Germany's plan of attack. All of them are kept from Sir Douglas Haig's army. But in Germany not a man is thus kept at home. The policy of our sentimentalists has not only killed and wounded many hundreds of British jvomen and children; it has also deprived our generals at the front of a whole army corps."