War Day by Day

Taranaki Daily News, 16 September 1940, Page 6

War Day by Day

Comment on the News Royal Palace Bombed - Deliberate Attack It was "a curious coincidence that a note in this column on Saturday last commenting on the damage to Buckingham Palace from a high altitude attack by Nazi raiders should have emphasised so clearly the deliberate nature of the low-flying example of barbarity which followed it. Attention was then drawn to the acreage of parks in the immediate vicinity ■ of the palace, and the sparsely populated wide streets surrounding it as compared with the densely populated areas of Stepney and Poplar. The ease of identification of Buckingham Palace by a low-flying aeroplane will be recalled by anybody who has stood on the campanile of the Roman Catholic Cathedral of Westminster. From that great elevation one can see London from Hampstead to Sydenham, and from Woolwich to Kew. But seemingly immediately below, actually a quarter of a mile away, stands the palace a focal point with Constitutional Hill, Birdcage Walk, The Mail, Buckingham Gate and Buckingham Palace Road as wide thoroughfares converging upon it. The palace's situation in relation to the Thames at Westminster Bridge, but three-quarters of a mile away, would make it a matter of the simplest kind for a navigator to fix a bearing. Though the Hun propagandists seemingly are in several minds about the advisability of confessing the deliberate nature of the attack, the rest of the world has no doubt at all. - - In an Old Mulberry Garden. Compared with Whitehall Palace, Buckingham Palace, as a Royal residence, has no roots deep in the_ history of the English people. In the days of James I. a mulberry garden was planted on the site for the purpose of encouraging a silk industry in England. A hundred years after the death of Queen Elizabeth a Duke of Buckingham bought the garden and built in it a red brick' house. It came into the Royal family when George III. made it a dower house for Queen Charlotte. It was not until, 1913 that Sir Aston Webb* gave Buckingham Palace a new dignity with its splendid s^one front 360 feet long, its balustraded roof, and its three colonnades crowned with pediments. Compared with the friendliness of nearby St. James's Palace, Buckingham Palace was a rather aloof sort of place' to Londoners until very recent times. To . the great masses of the people the thought of the palace brings memories, poignantly sad ones, and thrillingly happy ones, of King George V. In Ihe great days of his silver jubilee the King would come on to the balcony in answer to the; cries of a mighty multitude night after night. But the deeper memory is that of one who experienced, as this writer did, the heart of London beating outside the railings of the palace during the illnesses of His late Majest.y. Waiting for the bulletins to be posted was a representative cross-section, from humble house - maid to peer of the ■ realm, of that greathearted people, who can proudly boast that they "are citizens of no mean city." Watch and Ward Everywhere. Britain awaits the perhaps most vital week in all its history, hut it js not a week that is vital to Britain alone. As Dorothy Thompson said in her broadcast to Britons, they are fighting for all our dreams of our future. The bombing of Buckingham Palace may be significant as portraying - a .warp in the German mind directed to the end of creating, before invasion from the sea and' air is attempted, a repetition of the refugeecrowded roads of the Continent. In that they have failed, and it is an augury of failure in other directions. A New Zealand journalist yesterday spke from the British Broadcastirig Corporation of his personal experiences in a component of one of three lines of warships patrolling the seas around Britain. In the air the triumph of Royal Air Force fighter aircraft against Nazi bombers is a foretaste of what they could be expected to accomplish against large troop-carrying planes. The low-cloud conditions of the early autumn - might permit some to get through, and then as the song of Napoleonic days has it, "still Britons they'll firid to receive them on shore." Not only Britons— New Zealand- | ers, Australians, Canadians, Poles, ' Czechs and Frenchmen; and not only will they find trained soldiers. The voice of J.'B. Priestley, mellow as ancient ale, is recalled as saying recently, "There we were_ploughman and parson, shepherd and clerk, turning out at night as our forefathers had often done before us, to keep watch and ward over the sleeping hills and fields and homesteads." Awkward Auguries for Axis. Elsewhere in the world are auguries that Adolf Hitler and his partner must be viewing with some trepidation. The spirit of resurgent France is running high in Syria. This was to have been expected when once the unbeaten French soldiers thoroughly awoke to the humiliations in store for them. Npne know better than the poilus their parlous state' in the country and their access to its food supplies when once disarmament freed the native population of military domination. The Italian fleet, it has ' been ■ demonstrated, is powerless to escort them home' by sea, and Turkey has shown no disposition to allow them transit through its territory. The voice of the Emir Abdullah has arisen saying that no foreign commission had the right to enter Arab-man-dated territory with the object of maintaining authority. The voice of Abdullah is of considerable importance in Near East affairs to-day. Son of Husein, brother of Feisal, Abdullah was a leader of the Arab revolt during the last war. When the French tbrew Feisal off the throne of Syria, Abdullah started off to put him back again. He got as far as the Transjordan, where the British persuaded him to stop, and where he has stopped and reigned ever since. Abdullah. it is evident, does not see the posturing Mussolini as the Protector of Islam, and what Abdullah as a member of the Sreriflan family says counts a lot in Moslem affairs. Long-range Obstacles. Another not so pleasant spectacle for the psychological misfit of Berlin is the long-range problem he faces on his eastern front. Following a demarche from Moscow on the subject of Danubian con- ! trol comes news of intense activity in | putting the Soviet military house in order. _ At long last the United States Senate has passed a Conscription Bill, whicU presents yet another long-range check tft Hitlerian dreams, even should he survivi his nightmnre of the immediate future. True it is that Mr. Wendcll Willkie haS pledged himself, if olected President, not to "send an American boy overseas. This may, to Mr. Willkie, sound good vote-catching material, but no doubt I somebody will show that it is a pled.tf# that may have dangerous repercussions, pointing out that the state of London today is a potent lesson to be learned by those who preach the doctrine' that defence of one's homeland commenees within even strikins? distance of ort^s own shorelines. Then Mr. Willkie's tiwjory may not sound so good to him— «- to' Mr. HiUas.