Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, JUNE 5, 1940. THE DUTY OF RETALIATION.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 June 1940, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, JUNE 5, 1940. THE DUTY OF RETALIATION.

MADE as they were in part from an altitude of 30,000 feet, the German bombing raids on Paris reported yesterday can be regarded as nothing else than a deliberate attack on civilian non-combatants. As might have been expected in these circumstances, a proportion of the victims killed and injiuecl were children of tender years, some of them bombed in schoo s. On the facts given, the German assertion that the attacks were directed against aerodromes and other military establishments in the environs of Paris evidently amounts to a tianspaient and shameless pretence.

An announcement by the Paris radio, that German cities were to be bombed in retaliation for the raid on Paris has been carried promptly into effect and this obviously is the onlj policy that will'meet the case. Retaliation in kind becomes, within limits, an indispensable method of coping with Hitlei s ruthless savagery. There are some developments of worse than wild beast tactics in which the Nazi dictatorship, and those who do its will, of necessity will continue to enjoy a monopoly. There can be no reply in kind, for example, to the ruthless machine-gunning of helpless refugees, nor to the deliberate attacks on hospitals and hospital ships of which Nazi airmen have been guilty.

Calculated and criminal attacks on the residential areas of towns and cities are, however, in a different The actual alternatives here are to retaliate in. kind, as the French have done or to condone, encourage and in effect assist the crime. The people of Germany are definitely responsible for the deeds of their dictators and have no right to complain when punishment for these deeds falls upon their own heads.. The people of the Reich may find a full remedy, if they desire to do so, in either deposing their dictators or compelling them to observe the laws of war and of humanity. If, either in weakness or in indifference, the German masses prefer to let matters take their course, they become participants in the infamies of their dictators and must expect to suffer the consequences.

There are other recent developments of the German campaign of terrorism with which the Allied nations may find it necessary to deal in drastic fashion. Marshal Goering and Herr von Ribbentrop, the German Foreign Minister, have lately made statements, for example, in which they have advanced obviously invented charges of the ill-treatment of German prisoners by the Allies and have threatened savage reprisals. It. may be worth considering whether the Allies should not make it known that they will hold the authors of these threats personally responsible if they venture to carry their threats into effect. It might well become a condition of the ultimate peace settlement that the individuals in question should be surrendered for execution.