AIR WARFARE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 9 October 1940, Page 6

AIR WARFARE

REASONS FOR BRITISH CONFIDENCE STATED BY MR CHURCHILL. SPIRIT OF PEOPLE PRAISED. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, Noon.) RUGBY, October 8. In his review in the House of Commons of the results of air warfare, Mr Churchill said that after their very severe mauling on August 15, German short-range dive-bombers had beeit kept back carefully out of the air fight. Perhaps they were being held back for use in invasion or in some other theatre of war. German heavy bomber pilots were being worked at least as hard as the British, perhaps harder. The strain upon the Germans appeared to be considerable. The bulk of them did not seem to be capable of much beyond blind bombing. On the whole we might reach the provisional conclusion that the German average effort against this country absorbed a very considerable part of their potential strength.. “I should not like to say we have the measure of their power,” said Mr Churchill, “but we feel more confident about it than ever before.” Declaring that neither material destruction nor slaughter would turn the Empire from its inexorable purpose, Mr Churchill spoke of the remarkable spirit of the people who had suffered German frightfulness. “In all my life,” he said, “I have never been treated with so much kindness as by the people who have suffered most. “One would have thought,” exclaimed the Premier, amid cheers, “that I had brought them some great benefit, instead of blood and tears and sweat. Oh every side there is the cry: ‘We can take it!’ “With a less numerous Air Force Britain is inflicting more damage on the war-making capacity of Germany than Germany is inflicting on Britain’s.”