BOMBING REPRISALS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 September 1941, Page 8

BOMBING REPRISALS

DEMAND ON THE INCREASE. “Scientific investigation shows that the demand for reprisals is on the increase,” said Mr Gerald Barry in a recent broadcast talk. “Six months ago. in October, the Gallup Poll asked the question: ‘ln view of the indiscriminate bombing of this country, would you approve or disapprove if the R.A.F. adopted a similar policy of bombing the civilian population of Germany?’ The vote was exactly evenly distributed. Fortysix per cent said they would approve of indiscriminate bombing of Germany, forty-six per cent they would not. The remaining eight per cent expressed no opinion either way. The Gallup Institute has just completed another poll on a question almost exactly the., same as last October’s, and this time the answers show that fifty-three per cent would approve the policy of bombing civilians in Germany, and thirty-eight per cent would disapprove, an increase of seven per cent in favour. Nine per cent had no opinion either way. That isn’t a very big increase, rather smaller perhaps than all the discussion in the newspapers might have led one to expect. An analysis of the voting reveals some rather interesting things. It reveals that people who have been blitzed tend to be less anxious for revenge than those who haven’t. For instance, in Inner London, there is a small majority against reprisals (forty-seven per cent against, fortyfive per cent for), whereas in Cumberland, Westmorland and North Yorkshire, so far a comparatively immune area in north-west England, there is a thumping big majority for revenge (seventy-six per cent for, only fifteen per cent against)—the biggest proreprisals vote of any district. The figures equally show that in the villages of South Wales, which haven’t been much bombed, there is a much stronger demand for reprisals than in the coastal town of South Wales, which have. This suggests that the natural anger and hatred felt by people when they hear or read of terrible bombings often die out of them when they actually see it or go through it themselves; a sense of its futility, and compassion for anyone who has to endure it, overcome the other emotion.”