The Price

New Zealand Listener, Volume 10, Issue 243, 18 February 1944, Page 5

The Price

T is natural that the violence of our air-raids on Germany should be disturbing sensitive minds in Britain. In itself it is creditable. Not to feel how horrible a thing it is that we are compelled to do would be inhuman, and to gloat over it would dishonour and disgrace us. But it is one thing to feel the horror of it and another thing to protest against it. The protests have now begun, and they are exceedingly dangerous. They are one of the aids that the enemy has been waiting for. They help his propagandists, and they lengthen the war. They make it easier for him to say that the British are a race of barbarians, blind to culture, and deaf to the cries of women and children. They make it harder for our air-leaders to plan, and for our air-fighters to carry out, the speedy destruction of the enemy’s power te resist. Obviously too they put a strain on the patience-the already dangerously tried patienceof thousands of parents whose sons have given their lives to bring this war to an end at the earliest possible date and push the next one, if it should come, as far away as their courage can push it with the assistance they are entitled to expect from their elders, The purpose of the air offensive is, first, to disarm Germany as quickly as possible, and second, to remove for as long a period as possible her power to re-arm. The two ends can not be. separated, but the first, merely because it is first, in time and in necessity, is at this stage all-impor-tant. It is the desire of the overwhelming majority of the British people; and the only purpose the protesters can achieve is a slower but in the end more horrible and more complete devastation. At the worst, air-bombing destroys cities, factories, roads, and railways, and a proportion of the civilians located in and near them. Fighting mile by mile and yard by yard leaves the whole countryside blasted and blackened and burnt out.