Tribute to London

New Zealand Listener, Volume 11, Issue 265, 21 July 1944, Page 5

Tribute to London

HERE is a sense in which saluting London by invitation is like cheering the headmaster on the call of the senior prefect. The more emphatic the call is the less hearty the cheer is likely to be. Obviously, too, the fact that Edinburgh thought such a gesture necessary would be an encouraging piece of news to Hitler. It might not increase the shower of bombs but it would discourage any slackening off. But Edinburgh was right. London can take this too-our greetings as well as Hitler’s. It will not lose its courage or its composure: but we must not think, on the other hand, that what it is going through is putting no strain on its people. If there is nothing in the news to suggest that the attack is comparable with the 1940 blitz, it is clear that it is a far more disturbing thing than the first reports indicated, more trying to the nerves and more destructive to life and property, and of course indirectly disturbing to the offensive in France. If it were otherwise salutes to London would be an empty and foolish gesture whether they began and ended with words or arrived as blankets and boxes of butter. London would have no more need of them than Coventry or Cardiff or Portsmouth or Bath. But those other places are beyond the range of the robot bomb while London is such a target that it can hardly be missed. Probably too it will remain within range for three or fourth months, since the real counter to the new attack is the capture of all the country from which it can be launched. That is proceeding, and will proceed faster. There will be developments in our air screen and in our defences from the ground. We may even be given a scientific answer as decisive and simple as the answer to the magnetic mine. But in the meantime the terror is falling on London day and night. Seven or eight million people are goirig on with their work by day, ‘and to their beds at night, knowing that they are exposed to a danger which they have no means of removing. We need not be afraid, if we send them our sympathy, that they will not know how to receive it.