Trigger-Happy
On Monday, in the seventh Far Eastern incident of its kind since the war, an American B29 crashed in flames on Hokkaido after being fired on by Russian fighters over the waters north of Japan. The governments concerned have exchanged terse but vehement protests. Time and again since the war, almost all over the world, aircraft have been involved in imbroglios of this kind. The pattern of these small, wasteful and inflammatory tragedies has always been the same. So has their cause. Their cause has been shooting. Since airmen do not fire—do not, in fact, even load—their weapons unless they receive an order to do so, it is a comparatively easy matter to eradicate this cause. Contributory causes include vagaries of the climate, of navigational aids and of the human animal; these can never be entirely got rid of. Aerial trespass—actual, suspected or alleged—is and will continue to be a source of danger to neighbourly relations; and if the rulers of Russia are as keen on co-existence as they say they are they ought forthwith to revise the standing orders for the defence of their elastically-defined air-space. Their pilots are no more immune than anybody else's from mistakes and miscalculations; and to order them to shoot on sight at any supposed trespasser is inhuman, irresponsible and asking for trouble.
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