Bombing the Natives In the matter of air-bombing it is
satisfactory to rind Sir Austen Chamberlain coming down decisively against the British reservation. The contention he put forward' in his' speech at Edinburgh on Wednesday, that it was out of the question for this or any other nation to claim the right to train bombing pilots and possess bombing 'planes and expect everyone else to trust us never to misuse the right, is unanswerable. The argument as to the cheapness and convenience of bombing native villages may be admitted, but if every State abandons only such weapons as it can afford to part with and retains those it finds convenient to keepi the hope of a disarmament agreement vanishes. • Either bombing from the air will be abolished by general agreement or it will not. To begin to riddle. the agree- ment with exceptions is fatal, and it is not a happy thing that on this point Great Britain should have ranged the world solidly against it. On the practical side it has been claimed with considerable justice that in the regions in question the police-work necessary can be done as well, or almost as well, by machine-gun fire from the air as by bomb-dropping—unless indeed it is an essential part of such police-work to blow native villages sky-high. • *
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