The work of the Air Force during the past week
illustrates this view. On Thursday week in daylight our squadrons visited Saar- brileken, bombed the railway and the factories, and fought an enemy squadron of twenty-five machines, three of which were driVen down, while we lost only one. Last Saturday morning our squadrons attacked Cologne, dropped thirty-three bombs on the tailWay Stations and fectories, and returned safely after driving &yin two hostile scouts. According to the Deputy for Cologne, sikaking in the Reichstag, " an extraordinary number of victims were killed and wounded." On Monday our airmen made a raid on Landau, bombing the railway and barracks. On Monday night they attacked the station at Coblens. On Tuesday night they bombed the poison-gas factory at Mannheim. They might have selected many other objectives.. The enemy could not tell which of the many towns on or near the-Middle Rhine would be bombed until onr squadrons approached. Thus his problem of defence in the Rhine Valley is far more difficult than ours-in London. He cannot afford to neglect it, because many- of his munition Centres are on -Or near the Rhine, and Esstn itself is not beyond our reach. It may be fairly assumed, too, that our daylight raids are far more desistintivetheri ;the night raids which the enemy has made on London.
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