ANTI-AIR RAID PRECAUTIONS
[To the Editor of TIIE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—In your last issue you refer to the statement recently issued over the signatures of Lord Russell and a distinguished list of scientists criticising the Government's air raid pre- cautions ; and you state that the view conveyed to the public by such a manifesto is that " the Government are wrong to take any steps towards instructing and equipping the population to defend themselves against air attacks." - May I submit that you are entirely wrong in this supposi- tion ? The view conveyed by the manifesto is that all the steps that are now being taken at so much expense to the country would be futile in face of an extensive air raid. Pre- parations can be made to put out fires, and so on ; but so far as protecting the lives of the people and property goes, the results of all the preparations would be negligible.
The air manoeuvres over London in the early summer and the attacks by " enemy " bombers over Portsmouth in August proved once again that there is no defence against air attacks. The only weapon we have is retaliatory slaughter, which means the possession of aircraft to rain death upon defenceless civilian populations in revenge for similar treatment by them to our cities and towns.
Moreover, the fact that " every large civil aeroplane is a potential bomber " is no reason at all for the delay in coming to an international agreement to abstain from aerial bombing of civilian centres. Such an agreement should most properly be arrived at through the League of Nations ; and any nation, whether a signatory to such agreement or not, that resorted to aerial bombing, should be outlawed.
The real danger of the present situation is that the public are being lulled into a sense of false security by all this heavy expenditure upon protective aircraft which cannot protect, and upon measures to safeguard the public which are no safe- guards at all. If the European nations cannot quickly arrive at an agreement to cancel all bombing of civilian populations from the air,, it is the end of all civilisation and Christian progress.—Yours, &c., P. A. SirAw. Highfield, Uppertou Road, Sidcup.
[The Government should exert every possible effort to secure the abolition not merely of the bOmbing of civilian. populations but of all military aviation. But till that result, is achieved it is the Government's obvious duty to take any steps advocated by its experts to mitigate in some measure the appalling results of aerial attacks.—En. The Spectator.]
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