Lord Montagu of Beaulieu made an excellent speech at Sheffield
last week which has received loss publicity than it deserved. He said that ho had ascertained that so far the casualties from acre. plane attacks since January 1st were only sixteen hundred and fifty. Compared with the casualties at the front, this figure was " abso- lutely negligible." Deplorable though it was that civilian lives should be sacrificed, he did not believe the British people would be so craven as to desire to deplete the Air Service at the front in order to protect lives at home. Ho did not deny that home defence was a very important matter, and that London in particular, as the nerve centre of the war, deserved special protection, bat after all the truest form of defence was to destroy the wasps' nests and not try to kill the wasps individually.
