"A WAR LECTURE."
ITO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."]
Snt,—I had hoped that you would make some comment on a letter from Lord Fisher in the Times of Thursday, January 8th. The language of that letter seemed strangely familiar to me. Lord Fisher mentioned " a war lecture" as his source of inspiration; but I had read or heard no war lecture. Then I remembered that Lord Fisher's words corresponded with some- thing I had read in the Spectator. The result of my researches is that I find that Lord Fisher must have road your article of December 27th last entitled " Why We Must Not Have Another War." In that article you refer to a war lecture in which Sir Louis Jackson predicted that the next war would be more mobile, and that it would pay airmen better to bomb bases and distant sources of supply and points of training instead of the scattered bodies of troops on a You then proceed to comment. comments and some of Lord nolumns
quickly moving military front. Here let me put some of your Fisher's remarks in parallel
" SPECTATOR."
" Most likely by the time -another great war is fought, if another ever should be fought, silent engines for aero- planes will have been in- vented, and it will be possible without even a, declaration of war—most wars in the past have begun without a formal declaration—for aircraft to arrive in tens of thousands quite unsuspected over a great city and pour down cascades of lethal gas. It may be said that gas will be ruled out, as it actually had been ruled out before the Great War. But there is no certainty of that. As a matter of fact, if we look into the matter on grounds of humanity alone, there is a good deal to be said for a gas which kills without torturing. . . . Every war begins where the last left off.. .. We are not imagining this prospect for the purpose of arguing by means of terror. That would be futile. The spirit of man cannot be daunted, and when civilized man is lighting for his principles, which without exaggeration he loves dearer than his life, or when his blood is up, he is equal to any fate. We are merely offering a cold and rational argu- ment that civilization is threatened," &e.
Did Lord Fisher borrow from you, or did you borrow from the
Loan FISHER.
" They [aircraft] are de- picted leaving their peaceful avocations (I take this from a war lecture) and arriving in their thousands of thousands (darkening the heavens in their flight), and without a declaration of war appearing unexpectedly over London and pouring down cascades of lethal gas (the humane de- scriber adds there is a good deal to be said for a gas which kills without torturing). Terror is no argument, least of all in our nation. When our blood is up we are equal . to any fate. . . . I've quoted from a lecture on the next war. Every fool knows that every war begins where the last war left off. Every air- man knows that when the last war left off such a bombing had been arranged for Berlin (and was kept from starting) that would have made that city dust and ashes."
[The words our correspondent quotes are our own comments on Sir Louis Jackson's war lecture. But perhaps Lord Fisher meant the term "war lecture" to apply to us too! We were once told that it was the métier of the Spectator to lecture.— ED. Spectator.]
Previous page
