A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
THE proper limits to be set in a democratic State to criticism of the conduct of a war are hard to fix. Clearly the business of planning campaigns must be left to those trained and qualified to plan them, just as the designing and construction of tanks must be. But that does not mean that public opinion, whether convinced or not that everything done is done right, must be for ever mute. The country is obviously and inevitably unhappy today about our inability to give more help to Russia. Unhappiness will not turn inability into ability and some adventures which lay critics have pressed for sound to other lay critics suicidal. But what everyone wants, and what on the face of it is perfectly practical, is intensified bombing of German communications and industries (it is peculiarly unfor- tunate that weather-conditions should have held up night- bombing for a fortnight, just when it was needed most); a series of sharp raids on enemy-occupied coastline, like the Lofoten islands affair, to upset the morale of • the occupying forces ; a few naval bombardments, like the highly successful but never- repeated assault on Genoa ; and in general a much more resolute attempt to settle Italy's hash at a moment when she is palpably tottering to a fall. There may be reasons against some of these projects ; there can hardly be reasons against them all. And the mere substitution of activity for passivity would have a psychological effect by no means to be despised in Russia and America as well as here.
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