AIR RAIDS AND A SENSE OF PROPORTION.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR.") Sin,—One dislikes intensely losing sleep because a (lemma is overhead. But when the next morning's papers come and the evening papers too, a greater evil than the Gothas seem; to bare arrived. The air raid itself? Crest is gnerrel The papers, if one took them seriously, and many people do, seem to be an ominous symbol of national shallowness. Probably Germany has many reasons for raiding England beyond the one of effecting military damage or public disorganization. The raids may servo to cheer a depressed country. They may make on concentrate air forces in England that are needed in France. And above all, Die Ger- mans have an inordinate belief in their own frightfulness. And when we read the papers can anybody say that we discourage these views Nearly every English paper that reaches the Wilhelm- stress. justifies, by its headlines only, the Hun in confirming his air raids. A policy only expands according to the ice it cuts. Our febrile enervates of journalism sneer at the German complaints over our ways of fighting. Yet no Roche paper ever whined ea miserably as a very large section of our Press has dune over the air raids. The contents of a front-page news-sheet three weeks ago was very much on tbis -line. First, glaring headlines of the twentytve killed and injured in air raid casualties—our own casualty-list of three thousand in France was put on the back page with the racing news. After this, two columns of smaller head- lines and air raid communiques; then came a complaint that full details were not issued within two hours of the raid. Why? Here followed a glowing series of accounts from special correspondents who, from their descriptions, must have been in a very deep cellar or a tube station melee. After this, a clarion call for reprisals filled a column. At last, in blurred ink in the bottom corner of the page, the news of a Mesopotamian victory, or a (lerman defeat at Verdun, can be deciphered. Thus does our gallant Press deal with the air raids, and increase its own circulation.
Let us try in this maze of journalistic distortion to get a true perspective. Let as show that we still have some national courage- and pride surviving. Looking at the papers, it would seem that.
Si) long as our sons and husbands fight or die for us in France, our patriotism confines itself to a sort of back-chat comedian's hate in England " A silly joke against the living, A spitting in the faces of the dead."
Such is the English newspapers' bate and reprisal campaign. Does one chance in fire hundred thousand of dying from a bomb justify this newspaper panic ? Must we forget the weal seat of war and make a moonlit London the theatre of the emasculated emotions of the Press ? Are we going to lose honour or pride or sense of humour and show up ourselves thus to Germany or our Allies? Our casual- ties are so infinitesimal compared to those of oar armies or even to the death-rate. Northern France alone suffers daily more than we over can suffer. Our own self-pity blinds us to the fact that we have undergone less trial almost than any active belligerent country. If reprisals had been either practical or practicable, we would have carried them out long before this. Must an ignorant and selfish Press dictate that we waste our air forces in blowing up the Gretchens of the Rhine towns P So, let us collect ourselves, and the Press as well, if it is still possible, and remember that we should rather welcome our tiny share of danger than become, as we are becoming, the ridicules mos of a pip-squeak terrorism. Let no still keep our national sense of humour, which, after all, is the true philosophy of proportion. When we have a night soond warning let it be the opening bars of the hymn of
late on a fog-horn.—I am, Sir, &es Gauen Booass.
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