London Under Fire The article on another page by a
military writer on the fatal vulnerability of London, not merely under attack from the air but under long-range gunfire from the French or Belgian coasts, is a great deal more than merely interesting. There is no question about its technical accuracy. As long ago as 1918, the Germans possessed not one long-range gun, as the common reference to " Big Bertha " might suggest, but at least seven, capable of shelling Paris from a distance of seventy-five miles. The damage done was less than might have been expected, but the one chance shot which struck the church of St. Gervais; killing over seventy worshippers and wounding as many more, is some indica- tion of what long-range fire may mean. The proposal to move the Government offices and all the most important institutions in London a hundred miles or more further north is a counsel of despair, in that it assumes the indefinite survival of war and the indefinite development of the power of instruments of destruction. On that assumption the proposal is sound.; the move ought to be made. But the real moral of Captain Powell's article is that, on.the technical side the prohibition of all heavy artillery, such as Herr Hitler himself suggests, and on the political development . of the collective system into an impregnable reality, must be the first aims of sane statesmanship in every country.
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