6 JULY 1944, Page 4

Since the Prime Minister will have made a statement on

the subject of the flying bombs between the writing of this paragraph and the reading of it, there is clearly little that I can say with advantage here. The task of deciding what information will help the enemy is difficult. As things are, to let him know all there is to know would give him little encouragement ; it might, indeed, convince him of the ineffectiveness of his terror-weapon. But to decide on full publicity now would make it difficult to abandon full publicity later if any change in the situation should make that desirable. Local warnings during the period of an alert would be valuable. There does not seem to be much case against full publicity in the matter of casualties. Though not many people seem to realise it, the daily figures for killed and injured in the Metro- politan Police area (which covers a large part of the Home Counties) are posted up publicly and officially in various parts of London. The average weekly total is calculated to provoke neither alarm nor despondency, distressing though the tale of victims of even one " incident " inevitably is. By comparison with the total of the population of the area, it is completely insignificant.

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