To the Editor of the "Norra Caixa Dany NEWS"
Si&—The Home newspapers have now brought us accounts of the meeting recently held at the Albert Hall, headed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and attended by a Committee of highly distinguished people, ie protest against the use of aero-Planes by the Japanese.
While it has been proved impossible for the Powers to arrive at an agreement to abolish air warfare, and while our own government is, with feverish haste, manufacturing the very best and very latest, and con-Sequenuly the most. destructive, air-bombers that the world possesses, it seems pertinent to ask what his lordship thinks the government of which he is an eminent member intends to do with them. Presumably they are for use and not ornament, Lest it be thought that a pacifist can turn into a protagonist for indiscriminate slaughter, it it be said at once that it appears plain that pacifists have had a very much better understanding of what war means and a more realizing sense of the horrors of what is to-day called "military necessity" than the gentlemen at the Albert Hall, who appear to have only just envisaged what awaits them when their own turn comes.
One observes that the deeds and intentions of the Chinese Air Force have escaped the censure of the Albert Hall meeting. That may be because the wayward exploits of Chinese aviators only succeeded in Killing and injuring a vast number of their own people, and setting fire to large areas of their own property. The slaying per capita by Chinese planes largely exceeds anything aclieved by the Japanese. And what if Chinese planes had been able to reach Japan?
By registering protests of the Albert Hall order, couched in condemnatory language, is not the principle of neutrality outraged, and how are mediatory efforts towards peace assisted by un-neutral strictures about one party which are bound to cause, and have caused, deep umbrage and already widened considerably the goodwill formerly existing between Great Britain and Japan.
No one can deny that as far as hostilities around the two Settlements əf Shanghai are concerned the Japanyie displayed great care and consideration. Accidents were in-avia in dislodging an antagonist who Rugged the walis of the town, and of the Archbishop categorically state that the villages and hamlets in the lcinity of Shanghai contained no Chinese soldiers, sniper or weapons?
It Gould be interesting to know exactly what objectives the Archbishop Bus in mind when our own great Air Fd'ce comes into operation, and how Me would propose to restrain their activities, It is logical to suppose the promoters of the Albert Hall meeting have already taken steps to place the necessary ban on ihe Air Force authorities, which will limit aeroplanes perhaps walely to the carrying and distribution of food.
There was no one at the Albert Hall impolite enough to heckle the Archbishop nor was it an occasion, of course, for any reference to the Mote and the Beam. A conception of the appalling realities of war appears also to have been absent.
Cnaxtes R. SHaw Shanghai, Nov. 25.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.