May 23.
Mr. C. R. Attlee, Lord Privy Seal, made short work in dealing with a question in the House of Commons on Wednesday, when he! gave a laconic "No" to a question suggesting that Great Britain should treat with Germany for mutual restriction of night bombing. It was suggested by the questioner that) Great Britain might make direct, or indirect proposals to that end, and he drew attention to appeals by such people as the Bishops of Chichester and Bristol, Mr. George Bernard Shaw, and Professor Gilbert Murray of Oxford University. As another member remarked it was unfortunate that such a proposal. should be made just when we are' gelling on top of Germany." There is much be said for Mr, Attlee's final remark that it was not practicable to think that it was possible to come {0 any agreement with Germany, for it is unthinkable that Germany would consent to alter her inhuman methods, or that if she did she would honour such an obligation any longer than it suited Hitler.
Tt is probably only a coincidence but much support is to be found for the altitude of the British Government in this matter in a speech made by Goebbels addressing air-raid precaution workers from all parts of Germany. He confessed that while there were districts in Germany which had been spared from enemy raids, some had had to stand fairly heavy blows, and others even heavier. The British have known that for a considerable time past. The damage which has been done {o° Germany's war potential is known {0 be enormous, and is confidently expected to grow as the RAF. increases in strength. Practically all parts of Germany are now accessible to British aeroplanes and the time is not far distant when even more destruction of military objectives will become possible. It is quite understandable why some: people in Britain should be moved by the manner In which thousands of civi-Hans have been killed and many historic monuments destroyed, but their emotion should not be allowed to sway the Government in its determination to prosecute this war resolutely and with complete relentlessness. The time for sentiment is long past and there must be done to Germany everything that Hitler's air force has been doing to Great Britain, More particularly is such a question as this inopportune when it is realized that the substantial increase in the number of enemy aeroplanes shot down up to the present this month indicates that some progress has already been made in dealing with night raiders, Much has still to be done, but there has been such: an improvement' in "night fighting technique that hopes expressed some months ago, that the" menace would be ultimately effectively dealt with, seem now fon the way to fulfilment. In any event there has been less night activity over Great Britain since the striking increase in. the damage inflicted upon the German air force at night became known. That may to some extent be explained by German preoccupa~ fion elsewhere, but it is nevertheless a fact that the RAF. is showing increased ability to deal with the night raiders of the enemy, Where the questioner in the House of Commons was wrong in making the sugges-ion he did was that he apparently believed that it would be possible to dissuade the Nazis to cease wallowing in their obscene brutality, and endeavour to conduct the war with some degree of decency which is utterly foreign to them. It must always be remembered that the underlying philosophy of the German methods of making war is terrorism, Endeavours have been made to show that this in the Jong run was humane as tending to shorten the struggle, but that argument has been proved to be wrong in China, in Spain and now Great Britain, Nevertheless German military thought atill lings fondly to the idea that a people's moral can be beaten down by such terrorism, and to suggest to the enemy any limitation of their much cherished brutality would be to ask them to do something which they simply are unable to understand. They have gone all out for total war and the only way of convincing them of their folly is by giving them precisely the sort of war they have invented.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.