machine which would have gone to France, but (to give us safety here) is kept in Britain, represents a diminution of our chance of winning the war, and a point scored to Germany. And the argument just set forth shows the enormous wastefulness of that policy. No sophistry can obscure the reality that one machine actively employed against the enemy on the Continent is worth more than five machines employed at home.

We have now sought to establish two salient facts. First, that an enormous increase in power to attack through the air is inevitable in the near future, and, secondly, that to propose to frustrate such attack by passive defense would be prodigal folly. It remains to consider the only real defense, namely offense, which we are able to achieve. Here, strange to say, we are confronted at once not by a military, but by a theological obstacle. For the theologians, Anglican Bishops, and Nonconformist ministers, linked, almost for the first time since James the Second's Declaration of Indulgence, in a singular alliance, have come forth as the protectors of the Kaiser and the Hun. Better far, say these gentlemen, that any number (millions, if you will) of English women, children, babies, and noncombatant men should have their bodies torn in pieces by German bombs than to adopt "reprisals" (that is the sinful word) which, though it might save these indeed, would bring a similar fate upon their like in Germany.

Now for the unfortunate introduction into common use of this unhappy term "reprisals," I must plead guilty to a small measure of personal responsibility, seeing that I wrote a series of articles in The Globe in the summer of 1915, urging the adoption of countermeasures, so denominated, for Zeppelin raids, and subsequently, in associa

tion with that journal, organized a crowded meeting at the Cannon Street Hotel. The speeches then made were widely reported and the expression "reprisals," which was prominent in them, has been of frequent occurrence ever since. Would that this word could now (as Mr. H. G. Wells once wrote of a sentence of his own) be folded up and put away in a drawer. It has probably done more to stimulate theological animosity than any other that could have been employed. For my part, I advocate "reprisals" no more. I merely urge the constraining necessity of "counter-raids" on legitimate military objectives. If only this term could be substituted for that, the conscientious objectors would cease from troubling and the Bishops be at rest.

But assuming agreement as to the expediency of counter-raids of this kind, the question immediately arises, "What is a legitimate military objective?" and here it is that we touch the crux of the whole matter. Is a munition factory such an objective? Yes. Then, since bombs cannot be aimed with accuracy, the place in which the factory is situated also becomes a legitimate object of military assault. Perhaps not merely a bishop but even an archbishop might be obliged to admit this. But what is the essential difference between a munition factory and a military clothing factory, or a boot factory, or an army food depot, or any other factory or storehouse where either work vital to the army is carried on or the fruits of such labor are preserved? Or, again, what about railway stations where troops are entrained, or where trucks are filled with army stores? Is every spot of this kind to be held by us sacrosanct, if it stands in any town of which the inhabitants are liable to be hit and even certain to be hit by bombs dropped during an air

raid? Our enemies freely attack every place of this sort. Are we to be restrained by conscientious scruples from similar action on our side? If so, we had better not have gone to war at all. For what is the good of entering into a tremendous contest against a mighty and fully prepared antagonist if you do not mean to do your very utmost to defeat him? And what can be more grotesque than the position of any man, whether theologian or politician, who on the one hand affirms, urbi et orbi, that the freedom of mankind, humanity, justice and the future of civilization alike depend on obtaining victory in this strife, and on the other hand declares that we must impose on ourselves an immense and crippling handicap rendering that victory far more difficult and defeat far more possible?

The truth is that the plainness of this issue was obscured at the beginning of the War by the comparatively small part then played by aviation. For, great though the progress of that art had been, it was as nothing to the progress made since, just as this again is certain to be thrown into the shade by that which will be attained should the war be much prolonged. In that event it is now evident that supremacy in the air and the use made of that supremacy will be paramount factors dominating the final result. If we allow ourselves still to be bound, even to the end, by the restrictions hitherto accepted, then not only shall we throw an enormous extra burden of wounds and death upon our fighting men by the neglect of the means which would shorten heir grim ordeal, not only shall we leave the Germans great military advantages in the safety of factories, storehouses, stations and so forth, of which advantages we might have easily deprived them, but we shall prodigiously diminish our chance of winning that long

assured peace which is the goal of our hope and the object of our desire.

Must we then surrender for an insensate scruple, founded entirely on a confusion of thought, the chief aim to attain which we fight? Must we, by failing to crush Germany, doom the world to a speedy repetition of its present agony? Yet all these effects, and more still, shall we risk incurring if we decline to use to the uttermost the giant hands of aerial power.

This vast sacrifice, this prodigious waste, will be due in fact simply to a failure to understand the conditions of the New War. The meaning of that war, the war of the air, and the terrible consequences to a civilian population inevitably proceeding from it, have not yet been grasped by our people, or even by our politicians— not to speak of our divines. But, as soon as the radius of aeroplane action has become a little greater than at present, those implications are likely to be made terribly clear. For the novelty consists in the ability to pour down destruction anywhere, and in the impossibility of giving notice or of accepting surrender. An army which bombards a city has first to reach that city, usually a long and painful process. Then it can, and is expected to, give notice of its contemplated action and, as an alternative to it, to demand rendition. When however these preliminaries have been fulfilled, and when surrender has been refused, then the shells fired from the guns of the besiegers are missiles as deadly as the bombs dropped from aeroplanes. The shells, like the bombs, will kill and maim and tear to pieces the bodies of women and children and non-combatant men. They will blast the homes of the poor: they will destroy great buildings. But it is admitted that there is still this difference: that the population of the city bombarded by guns can, if they choose, at any

moment agree to the surrender which they first declined, and the besieging army can then occupy the town.

But

Now take the case of a fleet of aeroplanes. Within the constantly widening limits of its fuel capacity, where it will, there it can go. however terrific the downpour of its bombs, it cannot accept surrender because it cannot take possession. Neither, practically, can it give notice of its intention to bombard. For in giving such notice it might enable an enemy fleet to concentrate to meet it. Therefore we reach this point: that either aerial fleets must not be employed at all to bomb legitimate military objectives, which will very frequently be situated in the midst of towns, or else they must be employed just as the Germans have been using their squadrons against us, and as we ought to be using our squadrons against them. Let us then come to close quarters with the Bishops (et hoc genus omne) on this issue. they say that bombardment of cities by guns is lawful but bombardment by flying machines unlawful because of the two differences named? do they maintain that rather than ignore those differences they would prefer to see the Allies defeated, Britain converted into a Belgium or a Serbia, and British women and children massacred by the million? If that is not their contention, at what point precisely do they draw the dividing line?

Do

And

We have a right to get clear answers to these questions from any man, even an archbishop, who seeks to deter his countrymen from using the only means of warfare likely to save them from coming slaughter from the air. Next year aeroplanes will be counted by the thousand, and the year following by tens of thousands. Their range will by that time be much wider than at present. In any case, and

even though we strike back, the damage which we shall very probably incur will be far greater than any which we have suffered yet. But unless we ourselves resort to like methods against the Hun; unless we, so to speak, smother his assaults by our own; unless we force him to give his chief attention to preserving his own cities from destruction, many of our towns in England will be heaps of shattered ruins and a large part of our home population will be dead before this world-strife wears to an end.

If the foregoing argument is allowed to possess force, it will be seen that at least one unavoidable deduction

emerges. It is an unpopular deduction. It is one running counter to the most natural tide of popular feeling. But we cannot shirk it, and we had better face it. This deduction is that the German air raids, unlike other acts of theirs by land and sea, are perfectly legitimate features of the new warfare. Take the case of London. Could there be a place more calculated to attract aerial attack? It is a port, with dockyards and with ships. It bristles with munition factories. It contains a great arsenal. It holds buildings which are the seat of empire. How could we reasonably expect any enemy who uses the air to refrain from operating against it? And what is true of London is true also, more or less, of very many other towns in this country.

Of course aerial operations against these places involve the destruction of many non-combatants of all ages and of both sexes. That cannot be helped. That effect is and will continue henceforth to be the distinguishing characteristic of the New War. This is precisely what we have to learn and have not learned yet, namely, that from this time forth the civilian population of every country, men,

and women, and children, and infants in arms, must all share, almost equally with the actual fighters, in the perils of conflict.

The fact is very horrible.

It is new. It was by most people unforeseen. But it is there, staring us in the face, and it will become plainer every day.

If any individuals doubt this conclusion, or think that this inevitable result of war in the air could be, in future contests, averted by a pact of nations, a little reflection will show them that they deceive themselves. For when air power has become the supreme decider of war, mankind must use it or else war becomes a farce. But war will not be a farce while human nature contains elements of tragedy. On the contrary, war in our time has grown to be for each people the sum of its national life matched against a like effort on the other side. The fate of future generations hangs in the balance. Between opponents nearly equal a little weight will incline that balance. How, then, can any warring people forego the use of what, in years but just removed from this, will be the mightiest weapon which it wields? A nation, we will suppose, has it in its power to blast with death and ruin the cities of its foes, in all of which work for its destruction is being carried on. If it exert that power it will win, and so grow to greater destinies down the paths of time. And if it employ not that power, then it must lose-lose all for which it has fought, lose its national existence, and lose the future of its sons. Is it really conceivable that a country in such a position could be withheld from the exercise of its chief resource?

Or is it thought that some future league of nations, at a period when the air is becoming the common medium of communication amongst mankind, is solemnly to renounce the

use of the air altogether for purposes of war? As well tell us to fight only with bows and arrows, or to abandon steam and motor engines, or to cross the ocean in canoes.

It is perhaps permissible to recall that the immense changes to be wrought by aviation, and other consequences following from them, were foretold by the present writer in articles published in this Review prior to the war. Thus in one which appeared in May, 1913, I wrote of the noncombatant British public "Their old immunity from personal peril is forever gone. . . There will not be in all England, and perhaps in all Scotland and Wales, one dweller in a town of any size upon whose roof the levin bolt of death may not descend while he

sleeps. . . . And he will know too that to this appalling menace of imminent destruction are exposed, equally with himself, his women folk and his little children. For when death rains down from above, in the nature of things there can be no discrimination. To the strong man, or to the weak woman, or to the little child, the risk will be the same."

As mankind travels towards the strange vistas of the future now opening to its view, it would do well to attain to coherent thought concerning its new perils and its new duties. Of all Christian bodies, so far, the Roman Church alone seems to have a definite voice with which to speak on these matters, as it has, for instance, spoken in the recent noble pronouncement, made at the risk of his life, by Cardinal Mercier. The Vatican itself, however, remains helpless and mute.

One more reflection remains to be uttered. Will civilization survive, can it survive, the new forces of destruction which the progress of science is letting loose? Almost is one tempted to believe that, before this

century ends, the garnered fruits of ages of advance will have been brought to ruin, unless in the intervening time The Nineteenth Century and After.

some change shall have been wrought in the nature or in the beliefs of

man.

H. F. Wyatt.

The Executive Committee of the Union of Democratic Control have issued a document containing suggestions for terms of a Peace settlement. This document has been sent to me in France. It is a mistake to ignore the influence of this Committee, because their ideas are those of a large number of persons in Russia and the United States, in France and in Germany. "The democracies of all belligerent countries are beginning to work towards a peace based on the same general principles" is a statement that the Committee supports by passages from declarations by the Russian Government, by Lord Robert Cecil, by President Wilson, and the German Chancellor. With such authorities to back them, the views of the Committee of the Union of Democratic Control cannot be put aside as negligible.

The "Suggestions" under three headings:

are classified

(1) Questions of nationality and territory.

(2) Guarantees.

(3) Reparation.

They start off by demanding a complete acceptance of a policy of "no annexations," and they repudiate all claims based on conquest, imperialistic ambition, or strategic considerations, when it comes to any "rearrangement of territorial boundaries." The Committee, having enunciated these principles, proceed to make detailed suggestions that do not square with their premises. Obviously the complete re-establishment of the independence and integrity of Belgium,

together with its "economic restoration," the evacuation of Northern France, the restoration to independent life of Serbia, Montenegro, and Roumania, are not inconsistent with the views expressed in the leaflet I have before me.

But when they proceed to discuss the question of Alsace and Lorraine, of the Trentino, of Poland, of the "component populations" of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, of the Polish claim on Danzig, of Bulgaria's claim on Macedonia, of Roumania's claim on Transylvania, the future status of Persia, the "freedom for races" under the suzertainty of the Sultan, the status of the German colonies-then the policy of "no annexations," the repudiation of

"claims based on conquest," imperialistic ambition, and strategic considerations presents obstacles to the acceptance of projects upon which the "democracies" of Europe have laid much stress.

What, for example, prompts France to desire the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, or Italy to desire the Trentino? What other than "strategic considerations" suggests the neutralization or internationalization of Constantinople and the Straits? Whether the "strategy" appeals as a military necessity to one Power or several Powers is a mere detail. What is meant by "securing freedom" to component populations within the Empire of Austria-Hungary as well as to the Finns in Russia and the Irish in Britain? If the Finns desire

to set up an independent Finnish