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Aviation History
1917
1917 - 0879.PDF
Flight, August 30, 1917. •.:<*.« First Aero Weekly in the World. ""•' Founder and Editor: STANLEY SPOONER. A Journal devoted to the Interests, Practice, and Progress of Aerial Locomotion and Transport. v OFFICIAL ORGAN OF THE ROYAL AERO CLUB OF THE UNITED KINGDOM. No. 4*3. (No. 35, Vol. IX.) AUGUST 30, 1917. rweekly, Price 3d.L Post Free, 4d. Editorial Office: +4, ST. MARTIN'S LANE, LONDON, W.C. 2. Telegrams : Truditur, Westrand, London. Telephone: Gerrard 1828. Annual Subscription Rates, Post Free. United Kingdom .. 15*. zd. Abroad.. .. .. ios. od. CONTENTS. ^ Editorial Comment: • PAGE The Unspeakable Hun 879 Too Many Hun Prisoners at Lafrge ! .. .. .. .. .. .. 8S0 To Help Production 880 Parachutes for Airmen .. .. .. .. ,, .. .. .. 880 The Future of Aviation.. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 882 Honours .. .. * .. ..' 883 Some Nieuport " Milestones " (with scale drawings) .. .. .. .. 884 Aircraft Engineering Notes .. 890 The Royal Aero Club. Official Notices 891 " X " Aircraft Raids 891 The Roll of Honour 802 The New Curtiss H-S-T Flying Boat _ : ..893 Airisms from the Four Winds .. 894 Personals . ••„ 897 The British Air Services . .. 899 Aircraft Work at the Front. Official Information gon. The Handley Page Athletic Sports .. .; .. goa Side-Winds .. 904 Lining White Metal Bearings 905 HILE certain of the Labour ." leaders " and widows of Anglican, bishops are endeavour- ing to impress upon us that we must take " our German friends " to our hearts after the war, the latter are doing all they know to demonstrate that the Hun is a veritable leper and completely outside the pale of civilisation. We have become used to air raids on open Unspeakabletowns- in the course of which non-Hun, combatant civilians, women and children are done to death, and aregetting accustomed to regard them as merely incidents in a war to the death. We have evengone to the length of admitting that there is a more or less legitimate aim of war in the attack on opentowns, inasmuch as it compels the attacked to keep for defensive purposes aircraft, guns and munitions-, which would otherwise be employed for more directwork at the front. In a word, we have almost tacitly come to look upon the ordinary air raid as a more or less excusable, if not precisely a legitimate, enter- prise of war. But the latest development of war in the air, as understood by the Hun, stands in a different category altogether. We refer to the deliberate bombing by aircraft of military hospitals, of which many instances have occurred lately. We have had it here. In the last raid on Margate, bombs were dropped on a hospital under circumstances which would appear to leave little room for doubt that the precise nature of the buildings must have been known to the attacking airmen. They were clearly marked with the Red Cross in the ordinar ' way, and in addition a huge Red Cross was displayed on the ground for the very purpose of enabling possible enemy raiders to recognise them as hospital buildings. Nevertheless, bombs were dropped on them in a manner unpleasant to think about. In this case, however, there is a small element of doubt as to whether the German airmen did recognise that it was a hospital they were bombing, and they are, therefore, entitled to the benefit of it. When we come, however, to regard what has recently been happening in France and Flanders we come on to different ground. It is quite impossible to read the accounts of the bombing by German aerbplanes of the French hospitals behind Verdun without realising that here is a whole series of deliberate and calculated outrages against every canon of humanity and civilisation. Not only do we read of bombs dropped on the hospitals by aircraft flying so low that they could not fail to hit their mark, but of the Boche aviators actually firing with machine guns on the nurses and orderlies engaged in the work of rescuing the wounded from the burning hospital buildings. There is not a single redeeming feature—not the remotest possibility that the Huns could have mis- taken the buildings for barracks or for anything but what they were. They were out to do cold- blooded, calculated murder—murder of the very worst, most sordid kind, inasmuch as their victims were helpless wounded and nurses engaged in a work of mercy. It is idle at the moment to talk of* meting out punishment to the perpetrators of these,, unspeakable /atrocities. For one thing, the actuaPperpetrators would be hard to identify individually. Moreover, there is the probability to be reekoned with that they were obeying the commands of their superiors, and logically, it is upon.the latter that the punishment
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