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Aviation History
1918
1918 - 0170.PDF
QFidCHT] from which he begins his line of reasoning, so that it is quite impossible to see how he arrives at his con- clusions. Nor does that particularly matter. Very few of us know anything much about the habits of the polecat. We know it to be a filthy, smelly beast and there our interest in it ends. It is the same with the Hun—except that he is rather worse than the polecat —and his particular form of psychology interests us not at all except by reason of its contradiction that all he does must be good, but that everything done by his enemy must of necessity be bad. It is impossible to avoid this reflection when we read of the sort of propaganda literature that is being distributed by enemy airmen, particularly on the Italian front. In a despatch to The Times from Italy, a correspondent says that " enemy airmen continue to drop leaflets and pamphlets in the Italian lines. One of these pamphlets has an illustrated cover showing a British soldier bayonetting an emblematic figure of Italy, who is falling on a map of Italy, while a British officer seated upon Rome brandishes a revolver. In the text it is declared that the English will burn Milan and Turin as they burned Salonica (sic). On the cover of another pamphlet the British and French sectors are marked, ' Quiet Zone,' but over the Italian sector is written, ' Zone of fierce Austrian attacks and the zone where the Italians shed their blood.' " The burden of these efforts is that the Italian Army has to bear the whole brunt of the battle and that the Allies have an easy time. All this nonsense is cleverly enough dressed up in a fashion to impress the minds of peasant soldiers. The illustrations are no doubt intended for those who cannot read." To the mind of the Hun it is doubtless quite right and proper and perfectly legitimate war to drop broadcast this sort of lying propaganda, but it be- comes one of the most serious of crimes when truthful accounts of the utterances of Allied statesmen are distributed among his own people. It is pretty certain that if we gave notice that we should treat as ordinary prisoners of war airmen captured in possession of truthful propaganda literature—assuming the Hun can tell the truth—but that the dropping of such offensive literature (!) as that described above would entail the shooting or sentencing to long terms of imprisonment of the airmen concerned, there would be a howl of pious horror at our barbarity (!) and we should be held to be outside the pale of civilised peoples. Let us say at once that we do not ask that any such punishments should be imposed upon men who are only doing their duty according to the orders they receive. It is even distasteful to demand reprisals on those who have had no active part in the trial or sentencing of our own officers who have been un- fortunate enough to fall into enemy hands. Were there any other way out we should be glad to take it— as we should in the case of air raids on open towns— but unfortunately there is not. It is hard luck on the victims of these reprisals, but the fault does not lie with us. The account is due to be paid by the German Government, which has always had one law for itself and a directly opposite code ior its enemies or for those who are so unfortunate as to be beneath its heel for the time being. We confess to more than a passing interest in Mr. Kemp Prossor's ideas of the curative value of colour in the treatment of nervous disorders—shell- shock, for example. Briefly, the theory is that certain colours produce certain effects on the TheCurative Value ofColour. FEBRUARY 14, 1918. mental system and if the patient who is suffering from shock is brought into contact with hostile colours, such as cardinal red or brown, the result will be a mental disturbance which will greatly retard recovery. If, on the other hand, the patient is surrounded by sympathetic colours an entirety opposite effect will be produced and recovery accelerated. There is undoubtedly a great deal in "this theory of colour-cure. We know, for instance, that red has a valu- able effect on smallpox patients and we are also familiar with the cure of lupus and similar diseases by the aid of the ultra-violet rays, so that there is no inherent improbability in the theory that the colour treatment can be extended farther afield with beneficent results. Apart altogether from theory and the known effects to which reference has been made, most of us are affected in more or less degree by our colour sur- roundings. Certain blues, for example, have a most depressing effect on some subjects while the brighter shades of the same colour have an opposite effect. Orange, again, is mentally stimulating to some people, while some reds are capable of making certain subjects into potential murderers. The list might be con- tinued almost indefinitely, but we are confident that most of our readers •will be able, out of their own experience, to supply examples of the effects of colour surroundings on the subject. With the approval of the War Office, the colour cure for shell-shock patients has been tried in the McCaul Hospital for Officers in Welbeck Street with, we are told, excellent results. The point that suggests itself to us is that the war has produced other nervous affections than those resulting from shell-shock. After a long period of active service flying many of our airmen suffer from nervous affections which entail long terms of hospital treatment and it seems to us that if the colour cure is so successful in the one class of cases it is surely worth trying in others, particularly as it costs nothing but the very nominal outlay on the necessary paints to turn the ordinary hospital ward into a room similar to the experimental ward at the McCaul Hospital. Even if the War Office is not prepared to go all out on the scheme, there are certain private hospitals and homes in which officers of the flying services are undergoing treatment for nervous affections in which the new cure-by-colour might well be given a trial. We understand that Mr. Kemp Prossor, who has worked out the theory of sympathetic colours, is prepared to give every assis- tance in its development without any charge whatever, which may be an additional incentive to some of our hospital authorities to give the system a trial. But every other consideration apart, we simply cannot afford to ignore any method of treatment, or any theory which can be seen to rest on anything like a basis of ascertained fact, which promises to assist in the alleviation of the terrible toll of nervous disorders the war is taking from the officers and men of our fighting services. Environment is almost everything in these cases, as we know, and after all colour schemes are simply modifications of environment. For our own part, we are fully convinced that the Kemp Prossor theory is one that has a great deal of sound reason behind it. M H H E Death of Lord Rothermere's Eldest Son. IT is with sincere regret that we have to record elsewherein this issue the death of Captain the Hon. Harold A. Vyvyan St. George Harmsworth, M.C., the eldest son of Lord Rother-mere, the Air Minister. This loss is the more grievous, since about eighteen months ago, Lord Rothermere's secondson, the Hon. Vere Harmsworth, R.N.V.R., met his death whilst serving with the R.N.V.R. 166
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