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Aviation History
1918
1918 - 0608.PDF
JUNE 6, 1918. which will doubtless bring joy to the hearts of their vvomenkind if it does no one else any good. As to the lists of naval and military rewards and promotions, we have no word to say except that these are honours which have been well earned and justly awarded, but it is when we come to the lists of civilians who have been picked out for distinction we confess we are inclined to quote the classic, if hackneyed, example of Nero fiddling while Rome burned. It may be perfectly true that some of these honours are well-deserved. For example, we imagine that no one will find fault with the elevation of Lord Rhondda to a viscounty. Doubtless he has been criticised more than almost any other Government official, but there is no getting away from the fact that he has done wonders in straightening out the terrible tangle in which the food supplies of the country had become involved under his predecessor. Had the list stopped short at names like his, we should not have been at all inclined to find fault, but when we follow it down and find that it is just like its fore- runners—that it contains the names of the usual rag-tag and bobtail—we begin to despair, especially when we come to the announcement that this is not the end and that more lists are to follow. There is just one consolation to be got out of these inordinate lists, and that is if the system continues for much longer it will break down automatically, because there will no longer be anyone left without a title or decoration of some sort. We are quite unable to admit that the explanation of the Corpus Christi " truce " &ven by Lord Robert Cecil The Chrteti & y "Truce." to his constituents explains away the abject futility of the British attitude towards the request of the Vatican. It fixes the responsibility for the agreement on the War Cabinet, but it is not likely to alter the opinion of any thinking person by an iota, and that opinion, as the War Cabinet must have realised by now, is that the ready consent to meet the wishes of the Pope was a piece of weak- ness deserving of the severest censure. To begin with, it has not emerged that the Huns were requested, at the same time, to refrain from bombarding Paris or to agree to a " truce of God " in their war against hospitals. Had His Holiness put forward such a request and had the German Government assented— and kept its pledge for once—it might be possible to agree that the Cabinet had acted properly, if not wisely, in agreeing to leave the Rhine cities alone for the day. But as no such request seems to have been made, and certainly no pledge was given by the enemy, the nasty feeling is left that we have been " spoofed " again. Not only was there no counter pledge, but actually the Hun seems to have laid himself out to treat us to an extra dose of frightfulness. The story of Good Friday in Paris was written over again in •characters of the blood of women and children. As on the previous religious festival day, a church full of worshippers was struck by a shell from one of the German long-range guns and a number of people 'killed and wounded. Aerial frightfulness was per- sisted in against French hospitals in which lay help- less wounded—and the Hun laughed to think how cleverly he had secured immunity for his own people by taking advantage of our weakness. Why is it that, after nearly four years of war, during which the Hun has broken every convention, ignored every pledge, and outraged every civilised convention not once but a thousand times, the British Govern-1 ment persists in treating him as though he were ax*-- chivalrous enemy instead of one undeserving of the * slightest consideration. It is not only that he is a I dirty dog, and should be treated as one, but the weak accession to the Pope's request undoubtedly gave the enemy a chance, of which we may be very sure he availed himself to the utmost, to rush troops and supplies across the Rhine bridges in the full certainty that they ran no risk from attack by Allied aircraft. Lord Robert Cecil's ingenuous explanation that we did not bomb German towns every day, and that wo were therefore right to undertake not to do so on a particular day, will not do at all. Even admitting that we were right not to do so.we were certainly wrong in giving the undertaking. If we had contented our- selves with the private determination not to bomb Cologne that day and had said nothing about it, we should have left the Huns guessing and therefore not eased the strain on the morale of the Rhineland inhabitants, and have given away no military advan- tage. The one thing in Lord Robert's speech that will pass is his confession that the German disregard of the offer of a truce would make him look differently on future requests of the same kind. But why, we ask, was it necessary to wait for still another demon- stration of Hun brutality to lead the Cabinet to regard future requests of the kind with disfavour ? Surely we know all we want to know about German methods of making war—enough, at any rate, to have justified our saying to the Vatican : "We are sorry to have to refuse, but the Huns want ruthless war, with no truce until one side or the other throws up the sponge. As they insist upon that, they must have it. Whether we bomb Cologne on any particular day or not is a matter that we alone shall decide." From one point of view the " truce " was not alto- gether bad. Such a volume of deep indignation against the weakness of the Cabinet has arisen that it is fairly certain the incident will not be repeated. Of course, we do not want to kill civilians—especially women and children—but this form of war has been forced upon us, and we can give no pledge not to pursue it so long as the belligerents cannot see their way to come to an agreement for it to cease altogether. And such an agreement is scarcely likely to be reached now when, from enjoying a monopoly of it, the Hun has begun to realise what it feels like to be the victim. As though we had not sufficiently demonstrated our want of strength in this, almost simultaneously with the Corpus Christi lapse comes the disclosure of what one of our evening contemporaries rightly calls a truly amazing document—no less than a " petition " from the Order of St. John of Jerusalem to the Prussia Order of St. John to assist in maintaining the " highest standard of Christian generosity, charity, mercy and honour " in the conduct of the war. The manner in which this egregious petition is worded is enough to make one's gorge rise. " Certain belligerent acts," says this abject document, " appear to us to be opposed to the declarations, maxims and professions of our ancient and illustrious Order of Christian Chivalry." Then the subscribers proceed to bleat—we can find no other word for it—that the " Imperial (German) Government has not always acted up to the ideals and laws of our Christian brotherhood," and a lot more of such insufferable bunkum. That there should exist in this war year of 1918 an organised body of British men and women that can bring itself to think that such an appeal 606
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