MILITARY OBJECTIVES
Sm.—Although A.R.P., black-outs and gas-masks have accus- tomed people to accept the deliberate bombing of civilians as inevitable, there is still hope that efforts to prevent its exten- sion on an unlimited scale might succeed.
The accidental killing of civilians during air bombing operations appears unfortunately inevitable. What seems likely to happen in the Western War area is that the uninten- tional killing of civilians during the bombing of legitimate military objectives would be made the excuse for reprisals, leading ultimately to the deliberate bombing of open towns on a wholesale scale.
Is it not possible by swift action to avert or minimise the danger of such a development? It is suggested that one or other or a number of the neutral Governments—such as Governments of the United States or of the Netherlands or the Vatican, be urged to propose and organise, and secure facilities for, neutral missions in each belligerent country, to investigate immediately on the spot any bombing operation in which civilians are killed. Their duty should be to report promptly whether the bombing was directed at legitimate military objectives and whether the killing of civilians might have been unintentional. The belligerent Governments should be asked to pledge their word not to undertake reprisals until the neutral mission have reported and not at all if the report concludes that the killing of civilians was accidental. Any breach of this undertaking would involve the united condemna- tion of the neutral Governments.
A general definition of military objectives would need to be agreed, but the organisation of the missions need not wait upon that.
This seems a slender hope on which to base the possibility of saving millions of helpless civilians from wholesale slaughter, but a supreme effort is surely worth mak:ng, even
though it should fail. It might succeed and the horrors of war might be mitigated to that extent at least.—Your,
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