While on this matter of reprisals, I perhaps owe some
reply to various persons who denounce my reluctance to see Rome bombed. If I thought bombing Rome would carry us any measurable distance towards winning the war I should have nothing to say. But we are constantly assured that the Germans are achieving nothing in the military sense by bomb- ing London. What, then, should we achieve by bombing Rome, whose war industries, such as they are, cannot compare for a moment in importance with London's. Rome, for one thing, is not a port. Ostia is, and Ostia is a fair target. But Rome happens to contain historic remains such as no city in the world except Athens—which, of course, can be bombed with pro- priety if Rome can—possesses. The only tangible memorials of the Athens of Pericles and the Rome of Augustus are unique and irreplaceable. They are a possession of the world, not of Italy alone. If what is left of the Forum or the Colosseum were destroyed by an earthquake the disaster would be deplored throughout the world, and rightly. But a great many people, it appears, want to see them destroyed by the R.A.F. Does the bombardment of Taranto and Brindisi and Bari and Turin and Genoa and Milan and Naples—all most legitimate objectives —really not suffice?
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