NEWS OF THE WEEK ONDON has faced its ordeal now
for three weeks. The la German air-attacks have neither abated nor changed their fundamental character. Here and there signs appear of some definite attempt to hit military objectives, but in most cases they are not hit, and destruction falls instead on a hospital, a church, a hotel, a block of luxury flats or a row of workmen's dwellings. And in the main the bombing is unashamedly indiscriminate. In a bitterly literal sense the hostile air-fleet is a great leveller. Rich and poor are suffering equally, and so far as can be seen accepting their suffering in the same spirit. Many defects in our plans for minimising the effects of the attack have been disclosed, as *articles in. later pages of this issue show, but there is evidence of timely recovery on the part of various public services which seemed for a time unequal to the emergency. There is no ground for expecting any immediate alleviation, in spite of the hopes based on certain new devices. The attacks of the R.A.F. on military objectives in all parts of Germany—including Berlin, which is now so much under fire that the theories of those who believe the best way of protecting London is reprisal are in a fair way to being tested—continue on an increasing scale, but it is unlikely that their direct effect will be a slackening of the campaign against London. They are better calculated to upset Hitler's invasion plans,- and though attempts at invasion still seem probable, the time for making them under the best conditions has passed and Preparations for resisting them have reached a high pitch of perfection. As for London, it must adjust itself to its trial as belt it can, and an imaginative view must be taken of that necessity. Adjustment, often radical, in many spheres of life is Imperative.
