MARGINAL COMMENT
- By HAROLD NICOLSON •
IN the House of Commons, last week, Mr. Stokes, with his usual warm-hearted pugnacity, intervened at question-time to draw attention to the " ever-growing volume of opinion in this country which considers the indiscriminate bombing of civilian centres both morally wrong and strategic lunacy." Mr. Attlee, quite rightly, answered that our bombing was not indiscriminate, and Sir William Davison reproved Mr. Stokes for making statements which (he implied) might be of advantage to the enemy. I admit that there are moments when Mr. Stokes is tempted by his bubbling hatred of hypocrisy to overstate unpalatable truths. I admit also that Bomber Command are better judges than is Mr. Stokes of what is, or is not, strategic lunacy: But it is an important fact that the only two places in the world where such points of public conscience can be raised with fearless indiscretion are the British Houses of- Parliament and the American Congress. Dr. Goebbels may from time to time twist such indiscretions to his own advantage ; yet in fact he is chary of using too frequently material supplied him by the undisciplined Members of the Democratic Legislatures ; since he knows full well that for every German who supposes that such outbursts indicate internal dissension, there will be goo Germans who will mutter inwardly, " If only, in the Reichstag, we could ask such questions ourselves! " It is in fact the truth that there are many people in this country who are distressed by this fierce bombing of crowded cities, and who have every right, under a free constitution, to make their opinions heard. And even those who, like myself, have come to an uneasy compromise with the paradox, " In order to conquer evil, one must commit evil," find it difficult in this matter to steer a steady course between hypocrisy on the one hand and sentimentality on the other.
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By what argumentsi I ask, can humane and honest people be convinced that the bombing of large cities is in fact a necessity? For them it is hypocritical to contend that our pilots or our bomb- sights are so far superior to those of the enemy that our bombs spare the innocent while dealing destruction only to the guilty. It may be true that grave dislocation is caused to German war produc- tion by the annihilation of whole streets of workers' dwellings. But it is also true that this annihilation brings death and misery and horror to many civilians. There are some who are able to reconcile this slaughter with their own consciences by contending that the bombing of German and Italian cities will shorten the war, and thus reduce the total sum of human suffering. There is some force in this argument. The fact that an order has been issued forbidding German soldiers from the Ruhr district to return to their homes when on leave does certainly indicate that the German Government dread the effect of our bombardment upon civilian, and ultimately upon military, morale. To that extent it can be argued with some foundation that aerial bombardment in this war will produce the same disintegrating effect upon Germany's powers of internal resistance as in 1918 was produced by the blockade. Yet if this were the only argument lE should feel myself that it were better to have another year of military warfare than to achieve victory by bombing in the night_ In other words, I believe this to be a sound and most important consideration, but were it the only consideration I should not be wholly convinced. It is not the only consideration.
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There are those, of course, who can still all questionings of con- science by the argument, " Well, after all, it was they who began it." This argument does not appear to be completely applicable. The fact that other people have behaved abominably does not in the very least convince me that we should behave abominably ourselves. The motto of this great country should be aliis licet: tibi non hcet, "others can do it, but not you." But although this argument does not, to my mind, provide us with a complete justification, it certainly does deprive the enemy of all causes of complaint. It is unworthy of Germany or Italy that they should start screaming, and induce Franco to squeal with them, when they receive the very treatment which in the days of their triumph they dealt so mercilessly to others. " We shall erase their cities," boasted Hitler at the Sportspalast on October 4th, 1940. " London's fate," wrote the Volkischer Beobachter, on the 17th of the same month, " is being accomplished with the same logical necessity with which Warsaw and Rotterdam paid for their senseless resistance." " I regard," said General Field- Marshal Kesselring, in April, 1941, " the purpose of total war by the Luftwaffe as having been achieved when the power centres of land attack have been annihilated, and the capacity of the people to resist has been smashed." "The Italian Air Force," boasted Mussolini, on November 18th, 1940, dominates the sky and reaches out to far flung objectives. I asked and obtained from the Fiihrer permission for direct Italian participation in the battle against Britain with Italian planes." These statements were amplified with almost orgiac ferocity by the German and Italian newspapers and wireless at the time. They vaunted the destruction of Warsaw, Rotterdam, Belgrade, Coventry, Bristol and the rest. This fact does not, to my mind, justify us in vaunting now that we are in the position, with ever increasing force, to repay the debt. But, had they any sense of reality or dignity, our enemies should remember these words and jubilations ; and should keep silence now that it is upon them that similar sufferings are being imposed.
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" It will hamper German war production ": " It will shake enemy morale ": " It will shorten the war ": " They started it first "—all these are unguents which can certainly assuage the smart of conscience which so many of us feel. I do not derive full comfort from these palliatives. My conviction is steeled rather by the harsh reflection: " War is a cruel thing. We strove, even to the point of dishonour and cowardice, to avoid it. Now that it has come to us, we must cast aside all soft hypocrisy and wage it grimly ourselves." I am prepared for this. I do not jubilate when the dams burst, and I know that in a night terror and death came to many humble homes. I set my teeth and say : "That means six months less of war ; that means six months lesi of fear and misery for Poles, and Czechs, and French, and Greeks." I say: " Let us not flinch or quail ; let us do it again and again, for the end is good, although the means are terrible." And I smile sadly when I listen to • Deutschlandsender and hear in the very same transmission long quotations from the Spanish Press regarding the brutality of the R.A.F. coupled with long and quite untruthful paeans of how "wave after wave of the Luftwaffe" have during the last week reduced the centre of London to a " lake of fire."
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Yet there is, to my mind, another and more potent justification for all this grim business. There are those who, in considering the perplexing problem of the future of Germany, escape from the sense of the insoluble by consoling themselves with the thought that, once peace returns, we shall " educate " Germany into a civilian mood. I am not quite clear by what means we are to find the 6o,000 teachers which would be required. I reflect also that for generations the German people have been educated as no people have ever been educated before. I am not referring only to the State educa- tion, but also to the intense and pacific education carried out by the Trades Unions, the Co-operatives and the Socialists. In every town and village bf Germany there existed, in 1933, an Arbeiter- kulturbuncl, an Arbeitergesangverein, an Arbeiterjugend organisa- tion. All this was swept away in a single night. What happened to the eleven million workers, the three and a half million Com- munists, who during all those years had been subject to " education "? They were swept into war. For they believed that they could win, and that in any case Germany herself would not be punished. The German conscience today aches with a sense of complicity, of Mitschuld. They are experiencing more than punishment, they are experiencing retribution ; the word Rache is on their lips, a word which is ill-translated by " Revenge," since it stems from the same root as " justice." Is it hypocrisy to feel that this is the true education? Is it incorrect to feel that the German people, terribly and durably, are being taught that war does not pay?
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