6 DECEMBER 1940, Page 14

SHOULD ROME BE BOMBED?

Stn,—I would like to be among those who express their strong support of " Janus's " contention that the bombing of Rome would be an outrage which we would all be ashamed of when the war is over and most of us even when it is in progress. Surely the Forum, the Colosseum, the Vatican and its treasures, and the early churches are possessions of all peoples and of all generations. A disaster to the Vatican Library would be a calamity no greater for Italians than for tie scholars of every race and time.

When it is remembered that Rheims Cathedral, that flowering of zoo years of the finest French architecture, sculpture and glass-work, was the victim of ignorant German gunners in the last war, that the French, because of their trouble with the Druses, after the last war shelled Damascus, the oldest city in the world, and that long ago the Peking Summer Palace suffered grievously at the hands of British troops, it is surely time to regard the precious things of the world as outside the war zone. That our enemies do not have such scruples is to me no argument. Let us hope that the Italians will look upon the Cairo Museum as outside their military objectives.—Yours faith-