London in War

Stocky, bullet-headed Valentine Edward Charles Browne, Viscount Castlerosse, has been a naval officer and a Captain in the Irish Guards with a distinguished War record. He is now director of three great London papers (Evening Standard, Daily Express, Sunday Express) and a part-time gossip columnist who has learned to overcome the British public's innate awe of a title by writing with elaborate earthiness. Fortnight ago His Lordship turned his attention to the menace of aerial bombardment during the next war.

"Hell!" Lord Castlerosse opened his article in the London Daily Express, "I ought to know ... I have been bombed and bombed and bombed, not like the fellows who were bombed in England during the War.

"People, particularly embusques, are inclined to talk now of the bombing of London as a major operation of the War and shiver at the thought, whereas in fact only 670 were killed--a mere fleabite in these Belisha days. In 1928 more than double that number were killed [in traffic accidents] in the streets of London. Now the returns are astronomical, but because of the dangers of the streets I do not sleep under my bed.

"One of the greatest German experts who has gone into this matter estimates that it would take about 30,000 machines, each carrying 2,000 pounds of bombs, to make London look really sick, and Germany has not more than 500 such airplanes.

"Of course London will be bombed in the next war, and I'll tell you why. . . . In the event of war the Germans will bomb London in order to frighten us.

"They will be wrong. You cannot frighten English people that way; you will only infuriate them ... I do not disguise the fact that living in London during the next war will be uncomfortable and moderately dangerous, but London is not going to be wiped out nor is the civil population going to be exterminated."

Publication of these Castlerossisms seemed to fill British aviators with blind rage. Shouted Capt. B. A. Davey, one-time War pilot : "If war were declared one afternoon one-third of London's population would be wiped out by morning. It would be an all-night affair. Lord Castlerosse is talking through his hat."

Added Sir Alan Cobham, a pioneer England-to-Australia flyer: "The possibilities of strafing from the air have become so uncivilized that it has become beyond war. Lord Castlerosse knows nothing about it."

Wrote "Six Ex-Tommies from Streatham": "You can tell your pet Viscount from us that he can tell his story to the Marines."

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