Two Teeth For One

The Germans, with sarcasm as subtle as a plate of pigs' knuckles, admitted "heavy" R. A. F. raids last week. British fliers, said one communique, "succeeded in striking objectives not only of national importance but to a great extent of international importance."

Among these vital targets, said Berlin officials, were the house of the Union of German Engineers, which has given the world many a scientific blessing; the Academy of Art, where the decadence has supposedly been distilled from modern painting; a home for aged Jews; the innocent Brandenburg Gate; a gymnasium; a bed of roses in the garden of Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels.

But German bitterness grew really ear nest over "a particularly detestable, low-down British weapon": the "self-igniting leaf." This was described as a three-inch cardboard or celluloid card with a cut-out centre, into which was pasted a flat core of guncotton and phosphorus. When dropped by night, the cards were slightly damp. When they dried out--it might take ten minutes or ten years, depending on where they fell--the reaction of oxygen on phosphorus made them burst into flame. This weapon, railed the Germans, was "obviously directed against the German youth, the German harvest. . . ." Officials complained that simple burghers picked the cards up as souvenirs of war, only to have them ignite in pockets and drawers; that children handled them and were brutally burned.

The British did not deny using the cards. They said that the leaves had been used to set fire to military stores standing in open dumps, in arsenals, in railway cars on sidings, in trucks, or in woods. Sincerely regretful of the costly blight which had come upon Propaganda Minister Goebbels' roses, and refraining from indiscriminate bombing of Berlin despite urgent popular pull for it, the R. A. F. further pointed out that it had bombed scores of authentic military objectives, such as potential jumping-off spots for an invasion, railroad centres like Hamm, Ehrang (near Trier), Osnabrueck, Brussels, air bases at Norderney and Den Helder, industrial plants like Bremen's Deutsche Schiffund Maschinenbau (shipbuilding), and three of Berlin's railroad terminals.

When invective is the ammunition, Italy is quick to fire. The press accused Britain of breaking explicit agreements not to use chemical warfare. The dropping of the phosphorus calling cards was the signal, said Corriere della Sera of Milan, "of a new method of offensive to which fit reply must be given." Benito Mussolini's Popolo d'ltalia echoed ominously with a new version of the Mosaic law: "Two eyes for one, two teeth for one, and so on until they cry, 'Enough!' '

It looked last week as if two for one was understatement. The R. A. F. had previously boasted that the Ruhr industrial district was pulverized--except for a few blast furnaces which were left as beacons on the highroad to Berlin. But, by comparison with German attacks on Britain, the R. A. F. effort looked pale. One rough day last week the R. A. F. did not go out over Germany at all, yet the Luftwaffe was still in evidence over London. R. A. F. might be more scrupulous, but on the average it could scarcely be more successful than Luftwaffe in going after military targets, about which neither side ever talks. On the meagre dependable evidence at hand--photographs passed by respective censors, the testimony of expert neutral observers, newspaper dispatches--the British seemed to be taking 20 for every one they were handing out. But they had not yet cried "Enough!" (see above).

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