The Bismarck tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, N.D.) 1916-current, 1918-04-10
THE GROWTH OF AIR WARFARE

InlS -cOuntry-and particularly LONDON winch
has learnt to know what air raids now mean-will
give full sympathy to Paris for the heavy price
that was exacted by German airmen on Monday
night. The casualties actually caused by the
bombs were not so heavy, as matter of fact, as
those in the raid on the night of January 81. But
they were greatly increased by one of those tragic
Incidents which are liable to happen, in spite of
every, precaution, when human beings are sub
jected to sudden and heavy strain. The accounts
that we have as yet of this calamity are meagre,
but it is clear enough that there was panic at the
entrance to of the refugees in the Metropolitan
Railway and that this cost sixty-sx lives, mostly
those of women and children. These deaths far
outnumbered those which the enemy raiders were
able to cause-a fact that the people of London
may take to heart while abjuring any temptation
to plume themselves on their fortunate immunity
hitherto from deadly crowd-terrors of this kind
a fact to be thankful for, but emnently risky to
boast about. 1t is much more to the point to re-
fleet upon the moral of the enemy's night attacks
on allied capitals and large towns during the pres
Thursday night; Paris on Friday and Monday !;
|Naples-whether by seaplane or airshp seems still
uncertain-on Sunday. All these attacks show
that darkness is no. longer any real protection
against rading aircraft, as our own armen, in
deed, had proved long before, by bombing opera
tons on dark nights far behind the German lines.
1t is sufficiently obvious we think, that the enemy
every night, dark or moonlit, when the weather
favors him; and the experience of Naples on Sum-
day night suggests that Rome, too, is within his
effective range. ~
What the German is doing under the shield of
might to London, Paris, and Naples, that British
airmen are doing in broad daylight to German
towns. On Saturday Mainz was raided on Sunday
Stuttgart; and yesterday Coblenz. Cobenz is the
farthest north that the British raiding squadrons
have gone in Germany. They are getting near
Cologne It is like the German to give out that
the raids on Paris are by way of reprisal for the
raiding exploits of British airmen-one of his
childish expedients for sowing dissension between
the allies. We can well imagine the scorn Of our
French allies at this typcally German bunder in
elementary psychology. Let US beware, too, of
yielding to the temptation to make much Of enemy
attacks upon the civilian populations at the ex-
pense of our understanding of the important devel-
opments in air warfare on the fighting fronts. The
first favorable days of an unusually clement spring
have filled the air with swarms of fighting air
craft, to say nothing of bombing machines and
those which are used for the more prosaic art of
military photography. These first large-scale en-
counters Of the year have justified fully Mr. Bonar
Laws contention the other day that the British at
present enjoy IAN overwhelming superiority" in
the air Last Friday and Saturday were good
day. fog sil figatinaTpis has been troqbeaoRs
ported to have brought down the ski,H total
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