Page:"The next war"; an appeal to common sense (IA thenextwarappeal01irwi).pdf/50

 unfortified. Germany began this process. She was in a position to do so. She held the advanced lines. Her front was only seventy miles from the capital and metropolis of France, less than a hundred from that of Britain, whereas, to attack Berlin, the Entente Allies must travel by air nearly four hundred miles. Tons of illogically sentimental propaganda have been published concerning these air-raids. In the beginning, the intention was, on any standard barbarous, cruel, and stupid. The German General Staff, rich in scientific knowledge but poor in the understanding of human nature, thought by this means to “break down the resistance” of the hostile peoples, to bully them into a submissive attitude. In this they failed utterly; air raids had rather the effect of lashing the French and British into increased effort.

But the raids were continued for a more practical purpose. The nerve-centres of war are in the great cities, and mainly in the capitals. Suppose for an extreme example that the Germans in one overwhelming raid or a series of raids had destroyed Paris. All the main railroad lines which supplied the army at the front ran through Paris. There, the trains were switched, rearranged and made up. In Paris also were the headquarters of those innumerable bureaus vitally necessary to the conduct of modern war, with all its complexities and coordinations. Had the railroad connections been destroyed, had the bureaus lost their quarters, their