UP to the middle of 1939 the incredulous confidence of Morningside Prospect¹ sustained itself throughout all the regions of the earth that were still untouched by destruction. In Spain, in the May of ‘37, Goering boasted that he demonstrated the strength of the German air force — at that time — by the destruction of the ancient Basque city of Guernica. The place was practically destroyed, the population massacred and the world horrified². But it was done with planes and bombs that would have seemed beneath contempt to the airmen of four years later.

So, too, the exploits of the Japanese bombers³ in China; the blazing houses, the heaped dead, the smashed women and children, and the rapes⁴ and murders of the invaders⁵, were accepted by the world as the last word in frightfulness⁶ instead of mere⁷ earnests of worse ahead. When again the Italians clenched⁸ their conquest of Abyssinia by the surprise use of mustard gas, which they had ‘expressly agreed to abandon, it seemed as though treachery and bad faith had made their crowning triumph. All these events which people with untrammelled imaginations would have realised were mere intimations and sketches⁹ of things to come, were treated as being the final achievement of destructiveness. Why were people so stupid? The facts are plain enough. There was and there is no visible limit to the size and range of aircraft. They were, they are, certain to go on increasing in power and speed so long as air war remained a possibility. What else can happen? Neither was there any limit apparent to the destructive power of a bomb, which again must increase to world-destroying dimensions. Nor was there any perceptible limit to the amount of misdirection and social disorganisation that could be achieved by sustained lying, by the use of poisons, infections, blockades and terrorism. The human mind was amazingly reluctant to look these glaring inevitabilities in the face.

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