May 30, 1918 
Land & Water 
Rheims and the hills, and so turned theeastern end of the ridge 
known as the Chemin des Dames from the eastern end of this 
ridge, therefore the Allied line has fallen back to the River 
Aisne south of it, and the enemy has reached the road 
crossing at Pont Darcy. No further news is,to hand.] 
The Air 
There remains the work in the air. Of the normal work, 
the work of mihtary operations proper (which is' nearly 
the whole) all we know is that the Allied superiority is main- 
tained and increased. But tYie comparatively small extra 
work designed for political effect merits our special attention 
this week. The most striking and the worst incident in it 
was the deliberate bombardment of a great British Base 
Hospital area by the cnem\'. What he did here was con- 
sonant to what he has done throughout the war, to wit, 
the breaking of nil civilised conventions where he Hjoupht 
there was advantage to himself with no -corresponding 
disadvantage that he could see. It was exactly the same 
calculation as made him massacre and bum in Belgium 
at the beginning of the war, and as made him murder Captain 
Fryatt. No parallel action could, he thought, be taken 
against himself. 
It is clear that if he compels that one of his enemies who 
has maritime communications to spend more tonnage in 
transporting wounded ; to subject more wounded to the 
strain of two transhipments? etc., he has a clear advantage, 
because his own communications for evacuating wounded 
are uninterrupted and by land. Further, he can withdraw 
at necessity liis base hospitals to a great distance. The 
British, short of crossing the sea, must remain within radius 
of aircraft. 
But he had another object, which was purely political, 
and that was to prepare the way for a Convention which shall 
put an end to the bombing of anything that is not of strictly 
military importance and within the war zone. He desires 
to put a special strain upon the Allies in this respect because 
he knows that if he does not get his Convention the Alhes 
can in the near future put a greater strain on him, which 
will be in his particular case really dangerous. 
We shall never get a proper view of the present and coming 
air raids in the Rhine Valley until we put ourselves in the 
shoes of the enemy and see how various experiences combined 
have produced in him a state of mind upon which these repeated 
raids are pecuharly efficacious. 
The principal of these experiences is the tradition of victory 
combined with complete security at horrie. 
The very oldest men alive in North Germany to-day, 
the men between 70 and 90, have their memories of yqung 
manhood crammed with victories not only on the largest 
scale, but of the most decisive sort, and these achieved against 
first class Powers with incredible facility and rapidity. They 
remember the wars whicli unified North Germany under 
Prussia between '64 and '70 as the very foundation of their 
lives. 
Men somewhat younger, men still in the vigour of 
public service, men from 55 to, say, 68, can recall as children 
the same experiences. No one living in North Germany 
can recall anything else. The whole psychology of that 
modern experiment which still calls itself the German Empire 
is steeped in a blind faith in absolute, riecessary, conclusive 
victory upon the largest scale. No one living remembers 
invasion, and, what is more, only thfe very oldest of those 
now living can remember a state of mind in wliich defeat 
was thought possible. 
With the national soul ill such a state the German Empire 
launched its campaign'of conquest in 1914. There followed, 
it is true, a certain disappointment. Victory did not prove 
as simple, as easy, or as rapid as had been expected. Still 
there was victory, and, above all, there was the continuation 
of complete security. 
All the news of civil damage and humiliation which the 
German at home reads about (or the German soldier either 
for that matter) was news of harm dune to the enemy, not to 
himself. Did French and British gunfire fall upon points 
behind tlife lines, those points were French and Belgian. 
A German attack involved the ruin of foreign land'i Even 
German defence involved nothing but the ruin of foreigrt 
land. 
Later when the German armies made their retire- 
ment to what was called the Hindenburg line, they 
devastated territory which thev detested, and which was 
not their own. And all this while, though suffering the 
strain of partial blockade, civilian life in Germany was 
quite secure. 
We cannot grasp the enormous effect of air w(jrk in Ger- 
many until we grasp tliat state of mind. 
The first sign of what such an effect could be was the ex- 
plosion of anger, surprise and furious recrimination which 
followed the French raid upon Karlsruhe. So normal was 
life within Germany, so much did all the authorities take the 
old state of affairs for granted, that the Royalties were 
quietly visiting each other in the Palace of Karlsruhe when 
the raids took place, and the Queen of a neutral country 
narrowly escaped death. 
A Small Beginning 
But Karlsruhe was only a beginning — and a small beginning. 
After al), the opportimities (apparently) of hurting French 
territory in such a fashion were much greater than the oj>- 
portunities of hurting German territory. There was, as yet, 
no conspicuous Allied superiority in the air. It seemed safe 
for tfte enemy to pursue an intensive policy of terror over 
Allied civilian territory. 
We said in these columns many months ago, that the test 
would be Cologne. The worSs written in these columns 
were to this effect^- "The first bombardment of Cologne 
will wake an echo not only throughout Germany but round 
the world." 
Why had Cologne this great importance ? On account 
of its size, its political history and its character as the capital 
of the great industrial district which lies to the north of it. 
Cologne was the.vone great city of Western Germany which 
had this character of a capital, of a provincial metropolis ; 
of a centre of influence, of a great historical aggregate of 
population. It was intensely jingo ; there had appeared 
in its Press threats against! the French and British more violent, 
and perhaps one may say more simple, than in the Press 
of any other city. It had constantly seen pass through it, 
and had insulted, those long trains of prisoners over whom 
for three years it had exulted. And all the while it had 
regarded itself as certainly out of the war as a great city 
could be. It was the heart and nerve centre not only of 
the western belt of the German Empire but of its great 
industrial ganglion, the Lower Rhine coalfield, and yet it 
thought of itself as no more than the spectator of, and the 
secure and happy applauder of, victones in hated foreign 
lands far to the West. That, it should be raided, raided by 
day, and raided on a large scale, produced a revolution in 
the German mind. If it could be thus raided on a large 
scale and by day there was apparently no limit to the Allied 
power of reprisal ! ^ 
You have the measure of the astonishment and the salutary 
terror produced by this British achievement when you read 
the pathetic, because child-like, cotnmentaries of the enemy 
upon it. The principal Parliamentary representative of the 
city (whose name Kuckhoff is amusing to our ears) naively 
suggests that the thing should stop. He thinks it frankly 
intolerable. He says it must not go on. The Cardinal- 
Archbishop of the place proposes that the Pope should put 
an end to it. The newspapers of Cologne ^d its district 
all shriek at the top of their voices that it is fiendish to imperil 
the lives of harmless women and children. 
The mind of Cologne just now, at the end of May, 1918, 
is far more different from what the mind of Cologne was six 
months ago, than is the mind of any western belligerent 
from what it was four years ago. And Cologne is only 
a beginning of what may be done for the conversion of the 
North German. In the West every one has known Gennjm 
outrage from the very beginning of the war, invasion, or at 
the very best the necessity for bearing with re\Trse and 
humiliation. The original British divisions had not landed 
and been deployed in line more than a few hours before they 
had to suffer the terrible ordeal of the retreat from Mons. 
Belgium in the first days of the war had suffered arson, 
massacre, rape, pillage, and inhuman insult after a fashion 
which no Christian nation had yet known. With Northern 
France it was the same ; and the\ captives had gone into- 
Germany by tens of thousands, "fhe monuments of anti- 
quity were ruined, the decencies of life dissolved, and a sort 
of chaos seemed to have come. It is nearly four years since 
that time. In all these four years the British, the French, 
the Belgians, and in their turn the Itahans (to mention onlj' 
the West) have acquired a complete experience of Prussian 
war and of what it means to have an inferior put for a moment 
over his superior ; what it means when the child of the 
savage or the bivte gets hold of a weapon which ought never 
to be left within his reach. 
Meanwhile the German himself, the author of all this 
abomination, was inmiune. He suffered military cttsualties ; 
but those are normal to war. He saw none even of his most 
offensive modern erections destroyed ; not one of his prin- 
cipal towns heard the noise of the aeroplane droning above 
it ; no open coastal place of his suddenly suffered murder from. 
