HELMET HEROES NOT SO CASUAL PROFESSIONAL

The effect of such methods of attack upon what has hitherto been the unarmed population of our cities must be obvious. Where bombing is considered uncertain of success, or after it has prepared the way, the vast flotillas of airplanes which the science of a few more years will put at the service of progressive military states will be able to land at crucial points bodies of troops sufficient to destroy the productiveness of essential industrial areas. Railroads, ammunition dumps, or densely populated cities may be bombed with high explosives or lethal gases. For it will be possible, as military writers have taken pains to inform us, to carry battle far behind and beyond the formal lines. To strike thus at an enemy in his most vital organs, the centres of industry that produce his military supplies, or to break down his resistance by terrorizing helpless cities, will certainly be one of the most ardently pursued objects of future attack. Killing or wounding either is a handicap to the enemy and to handicap the enemy is one of the immediate ends of war.' вЂThe dividing line between soldiers and civilians,вЂ™declares a recent writer, вЂwhich wore perilously thin in the last war, will vanish altogether in the next great war because from the military standpoint there is no great difference between the soldier who wields the weapon and the woman who makes it. They provide food for the soldiers in the lines by raising community gardens they nurse or entertain the wounded at home, in hospitals, or abroad they heap up stores of projectiles and explosives for the troops at the front.

HELMET HEROES NOT SO CASUAL PROFESSIONAL

And not alone the laboring, but the professional classes, the men and women of wealth, even the boys and girls, throw themselves into the contest. From him proceeds the supply of munitions and clothing to the armies. The factory worker is even more essential. In off hours it is her function to fold bandages or to peddle government bonds. Indeed the shopgirl is a valuable recruit. A nation now goes to battle entire, from president to shopgirl. Whereas wars were formerly fought out between armies in well-defined local campaigns, and the civilian population went unmolested about its usual business, except as a city might be beleaguered or a district ravaged, the present age has seen a transformation in the practice of war which has done away with most of the difference between the combatant and what used to be called the noncombatant. IT has become a commonplace to say that no very sharp distinction can any longer exist between military and civilian populations in war.

Helmet heroes not so casual