10%

It cannot be stressed too often, wrote the New York Times's Raymond Daniell from London last week, that these raids sometimes cause damage to military objectives. . . . Such damage is subject to censorship, it should be remembered, lest an erroneous impression be gained that only hospitals and churches are being bombed.

As the Germans came over last week by the scores and by the hundreds, as Londoners were treated to their twenty-first, twenty-second, twenty-third consecutive night bombings with no prospect of letup, it became increasingly clear that the Luftwaffe was going for definite targets. By day, the Germans hit not only at and around London docks, power plants, gas works, railroad stations, telephone exchanges, but also went with renewed vigor after ports, industrial cities in the Midlands and north country, even after isolated plants in the open countryside. Late in the afternoon, squads tried to start fires near objectives in London, which would light the way for night bombers. When these beacons failed, the Nazis just dropped their bombs at random. Plenty of bombs missed their intended marks and struck at innocence. The Germans also bombed the ancient stone lace of Cambridge University as "the only way of making the British realize the insanity of such attacks as that staged on Heidelberg."

Last week the Germans made their estimate of the damage they had inflicted. Since July 10, they claimed, the Luftwaffe had dropped 50,600,000 pounds of bombs on British targets. About 6,000 factories, 1,400 of them in the London area, had been hit. On British ports had fallen 17,000,000 pounds of bombs, and 700 raids had concentrated on airdromes. The British, for their part, admitted some damage to factories. But they claimed that plants planned by farsighted Marshal of the Royal Air Force Hugh Montague, Viscount ("Boom") Trenchard were just now getting into full production, so that the net loss was nil. Somewhere between the two opposing claims lay the truth.

One way of estimating the extent of general industrial damage was to ascertain how much U. S. enterprises with British branches or holdings were hit. Last week TIME queried 82 enterprises with headquarters all over the U. S. and associate properties all over Britain. The results were not reassuring.

Of 68 companies which were willing to discuss their British affiliates, 20 were able to say that they had recently heard that the plants in Britain were altogether unharmed, 40 replied that "as far as they knew" plants were operating, but mostly at reduced rate because of enlistment of labor or difficulties of transport, and eight reported more or less severe damage by bombs. Eight hits in 68 is 11.8%. The figure sounds low, but it must be remembered that much less than 100% destruction spells trouble. The U. S. Defense Commission's battles against bottlenecks have demonstrated all too clearly how a hit on one vital supply plant could slow up a whole chain of processes. Furthermore, most of these firms produced non-military goods, and the percentage among strategic industries was doubtless substantially higher.

On the plus side, the recovery of Britons in adversity was universally reported to be phenomenally quick, at least as far as non-military enterprises were concerned. Large London department stores like Bourne & Hollingsworth and Peter Robinson opened twelve hours after being bombed, with piles of debris covered over in some cases by flags. Damaged goods went on sale. One punning Londoner cracked: "It's bomb marche in Oxford Street this week."

Economist John Maynard Keynes said that destruction had not exceeded potential rate of construction. "We have," he added, "the capacity to replace what has been lost by something much better." One businessman cabled his U. S. associates: "Lots of our buildings were dirty anyway."

Possibly a good estimate of damage to British industry in one month is 10%. Nothing positive had developed last week to prove that the Germans could not continue bombing London in about the same way for six months, or more.

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