'It might take weeks or months to bring the Hungarian Bolshevists and recalcitrant Germans to book by extensive operations with large forces. It might take but a few days to bring them to reason by adequate use of aircraft. 'Allied airmen could reach Buda-pest in a few hours, and teach its inhabitants such a lesson that Bolshevism would lose its attractions for them. 'Strong Allied aerodromes on the Rhine and in Poland, well equipped with the best machines and pilots, could quickly persuade the inhabitants of the large German cities of the folly of having refused to sign the peace. 'Those considerations are elementary. For that reason they may be overlooked. They are "milk for babes."'[65] Now the prevailing thesis of the British, and particularly the Northcliffe Press, in reference to Bolshevism, was that it is a form of tyranny imposed by a cruel minority upon a helpless people. The proposal amounts, therefore, either to killing civilians for a form of Government which they cannot possibly help, or to an admission that Bolshevism has the support of the populace, and that as the outcome of our war for democracy we should refuse them the right to choose the government they prefer. When the Germans bombarded Scarborough and dropped bombs on London, the Northcliffe Press called Heaven to witness (_a_) that only fiends in human form could make war on helpless civilian populations, women, and children; (_b_) that not only were the Huns dastardly baby-killers for making war in that fashion, but were bad psychologists as well, because our anger at such unheard-of devilries would only render our resistance more unconquerable than ever; and (_c_) that no consideration whatever would induce English soldiers to blow women and children to pulp--unless it were as a reprisal. Well, Lord Northcliffe proposed to _commence_ a war against Hungarians (as it had already been commenced against the Russians) by such a wholesale massacre of the civil population that a Government, which he tells us is imposed upon them against their will, may 'lose its attractions.' This would be, of course, the second edition of the war waged to destroy militarist modes of thought, to establish the reign of righteousness and the protection of the defenceless and the weak.