I was going to end this section of the post-blog with yesterday's post, but who could resist a front page like this? It's so emotive and manipulative. The scene itself is tragic enough: the mass burial and funeral of 172 men, women and children killed in the blitz on Coventry last Thursday night. Another seventy will be buried today. But to that the Daily Mirror adds (1) portentous capitalisation ('the Tragedy of Coventry'); (2) a rousing declaration ('WE SHALL REMEMBER!') combined with a graphic of Coventry in flames; (3) the archaic insults ('HUNS RAID', 'the Hun's massacre'). There's more on page 7, along with photographs of the open grave, and on the back page. The Mirror is milking Coventry for all it's worth. And who knows, maybe it's worth a lot.

The Daily Express, by contrast, has a feel-good story on its front page -- that is if the increased ability to bomb Germany makes you feel good. The US Army is immediately giving up twenty-six of its coveted 'Flying Fortress' bombers to the RAF. Another twenty, now under construction, are to be delivered by 1 March 1941: a black day for German barrels.

These twenty are being equipped with the famed Sperry bombsight, said to be capable of aiming a bomb "into a barrel from 10,000."

And the Express would presumably consider this a feel-good story. In its editorial, which chiefly discusses the problem of the night bomber (again), it says (4) that part of the answer is that

Germany must be paid back in fill and overflowing measure for every bomb on this country.

Harold Jaffa of Norwich will also be glad to hear of the coming of the Fortresses. In a letter to the Express, he quotes Hilde Marchant's story describing the sentiments of the bombed in Coventry 'the morning after its Guernica bombing': '"Bomb back and bomb hard.'" He believes her account over that of a BBC correspondent who reported the following night that 'Coventry did not want reprisals':

But, of course, the people of Coventry, as well as the people of every other bombed city in this country, want the Germans to be bombed back. Not one shred more mercy, not one bomb less than they give to us.

"Coventrating" is a new phrase for the Nazi papers. Show Germans what it means before they add it to their military textbooks.

The editorial explains that 'Coventrating' is 'a word they invented from the devastation of Coventry when they boasted of the "demolition technique" of the Luftwaffe.' So which German city will be the first to be Coventrated?

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