A Kind Of Perverse Egalitarianism
Ray Cassin: “Debate about the morality of bombing German cities began, in Britain at least, almost from the time that the RAF started doing it, and Orwell used his Tribune column "As I Please" to attack wartime critics of the bombing campaign. His argument rested on a kind of perverse egalitarianism: the technology that had made it possible to bomb entire cities, he said, thereby made everyone a potential target, which was surely a good thing. This spreading of the risk, he said, not only meant that war's victims were no longer overwhelmingly young men in the front line, but that bloated capitalists and apparatchiks could no longer find a place to hide.”
Cassin argues that Orwell's reputation as a moralist is inflated because “his attack on the critics of the bombing campaign was facile and pernicious”. Not linked in the article, "As I Please" is available online. I quoted from it in August of last year.
