LONDON: British night fighters and ground defences fought one of the fiercest visible battles of the year over southern England last night [March 14] when a strong German raiding force made a determined fire-raising attempt on London. Intense gun barrage compelled them to bomb haphazardly. The Germans lost nine aircraft — two of them shot down over Holland by an intruder pilot. One raider crashed in flames in a London suburb, hundreds of people seeing it explode in mid air.

Working class houses were shattered in one District, while houses in a fashionable London square caught the full force of showered incendiaries. London’s fire-watching organisations using a high-speed telephone reporting system — in action for the first time — played a successful role in the defence scheme.

[Meanwhile, as reported from New York,] an early and complete agreement is believed to be imminent among British, United States, Russian and Canadian Treasury Experts on a fund of several billion dollars based on gold to stabilise post-war foreign exchange. Parallel conversations, it was stated, had been in progress here with the British, while a Russian delegation was being acquainted with the White Currency Plan.

Published in Dawn, March 16th, 2019