THOUGHTS FOR THE DAY

Dominion, Volume 36, Issue 17, 15 October 1942, Page 4

THOUGHTS FOR THE DAY

Comments —Reflections

The best remedy against ill fortune is a good heart. —Proverb.

"Defeat will come to the Germans as a tremendous shock, and if we think of them as we ought to, as a people who arc mentally ill, it may serve us to remember that shocks are being produced and employed successfully against all sorts of mental diseases; the invasion shock has shaken mahy a patient back to his senses and 1 do not think it unduly optimistic to estimate that the shock of defeat will have a similar effect on the Germans; the poison of Nazism will be at least partly shaken out of them; it will be up to us to 1111 the minds and hearts of the Germans with new ideas, new hopes and a better faith.” —Erika Mann.

"Three days ago I was in New York. Now I am sitting before a typewriter in London,” writes Mr. F. G, A. Cook, "Evening Standard” New York Correspondent who recently visited England. "It’s as simple as that, this business of flying the Atlantic. It means that week-end trips to New York are within the reach of everyone with a few pounds to spend after the war, The writer came over in a four-engined American craft. “We feel the aeroplane lift. The wheel vibration dies away. We’re up! Hours pass. Some of us eat chocolate. Some doze a little.” The skipper passes 'back word that oxygen masks must be worn. We are somewhere around 15,000 ft., and still climbing. It is pitch dark. For hours nothing happens. Dawn comes. An empty world. Suddenly someone yells ‘Spitfire!’ There is a rush for the little look-out. A couple of miles away is a Spitfire that has come, up to investigate us. Fifteen hours exactly, froin ‘somewhere in Quebec’ to ‘somewhere in Britain.’ That is all there is to Alantic flying today.”

‘‘ln times of stress there is a tendency for weak-minded folk to resort to soothsayers, palmists, and astrolegists,” writes Sir Benjamin Drage in a letter to “The Times.” "Those who practise these curious arts are not infrequently prosecuted as rogues ami vagabonds. I should like to point out, however, that the harm done by these people is infinitesimal when compared witii that done by astrological predictions in the Press. A newspaper may have a leading article dwelling, on the intense gravity of the situation and the need for the mostfstrenuous exertions by every one—and on the same page an astrological prediction that Germany will collapse within three months. I cite an actual instance. These predictions are widely read and popular, else no editor would give space to them —but when they deal with national interests they are a public danger. Why should anyone go all out at war work if Germany is sure to collapse in three months? Cannot the Newspaper Proprietors’ Association arrange that at least for the period of the war the astrological features be omitted?—or. as an alternative, that the astrologers confine themselves to birthday predictions for those w’ho credit that sort of thing, and omit all reference to public affairs.”

‘‘Our own air striking force will be in 1943 the most powerful in the world. Behind it will stand the gathering might of the United States, whose military and naval air forces cannot lie fully mobilized until, probably, 1944, What these tremendous assemblages of air strength will be able to accomplish can only be dimly discerned from what our own Air Force, still not at its peak, has accomplished in the past. The morale> of no nation on earth could be left unshaken by the weight of the attack to which German industries and communications are likely to be subjected in 1943-44. Whatever happens elsewhere, however far the German armies smash their way in the. east or the south, however badly we may fare in the Far Bast, the issue of the German war is certain —on four conditions. Tlie first is that these islands are successfully defended against Invasion; the second, that we and the United States go on grimly, whatever happens in Itussia or elsewhere; the third, that our supply line across the Atlantic is kept intact; the fourth, that our own and the American production of aircraft and training of air crews are maintained. If these conditions are fulfilled nothing on earth can save Germany.”—Mr. J. M. Spaight, C. 8.. C.B.E. on Bombing and Morale, in the ‘‘Quarterly Review” for July.

“The question of a second front is not one of politics, but of possibilities,” says “The Economist,” London. “The bounds set to military enterprise by shipping are now seen. The need to ■win air mastery over tlie invaded coast is common talk. But the limits of British manpower, which for the best part of three, years has been called upon to equip and man fronts all over the world, arc ignored. Too often it is stated by advocates of an immediate second front that, say, four to five million British troops are standing idle. It needs no inside imformation to show how misleading such figures are. Perhaps.so many men have been called up and t rained. But I lie Air force, the Navy and civil defence may well account for >i!f tlie total; more than a million men have gone to the Middle East, to aid the Russians on ’the Caucasus line ns well as to hold Egypt, to India and to key points and garrisons all over the world. The troops at home include every variety of soldier—combatant, technical, supply, transport and ancillary. Willy-nilly too the land and air forces were built up after Dunkirk primarily for defence ; a large part of tlie home force are engaged on anti-aircraft duties. Only part are the skilled and specialist shock troops needed to break into Europe. The possibility Ims to be admitted Hint there may not be a sufficient number of British troops in tills country to draw off any appreciable proportion of the enemy's forces from tlie Russian front. Calculations of tliis kind are necessarily very rough and ready; tlie margin of error is large. But it. is certain that tlie picture of a great British army straining at the leasli is a false one.” ♦ * * Compensation. Nothing is ultimate, not even death:— A love can brush with evanescent wing: Yet. briefly, too, triumphant, the hot breath Of pnin and sorrowthis for comforting! M. Adams.