BRENNER PICTURES BY AXIS ARTISTS

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 85, 7 October 1940, Page 6

BRENNER PICTURES BY AXIS ARTISTS

A month or more after the date which Berlin had programmed for celebration of the totalitarian States' total triumph, Hitler and Mussolini met at the Brenner Pass to consider the loss of the Battle for Britain, the demonstrated inferiority of the German air forces unit for unit, the near approach of the time when German air power will be inferior to British numerically as well as in quality, and the stand-pat position of the Italian offensive against Egypt, which resembles not total triumph but total paralysis. The periodical pageant provided by the meeting of the Dictators always starts a guessing competition, which can be summed up under various heads. First of all, there is "peace," of which it is reported: (1) that a serious Axis peace drive is imminent; (2) that an Axis peace drive is imminent, but that it is not serious, and will not deceive us; (3) that nothing is further from the Dictators' minds than peace or compromise. The second subject of speculation is what was done to promote "the new order" in Europe and in Africa. The Berlin Press states that the Dictators "shaped the picture of a new Europe to include Africa." Such a picture would be something quite new to art, but an artist possessing the qualities of a geographer might be able to produce 1 such a pictorial curiosity as a museum piece. It can be no more. The "Daily Telegraph" dismisses this Axis picture by stating that Balkan rivalries of the Dictators still prevent their discovery of any new order for that part of Europe—which contention, if sound, may in part explain why the Italian army pauses not only before Egypt but before Greece. Concerning the African part of the picture, the "Daily Telegraph" remembers that Africa and the Mediterranean present a naval as well as a land war problem:

Africa may be easier to divide on paper and Mussolini might be willing to accept orders to attack the British if Hitler would supply him with air and land forces, since he must face the fact that on the sea the German navy is in no case to assist the Italian or to cavil at its eminent caution.

Time, which waits for no man, and not even for Hitler and Mussolini, has somehow got ahead of the Axis in both the North Sea and the Mediterranean :

The Luftwaffe was to have overwhelmed the British Air Force and opened our shores to a mass invasion long before this. Italy should have swept the Mediterranean, cut off our armies in the Near East, and struck at the central communications of the Empire.

But instead of a picture of nil England and an Africa made safe for totalitarianism, it seems that not even the Brenner Pass was safe for its two masters, because their meeting was air-patrolled and their publicity men have denounced pre-publi-cation by neutrals of the about-to-be-held conference of the mighty. The official communique is unusually colourless, and even talks of "routine exchange of views." If any new Axis leg-ropes have been dexterously applied to Russia or to Japan, there is no mention of them. In fa,ct, the whole Tokio-Washington duel seems to have been left severely alone. It has not even figured in a picture.