COMMENT and REFLECTIONS

Evening Star, Issue 23681, 14 September 1940, Page 11

COMMENT and REFLECTIONS

It scarce needed Churchill’s solemn warning on Thursday to apprise us that the crisis of the war is at hand, that the next few weeks will be the most momentous in modern world history. The savage crescendo of air attack, concentrated in the main upon southern England, and particularly the Thames Estuary, the institution on a huge scale of raids by day. and raids by night, the intensified bombardment of our Channel ports by the German long-range shore batteries were unmistakable portents. What did remain doubtful was whether Hitler was trying to smash Britain into impotence and submission from the air, or whether invasions was to succeed these hammerings. The Prime Minister s speech made it clear that the latter is almost inevitable . He told how hundreds of self-propelled barges have been moving along from German and Dutch ports to French ports of sally from Dunkirk to Brest, and even into the Bay of Biscay, while a numerous fleet of merchant ships under convoy has crept to the same ports under cover of the shore batteries. He indicated, too, that their passage had not been undisputed. Despite the formidable covering defence, they have been attacked by our Coastal Command aircraft, and shelled by the Channel patrol of destroyers and mosquito craft, while at the same time the B.A.F. has repeatedly played old Harry with the port facilities at Calais and Dunkirk, and has' even sought out and attacked the large aggregations of troops awaiting the order to take ship upon their perilous if brief voyage. Nevertheless, the ships and the men are assembled and poised for the Venture; and, for our part, we stand ready to repel them, with the best chance in the world of emptying them into the sea before ever invasion materialises. For the Germans lack two of the three pre-requisites for success:—(l) Control of the air; (2) control of the sea. We hope even to prove, should they penetrate to our coastal defences , that they lack also the army strength to meet us on equal terms and upon our own grbund. Hitler is very much in the hazardous situation of the alpine climber who has crossed astraddle one of those dreaded knife-edge ice bridges, balanced over appalling depths on either side, to find when he reaches the far side that the portal he must scale is within his reach indeed, but beyond his grasp. He must jump for it. So England is within Hitlers reach but beyond his grasp, and should his leap miscarry he will fall into the abyss of perdition. Another signpost of impending invasion of Britain is that Mussolini appears to be at last moving upon his Egypt campaign. II Duce has been playing the mule, refusing to advance from Libya till Hitler made a pinning move to isolate Britain. The stage is now Set for the double event. And, as Churchill said, “ It is with devout but sure confidence that I say, ‘ Let God defend the right. 9 ” '

We have said, though it scarce needed saying, that Germany has not complete command of the air. That is a very conservative estimate of the situation disclosed by the cables during the past few weeks, Germany, in fact, has never had any command save for the few minutes it takes our fighters to rise and pounce upon the raiding bombers; and her squadrons, even when (as of late) protected by as many as four fighters to each bomber, have been consistently dispersed, with losses in the ratio of four to every British machine put down. Moreover, even in the latest phase, with attacks over the whole of the 24-hour period , our bombing strength has proved equal to striking blow for blow on the enemy's great munitions, manufacturing, and harbour centres, * even upon Berlin itself. Where we have not sought to emulate Hitler and Goering, is in the cold-blooded cruelty of the latest indiscriminate bombing, involving the deaths of many children and infants. The Nazi tactic, without doubt deliberate, relives that night of long ago in Bethlehem when (in De Quincey s matchless phrase) “Herod’s sword swept its nurseries of innocents, and the little feet were stiffened forever, which, heard at times as they tottered along floors overhead, woke pulses of love in household hearts that were not unmarked in heaven. This modern version of indiscriminate slaughter has awakened pulses, too, of detestation of the authors that will not be stilled until their crimes are expiated, A curious story mentioned recently has perhaps some bearing upon these latest exhibitions of frightfulness. It was related that German airmen, picked up from the sea after being shot down off our coasts, have been found to have puncture marks on their arms, the suspicion being that they have been deliberately doped to stimulate their enterprise on risky adventures, and confirm their natural callousness. This is genuine gangster technique. Many of the gunmen of the prohibition era rackets in the U.S. sniffed “snow” (cocaine), the effect being to wipe out fear , harden resolution, make them capable of the starkest and most cold-blooded cruelties; and withal (mark this point in relation to the airmen) render them for the time immune from shock. It is said that such gunmen, fatally shot in many places, were yet able to stand on their feet and continue their gun battle till death actually supervened.

If this be really part of the technique of Hiller s total war” Churchill’s description of him as “ This wicked man, the repository and embodiment of many forms of soul-destroying hatred, this monstrous product of former wrongs and shame, is a quite inadequate denunciation. More fitting the portrait Doughty drew in ‘ Arabia Deserta’ of a sheik whose hospitality he had to endure: “ Already in the shipwreck of a decent understanding, with the bestial, insane instincts and the like compunctions of a spent humanity.” \ While our present concern is victory, the economic situation of the world after the war is already causing economists much thought and many misgivings. Never has there been so complete a ‘disruption of normal economic life as the Nazis have caused by their conquests. It is said that 30,000,000 men are under arms in Europe, and, since it requires two other men to keep each soldier sustained and equipped, 90,000,000 men have been forcibly wrenched from the production of foodstuffs and the other necessities of peace-time life to feed a war machine whose insatiability can be gauged from the fact that it is costing Britain alone £4,000 a minute. The dominion of Hitler over his victims is a pure “ squeeze.” He is relying upon being able to transfer his indebtedness to the conquered territories, but this is obviously the most fallacious of hopes, for he has debarred their prosecution of the productive labour that gives a nation solvency, and once the war is over, all their pegged currencies must depreciate calamitously. Even if they didn’t their combined treasuries could not meet the monumental non-productive expenditure by which Hitler has plunged his country into indebtedness on an astronomical scale. Doubtless he hopes to inflict such crushing defeat upon Britain as to compel the surrender of the vast sums she has invested in foreign countries, but this could not.save him with the economic collapse of Europe that tvould inevitably be the first result of Britain’s downfall. On the other hand, if Britain can, as we believe, ivithstand the battering of the next few weeks, it is possible that the Nazi collapse, from the causes stated above, and because, too, the whole German people is fearful of the war carrying over into the winter, may be very quick and dramatic. Even so, it ivould then require the application of the best brains, the best-intentioned brains of Britain and America, and immense sacrifices on the part of both, to secure the rapid economic recovery that alone could save the Western ivorld from d civil tragedy more fatal than war.