COMMENT and REFLECTIONS

Evening Star, Issue 23693, 28 September 1940, Page 11

COMMENT and REFLECTIONS

It is clear that the week ends with at least the possibility of enlargement of the circle of war. Japan seems set upon her southward. expansion plan, and has categorically rejected all protests against her “ peaceful and constructive ” entry to French Indo-China, claiming that what she is doing has the full concurrence of the French (Vichy) Government. This, of course, means also the sanction of Germany, and the situation is considerably clarified by the announcement of a German-Japanese pact. The crumb of comfort in „ this agreement is the implication it contains that Germany no longer feels complete assurance of success in the battle for Britain, and is seeking to dissipate the latter’s resources by a diversion in the Far East. This is a very risky adventure for Japan, if, indeed, she is doing more than “ fly a kite ” to gauge the wind; for it constitutes a threat to the United States as well as to Britain; and while the former, in the throes of a Presidential election, is not likely to take overt action, there is a powerful economic weapon in its hands. The application of sanctions or an embargo must quickly bring the Nipponese to heel, for since war broke out in Europe their dependence upon the States as a source of war material has been as high as 70 per cent. On. the face of things Japan would take inordinate risks in disturbing her own economic status quo, let alone adding to her battlefronts. Nevertheless, this war has been so full of incredible happenings that the possibility of such risks being accepted cannot be entirely discounted. The Dakar affair appeared to contain all the elements of a successful and bloodless coup d’etat ensuring quick realignment of the Federation of French (Vest Africa with the “Free French ”; but de Gaulle seems to have miscalculated badly the attitude the French naval units in the port would adopt; to have underestimated also official adherence to the Vichy Government, and the extent to tvhich German intrigue had operated. At any rate, the reception of the mission was so unexpectedly hostile that the strong British naval flotilla accompanying de -Gaulle had to engage the French squadron and the fortress guns; and, rather than provoke a full-blooded engagement, carrying the enterprise to its logical conclusion, the “ Free French ” leader decided to accept frustration and abandon the whole effort. A lot of people, accepting the assumption that the population of the territory as apart from the officials is hostile to the French puppet Government, are asking why the British fleet ivas not “ bloody, bold, and resolute ” as at Oran. The answer, of course, is that the fleet was purely a protective squadron for de Gaulle and his mission, and had no charter to go beyond such function. It has been a definite setback to Britain’s chance of organising resistance throughout the French Colonial Empire and a score for German diplomacy, and it reveals the danger of embarking on any enterprise with hands tied. Once it was entered upon propitiation and deprecation of engaging a friendly enemy should have been disregarded and the affair pushed to its proper conclusion. Dakar is a strategic port of importance and an aerial keypoint. German and Italian officers had already assumed control of its several modern air bases as early as July. It furnishes the shortest air route to South America, and therefore its domination by Germany cannot be accepted by the United States with equanimity. Worst of all it may prove a valuable submarine base for attack upon British commerce on the Cape of Good Hope route. A great chance has lapsed for the moment. French West Africa would have added to Britain’swar potential in Africa a population of 15,000,000, a splendid accretion to the 3,500,000 we gained by the adherence to our cause of French Equatorial Africa.

Invasion talk seems to .he waning, and the general verdict is that Hitler was always pursuing a chimera, and probably realises it now that he has failed so signally to deliver a preliminary aerial blow on a scale huge enough to paralyse the Royal Air Force and smash the British coastal defences and aerodromes into isolated fragments. This was one pre-requisite to invasion, and lacking it. Hitler will have to set another date for his journalists to view the “ world’s greatest spectacle, the invasion of Britain.” Nevertheless, something did happen on that 16th September date nominated, and apparently provided quite another spectacle. That was the date of the first great channel storm, and the story of a disaster to picked troops on the invasion barges is too oft-recurring and too circumstantial to be disregarded entirely. The story is that the troops had been suffering so heavily from the British bombing that the thousands of barges were taken out of the ports and moored along the lonely Flanders coast, and that the south-west gales overturned hundreds of them, drowning many thousands of men and dispersing the rest of the fleet, even as the Spanish Armada ivas scattered centuries ago. These perilous waters are still the friend of Britain.

The lack of news from Egypt means that Graziani is consolidating his position and bringing up his supplies prior to attempting an advance on the first British fortified zone around Mersa Matruh. The marshal is a seasoned desert fighter and strategist, and as the ‘Sydney Morning Herald’s’ military writer says: —“ Nothing is to he gained by underestimating Italian leadership and organisation in their Libyan army; their weakness comes from the unwillingness of the ordinary soldier, and especially the native-levies, to take heavy punishment .’ The British forces in Egypt', despite recent reinforcement, are still outnumbered, but the well-equippd Egyptian Army of (say) 50,000 men will largely redress the balance, when Egypt comes in, which she must as soon as the invasion threatens the Delta region. Some strategists hold that the main British resistance ivill be offered much nearer Alexandria than Mersa Matruh, though the clash in the latter region will determine the form our later strategy will take. One factor is certain —the Italian attack along the coastal road has long been prepared for; many defensive works and obstructions have been planned, and many stretches of the road will be within range of accurate fire from British ships. Nor need, it be assumed that the British tactics will be purely defensive. A recent statement from headquarters at Cairo ran: “It is surprising that it should be so constantly assumed that only the Italians are preparing an offensive.”

No one incident among the many vicious and shameful acts that have earned the Nazis the execration of all mankind, so envenomed the popular fury as that of September 17, when, without delivering any warning, a submarine torpedoed a British refugee ship in the turbulent mid-Atlantic, 294 of the 406 aboard being drowned, 79 of them children. This was Hitler s great exterminating chef d’oeuvre, the occasion doubtless of great rejoicing among the Nazi chiefs: worthy, too, of the striking of a special commemorative, akin to the Lusitania medal of the last war. Outside Germany, the act inspired icy horror, with also some realisation of the tremendous power for evil laid open to any man in authority ivho can abjure all considerations of decency and humanity.