INVASION OF ENGLAND

Evening Star, Issue 23697, 3 October 1940, Page 10

INVASION OF ENGLAND

FANTASTIC, SAYS MELBOURNE PROFESSOR An attempted invasion of England is possible, but not probable; a successful invasion is “ too utterly fantastic for words.” This is the opinion of Professor T. H. Lahy, professor of natural philosophy at the Melbourne University. “ I know of no single recognised military authority who admits even a bare possibility of' it,” said Professor Laby last night, “To invade England Hitler 'would have to destroy the British Fleet, surmount British coastal defences —and as far as I know there has never been a successful invasion in the face of coastal defences in history (our own experience on Gallipoli in the last war is a case in point) —aud then, without mechanised equipment, meet men of a mettle equal to that of Iris best soldiers, fully trained and mechanised. “'it could not he attempted with 100,000 men; it would have to be with 1.000.000. If they were over landed, the Fleet would conic into action and prevent their retreat, and they would bo destroyed or captured to a man. Professor Laby thinks_ that, despite the impressive naval tradition of British peoples, many fail to realise what a_tariff bio weapon of warfare the British Fleet is. “It is incomparably more terrible than the German air force,” he said last night. “ If invasion is attempted—and it may he attempted, for the leaders of the German people to-day are gamblers, who would think little of staking the lives of 1.000.000 on a 100 to 1 chance—and it fails, tho wav will be over. Germany will have lost. THE CENTRAL FALLACY, “ Tho central fallacy of this war is the idea that it will have to bo won on laud, like the last war, at the cost of

millions and millions of lives. What people have failed as yet to realise is that this war is not partially a war in tli© air hut wholly a war in the air—and perhaps on the sea. “It will not be necessary to invade Germany to end the war. Britain is either gaining, or has already gained, equality in the air. Our machines and our pilots are better than those of the enemy. His losses, compared with ours, are colossal. He can’t stand them indefinitely, The front line to-day is in England: but there will come a stage when it will be in Germany—without a land invasion. The R.A.F. will hammer aerodromes until it is impossible for German aircraft to take the air, and then Germany will have no adequate defence against the rain of bombs that could be dropped on her cities. Our bombers already have a technique that enables them to return almost unscathed.

“ Do yon think the German people—a people which has been teetering between war and revolution for 30 years past, a people which, according to the statements of German refugee doctors, is on the edge of nervous breakdown and largely undernourished —could stand that? ~I don’t. I think a revolution will occur, as it did at the end of the last war.”-