The Evening Star FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 1942. A SECOND FRONT.

Evening Star, Issue 24291, 4 September 1942, Page 2

The Evening Star FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 1942. A SECOND FRONT.

It is not surprising that, .since the Dieppe raid, there has been much loss talk of an immediate second front in Europe. Considered as a sortie, the raid was an encouraging affair—the enemy’s losses were heavier than those of the Allies—but it had its limitations. A correspondent wrote at the time; “ Much opposition was never overcome. This indicates that the British, with the massed might of the R.A.F., just did not have the weapons.” The natural conclusion was that, while a succession of similar raids, at different points and made with increasing strength, might have precious value in keeping German forces in the west, the time for an invasion of Europe lias not come yet. The invasion will come. Every heart on the Allied Nations’ (side must be impatient for that time to arrive. All Britishers must desire it for the sake of the cause as a whole, for the sake of Great Britain, and for the sake of tho Russians, who have fought and are still fighting magnificently and are hard pressed. There was a time when the British had to defend fheir little island against what threatened to ho overwhelming odds, and they also fought magnificently and alone. The fact that they did so successfully affords the best augury that the Russians will be able substantially to defend their much larger country, having dose on four times the population, with such aid as the Allies can give, short of an invasion of Europe. There are people who have been much more concerned about Russia’s danger than they ever wore about Britain’s in her hour of extreme peril. That is illogical and unreasonable, and other aspects of the clamour raised by different factions for the immediate landing of an Allied army in Europe were unreasonable in an equal degree. Tho invasion we all want, but the time and circumstances that will ensure that au invasion will be successful and not a fiasco that would be disastrous to Britain and give less aid, perhaps, to Russia than she is receiving now, can be judged only by the best military minds. Tho notion, as it has been well expressed, that “ civilians organised in pressure groups ” are competent to shape military strategy and have a right to direct it should be at once dismissed. There can be danger in another influence which the ‘ Round Table ’ has described as “ that extraordinary flair of the modern newspaper proprietor for sensing a popular desire and fanning it to a blaze, and representing the dictates of reason as the caution of incompetence.” We are fighting now, America’s Admiral King has said, on eight fronts. It is enough till our means increase.