Wairarapa Times-Age SATURDAY, MAY 11, 1940. GERMANY’S MAJOR BLOW.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 11 May 1940, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age SATURDAY, MAY 11, 1940. GERMANY’S MAJOR BLOW.

OPENING an attack on three neutral countries alon D he ° eastern frontier—Holland, Belgium and Luxemburg Naz Cernmnv has added another vile infamy to her extending list of crimes It may be assumed that her gangster Governmei ° in thT« move staking all the resources at its desperate bid for victory in the war.. It goes without saj „ that the threat which thus takes material shape—a threat not only to the neutral countries immediately assailed and to the Allies, but to all free nations—is formidable, tlie to which strength is derived from a just cause and v < k ■■ from an m’just cause, Nazi Germany is damned Irem the outset.

Tn the manner that Nazi procedure has made familiar, the latest crime is accompanied by lying so inept as to seem devoid of purpose. No one will be deceived for a. moment the clumsv Falsehood that Germany has forestalled an attack through Belgian and Dutch territory. Only the oddities of Nazi psychology will account for this he having been considered worth while. It appears .to have been utteicd at the moment when German planes were murderously bombin fo Dutch and Belgian cities and towns.

It is one of the commanding facts of the situation that the German military machine is more formidable today, in illation to that of the Allies, than it will be at any later stage o the war The Allies have, and, short of some development now entirely nnforseen, will continue to have, vastly greater potential military resources than their enemy. . In prceipitatiiw conflict on the greatest scale, Germany is calling on human and material resources which she cannot hope either to increase or to replace when they are spent. The arrogant claim of her rulers that they have built up an irresistible military machine will now be put to the test. The failure oi: a full-powered German attack on the Western Front would not of necessity o-ive the Allies immediate victory, but it would mean that Nazi Germany’s hopes of achieving victory and imposing her will on democratic nations had vanished. While the position in these broad essentials is plainly defined, much remains open and undetermined in regard to the probable course of events in the immediate future. Much must depend upon the extent to which Holland and Belgium are able to defend their territories and the Allies are able to aid them in doing so. It is clear meantime that prompt measures for joint action have been taken ■by the invaded countries and’ the Allies and that Holland” and Belgium are stoutly defending their territory. Since the outbreak of war, much has been done to establish and extend a formidable system of deep defence from the northern extremity of the Maginot Line, opposite Luxemburg, round the- Belgian frontier to the North Sea. It may be taken for granted, however, that the Allies will do everything in their power to stem a German advance through Belgium and Holland. As in past, centuries, Holland gives an important place in its defence scheme to extensive inundations of its territory, and with the news of the German invasion came reports that inundations were being carried out according to plan and that the Dutch forces were taking up their stations behind the inundations. The Belgian defensive lines include powerful fortifications comparable to those of the Maginot Line, and to some extent these fortifications are co-ordinated with the Dutch defensive inundations. THE RED CROSS APPEAL. rpOMORROW there is to be launched throughout New Zealand an appeal in which the Joint Council of the Order 01. St John and the Red Cross Society hopes to raise a fund of £250,000 for the relief of those who are sick, wounded or distressed as a result of the war. It is wholly appropriate that an appeal of this kind should be made at a time when the war obviously has entered a supremely critical stage and should be opened on the anniversary of the birth of Florence Nightingale, the first and greatest of women war nurses, honoured today by all enlightened humanity for what she did to lay the foundations of the modern hospital and nursing system.

Florence Nightingale was born in IS2O and of her it has been written :- —

She it was, a beautiful young woman from a London drawing room . . . who went out like an angel to the battlefield in the Crimea; she scourged corruption and uncleanness from the I 10 ®! 31 ” tals; she gave food to the starving, clothes to the naked, comfoit to the sufferers. She made the hospital a place of healing, not a foul couch on which the famished, fevered victims were thrown to death. Every nation owes its hospitals and nursing system to Florence Nightingale; every army owes to her teaching the health of its troops.

The Order of St John and the lied Cross Society have established their own fame and reputation in carrying on the work the foundations of which were nobly laid by Florence Nightingale, and in the Wairarapa and t hronghont New Zealand the appeal these organisations are now limiting no doubt will carry its own sufficient recommendation. These inevitably’ are days of heavy calls and burdens, but they arc days also in which all who can should give ITeely in Ihe cause oi: the relief, ol human suffering and distress. No doubt there is much Io lie done in co-ordinating measures of help and in defining the spheres ol State and voluntary action bill il is certainly desirable that organisations like the Order of St John and the tied Cross Society’ should be given the resources which will enable them to continue the work of mercy to which they are dedicated.