SECOND YEAR OF WAR

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 November 1940, Page 7

SECOND YEAR OF WAR

SOME VITAL LESSONS LEARNED. How do we stand on the threshold of 'the second year of the war? asks “Strategicus,” writing in the Spectator. We must guard against the dangerous illusion that we are the stronger for the defection of France. But we have certainly jettisoned much of our baggage-train that would have ruined us as it did France; for of course we now realise that France was beaten before she engaged. Our main strategy is intact, though the pressure of the blockade is weakened in some directions; and we have discovered how to invade Germany while the Channel which holds her off holds us in. We have discovered that at long last man will always dominate the machine, that numbers can be a deadly obsession, that quality is of more importance than quantity. If these are truisms they nevertheless belong to the obvious that is the last to be realised. So. stripped of illusion, fully recognising that we have only ourselves to count upon, we enter the second year strategically so placed that we can see no possibility of Germany defeating us and with reasonable hope that if we use our powers wisely, that is offensively, to the full we can bring her to ruin.