LONDON’S ORDEAL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 26 December 1940, Page 8

LONDON’S ORDEAL

CAPITAL WILL ENDURE CONTRIBUTION TO VICTORY. GREAT VALOUR OF PEOPLE. It was bound to come, stated Lord Elton in the London “Sunday Times.” Who did not know it in his heart of hearts, even during those first deceptive months of “phoney” war?. There was character to warn us —how should a German War Lord hold his hand for long, with all the barbarous frightfulness of a new weapon not yet extracted to the full? There was precept —is not the indiscriminate mass-bombing of civilians implicit in every other line of Nietzsche or Clausewitz or the egregious Ewald Banse? And practice—the whole history of Prussia from the first Partition of Poland to the latest. Add present circustance to these familiar signposts —the Luftwaffe was being notably worsted in daylight battles and had not been adequately trained in scientific night flying—and the conclusion was irresistible. It was bound to come.

Now that it has come, now that the first spiritual shock has been swiftly absorbed by the tough, resilient spirit of the people, it behoves us to look coolly and closely both at and beyond the monstrous phenomenon. Is it an act of cold calculation or of reckless anger? That there is calculation in it is certain. As the Prime Minister warned us, the methodical preliminaries of invasion loom up along the whole length of coast from Norway to the Bay of Biscay. The Nazis doubtless hoped that a sudden collapse of moral fibre in the metropolis might distract and dislocate the whole poise and thrust of our defence,. In the same way a formidable air raid heralded the advance of the German hordes upon Paris. But Hitler’s motives are customarily complex. He doubtless reckoned also, as indeed he professed, that the German aeroplanes, scattering their bombs at random from great heights upon a city which they could not see, would soon compel the' Royal Air Force to abandon its own methodical hammering of German communications, harbours and industrial plant. At the least he may have hoped that, driven to blind reprisal, we should be distracted, temporarily perhaps, but at the crucial moment, from plastering the ports in which the barges of his invasion are assembling, to imitating, under all the handicap of greater distance, his own random savagery against the enemy’s capital. It is even possible that he may have allowed himself to believe that, quailing under the stroke, we should lose heart, falter, and produce a Petain of our. own. For it should always be remembered that Hitler has never understood us. BRITAIN RESOLUTE. . If this was the calculation it is already evident that it has been disappointed. The bombing attacks have stirred the nation—as. indeed similar savagery has stirred other peoples who lacked our power to match mood with action—not so much to fear as to a temper of taut and wrathful resolution. And as long as that is so, it follows inexorably that the essence of the calculation has gone astray, and that Hitler has himself been diverted from his primary military objectives.

He has not blasted'a path for invasion. He has not driven back the aerodromes from which our fighters take off to exact their devastating toll of enemy aircraft in the daylight battles which Germany cannot abandon until she also abandons, all hope of seriously crippling our air-power. And if there seems to have been a deep vein of miscalculation about the new schrecklichkeit, may it not be that it was never wholly a creature of calculation at all? And if the war should continue, for some while to come, to be a longrange bombing match, it is worth noting that Dr Goebbels has probably done a good deal already to start his side off at a serious psychological disadvantage. A population which is suffering the strain of continual attack from the air is readily encouraged to endurance by the knowledge that its own air force is dealing even heavier blows to the enemy; and this, of course, Dr Goebbels can be relied upon to assure the citizens of the Reich. He has, however, now kept Germany on tenterhooks for so long, promising so frequently that within a few days all British resistance would have been crushed, he has so graphically reported, even before the Germans’ heavy indiscriminate bombing began, that London was on fire from end to end, that there must surely be a progressive anti-climax about all future descriptions of the triumphs of the Luftwaffe.

Though Nazi propaganda may still be able to delude Germans as to anything happening outside the Reich, and perhaps as to most things which happen inside it, even Dr Goebbels cannot expect to conceal the fact that British bombs continue to fall on Germany. And it is impossible to boast indefinitely that you are on the point of flooring your adversary if it remains obvious to the meanest intelligence that he is continuing to punch you with unabated vigour in the ribs. There comes a time when even the Ark Royal cannot be sunk again. INVASION GAMBLE. But if invasion is indeed at hand, with air massacre as grim curtainraiser? (And how accustomed we have grown to that particular If, how familiar now is the cautious proviso that Maybe may have become Is before these lines see print!) If attempted invasion is at hand, it is at least encouraging to recall that, severe though the attacks may be which we have suffered in company with our various allies, every blow which the Germans have aimed at Britain itself has hitherto proved a spectacular failure. There was the magnetic mine, which was to ruin our sea-borne commerce in the first months of the war. There was the intention to roll up and destroy the whole British Expeditionary Force before Dunkirk: German leaflets, it may be remembered, were dropped to invite our troops to surrender, since “the match” was now over. There was the lively expectation that the surrender of the French fleet intact would transfer to Germany and its satellites permanent command of the sea. And, finally, there were the first great air battles, which were allowed to rouse a feverish pitch of expectancy in Berlin. And yet we survive. If invasion is attempted, we may be sure that it will be a gamble which Hitler would very gladly have spared himself a pis alter five times over.

TRAGIC DRAMA. ■’

There are moments, naturally enough, when the imperial city s ordeal, or some particular facet of personal suffering within it, will blot out the true perspective of the tragic but splendid drama which is being enacted. Viewed thus, on any view indeed save the longest, the spectacle becomes so monstrous as to be intolerable. For the seventy years since she finally passed beneath the yoke of Prussia, Germany, making ever scantier contributions to the arts of civilisation, has concentrated upon equipping herself as an instrument of destruction, until at last in one nation seem to have been concentrated all the slowly accumulating spiritual poisons of the Machine Age.

And it is to the murderous fury of this portentous monster that we see exposed the ancient monuments of a richer and a kindlier civilisation than Hohenzollern or Hitler ever dreamed of. The spectacle is appalling, but it is splendid, too. For in due course the valour and the sufferings of London and our other cities willjorove not only one of the principal agents of victory but a lasting spiritual influence on the post-war world. Victory in the end became as certain as fate —that inevitable doom which, in the Greek tragedies, eventually fell upon hubris, the over-weening arrogance of the criminal—in the moment when Germany first disclosed her plan for agelong domination of the whole world, for she had made death itself preferable to defeat in the eyes of all whom she has not yet subdued. To that eventual victory the valour of the metropolis will make an indispensable contribution. THE SOLITARY BULWARK. But if it is clear that the courage of our citizens must be as integral an element in eventual victory as the valour of our airmen, is it not possible that their sufferings may be equally potent in the age which will follow victory? Many sins, genuine or fancied, have been charged against London in the century since William Cobbett denounced her as the Wen. All are forgotten now.’ If there were crimes or grossness, the great city stands forth purged of them, every one. And her present ordeal visibly draws the Dominions closer to the heart of the Commonwealth; if they ever thought that the mother-country had grown soft with years or riches, they will have revised their opinions now. Already the British Commonwealth stands as a solitary “bulwark of the cause of men”; it will be more closely knit than ever by the fiery ordeal through which its metropolis must pass. What influence may not be wielded in the post-war age by a world-wide Commonwealth, regenerate and welded close by suffering, a Commonwealth which maintained the cause of mankind wken all else had forsaken it and fled?

The path which we have now to tread is steep and may be long, but it is not new to us. It is the path of Drake and the Armada, of Nelson and the flotilla of Boulogne. Let those who have not realised with what uncanny faithfulness history is repeating itself glance through the splendid series of sonnets which Wordsworth wrote in 1802 and 1803. Every feature of the landscape is there —from the nations “who henceforth must wear their fetters in their souls” to the coast of France “drawn almost into frightful neighbourhood.” And then as now the chief fury of the storm seemed likely to fall upon Kent. No parleying now! In Britain is one breath; We all are with you now from shore to shore. Ye men of Kent, ’tis victory or death.

The old perils confront us, but even more menacing; the old stakes are to be played for. but higher now than ever. It is the old enemy who assails us, but in another guise. London has made it clear that the old qualities are there to meet him.