Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 8, 1941. AN OPPORTUNITY FOR ACTION?

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 October 1941, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 8, 1941. AN OPPORTUNITY FOR ACTION?

JN the United Kingdom and in other parts of the Empire, the question is being asked ever more insistently whether the British Empire can afford, in its own interests, not to do more than it is doing now to help Russia. According to a British official estimate late in August, Germany was then employing 5,000,000 of her total of 7,000,000 front-line troops against the Soviet Union, together with ninety per cent of her mechanised units and a correspondingly large proportion of her operational air squadrons. There is evidence that since August heavy additional German forces have been sent to the Eastern front and this evidence is altogether convincing in view of the magnificent resistance offered by the Russians and the enormous toll they have taken of the invaders in men and material.

Some recent estimates declare that Germany is now holding with no more than 25 divisions the entire coastline .of western Europe, from Norway to Spain. At present Britain is helping Russia by her air offensive against enemy and occupied territory in western Europe, by naval action on the routes to the northern Soviet ports and, in conjunction with the United States, by expediting the greatest possible flow of war supplies to the Soviet Union. A wing of the R.A.F. is operating on the Russian northern front and there are, in addition, rather obviously imminent prospects of action in the Middle East which may give valuable relief afid support to Russia.

Against this and more that might be said to a similar effect, it is being pointed out that Germany is still being permitted to mass an overwhelming proportion of her total land and air forces on the Eastern front and that if under this tremendous concentration of force the Soviet armies were .to collapse, the consequences would be disastrous to Britain as well as to Russia. As an Australian commentator put it a week or two ago.- “The question is no longer whether we can afford to help Russia, but whether we can afford to take the stupendous and incalculable risk of not doing so.”

It is pointed oiit that over two years ago, when Britain’s military preparation and the output of her war industries were far from having attained their present magnitude, she sent ten divisions to France and the Low Countries. It is argued with considerable force that there are even more powerful and impelling reasons for making a military diversion in favour of Russia than there were in 1939 and in the opening months of last year for taking the heavy risks that were then taken in an effort to save France.

Shortage of shipping has been named as one or the principal factors which makes it impossible to undertake a largescale invasion of western Europe, but alternatives have been suggested. In the concluding passage of an article in which he recently discussed this question in detail, the military correspondent of the “Sydney Morning Herald,” for instance, observed that the best way of harming the German war machine was to keep open the Russian front.

Aerial, naval and supply aid (he added) are not likely to be sufficient and thus some land diversion seems called for. This may involve risk, but successful strategy implies the utmostaudacity compatible with resources. If such diversion, even in the form of raids, is deemed impossible because, of a shortage of equipment, the unavoidable conclusion is that there must be a reckoning with those responsible with Britain’s productive programmes. Contentment with passive strategy oi’ with lagging production would be courting defeat.

No very obvious or convincing reply to these contentions suggests itself. The concentration of the bulk of Germany’s military power on. the Eastern front is a demonstrated reality. It seems in these circumstances reasonable to believe that British air and sea command in the regions concerned opens the way at least to damaging raids on the seaboard of Western Europe —action which would enforce the transfer of considerable German forces from the Eastern front and might yield much greater results.