TOPICS OF THE DAY

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21188, 10 August 1940, Page 6

TOPICS OF THE DAY

America Tomorrow ? Difficult as it may be for most Americans to grasp, eyen today, there is at least a grave possibility that the same situation now faces the United States as that which confronted Britain, perhaps not last September but at any rate in March of 1939, after Herr Hitler had marched into Prague, writes Mallory Browne in the Christian Science Monitor. Thus the President, in his radio fireside chat on the nation’s defence needs, though he insisted on the necessity for swift industrial co-ordination in order to speed up defence production, demanded that traditional reliance on private industry should be continued, and he implied no such all-in effort as would mobilise and make available to the Allies America's great industrial potential when it is really needed, when it would really help to abolish the threat before it becomes a direct menace to America—that is to say, within a matter of few months at most, and not next year or the year after. The grave peril that faces the forces fighting in defence of liberty and Christian civilisation on the continent of Europe today will, if unchecked, certainly confront the American continent the day after tomorrow; for the essence of the totalitarian Blitzkrieg is not to wait until its victims are ready but to surprise them with the speed of its attack.