FRANCE’S COLLAPSE

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21205, 30 August 1940, Page 10

FRANCE’S COLLAPSE

HITLER UNDER-RATED I POLITICAL DISUNITY (Times Air Mail Service) LONDON, June 22 Reviewed at the distance of a week from the height of the tragedy, the breakdown of France seems due in part to some factors which contain a moral for Great Britain as well, writies E. B. Wareing the Daily Telegraph’s French correspondent. In the first place, what happened was unforeseen by the wider public owing to a bad system of information and censorship. Anything in the nature of objective or reflective considerations of a general kind tended to be suppressed by the censors of the Press and wireless. Similarly, references to facts about which a conscientious foreign correspondent might feel obliged to utter a warning often would not be allowed. Just as major reverses were glossed over, so minor successes were raised to exaggerated importance and the wrong perspective was given. French people thus thought till the last that it would still be possible, by changing politicians and generals, to correct a situation which had in reality gone too far. Politicians at Fault The French nation has proved sounder than its politicians. Elected in 1936 in utterly different circumstances, they proved unable to escape from the habits of intrigue and the routine personal ambition. Jealousies and rancunes continued to impede clear vision, energies were dissipated, and decisions- delayed. Content to play the political game in peace-time, the French people would have submitted, at an earlier stage than that of incipient defeat, to a military rather than a political chief. Many of the more far-sighted would have preferred it. Obviously the main cause of the debacle was the lack of preparation to meet a new form of warfare. Colonel de Gaulle—promoted too late to the rank of general and to a Government post—had foretold years ago exactly the kind of campaign which the Germans would, and did wage. Indeed, only tiie blind could have failed to do so, for Germany had proudly displayed her new weapons before the war began and—as though that were not enough—had publicly tested them in Spain and then thrown them seriously into the conquest of , Poland. The same tactics, slightly ! improved, were used again in France, and Hitler himself had warned the ! world they would be. Nevertheless the Allies paid no real attention, and prepared in 1940 to meet the German tactics of 1914, with some small concessions to what our reconnaissance ’planes and secret agents had actually seen. In a word, the eight months of “phoney” war were allowed to pass without prei paration to meet and possibly without full realisation of what the Germans were planning in the meantime. There was thus implanted in the public mind a feeling that Hitler’c bolt was shot or that at least tho

thrust could be parried without ' great effort. How far the Belgian and Dutch armies could have delayed or even averted the break through if they had discarded their neutrality earlier is a matter of dispute. It can only be said with certainty at the moment that both countries over-estimated their own .strength and cleverness and under-estimated the enemy, as France did, too. ! The excellent fighting qualities of the British were always fully appreciated and understood in France, so that a good deal of anti-British criticism was tempered. The proportion of British to French j manpower in the fight was believed by the French public to be about one 1 to 10, with equal populations in the 1 two countries. While the better British equipment and the big British air effort was j recognised, it was"felt that we had ; no adequate manpower reserve j available in time should Hitler prove | in a huriy. With the German occupation, anti- j English feeling always latent in some j quarters, will be fomented, but the i overwhelming majority of Franch- | men will watch with anxiety and fraternal hope the future of British arms, trusting that greater comprehension and closer collaboration learnt in a tragic school may yet be realised in time.