Tobruk And The Soothsayers

New Zealand Listener, Volume 7, Issue 158, 3 July 1942, Page 3

Tobruk And The Soothsayers

F the loss of Tobruk puts the soothsayers out of business the pain will become almost tolerable. And by soothsayers we mean soothsayers-the diviners, fortunetellers, astrologers, and complacency peddlers who have played such a large part in our war-report-ing. Everybody knows who they are and how they work. Nobody doubts any longer what they have done to us. They are the men who ery victory when there is no vic-tory-who call defeats withdrawals and retreats the occupation of new ground; the correspondents who tell us how difficult it will be for the enemy to get back into his own territory if he pushes too far into ours; the observers who see in a disaster the hidden hand of the master tactician; the propagandists who puff plodding brigadiers into Marlboroughs and Wellingtons; the fools who say in their hearts that the facts can be swept away by fiction. We have all met them, and listened to them, and laughed at them, and then surrendered to them, because it is easier to swallow encouraging lies than to accept humiliating truths. But we have not often met them in uniform. They do wear uniform occasionally, and then they become "military spokesmen" and "high military authorities." But as a rule they work in newspaper offices, or live in front of microphones, or hand out syrup from publicity offices, or expound strategy with their backs to the enemv and their eves on the Marne and the Somme. The fighting mn themselves are usually silent, make few promises, and indulge in very little swagger. Sometimes, though very rarely, they speak slightingly of their adversaries, but they never suppose, and seldom suggest, that Jattles can be won with wind. If they boast — it is an almost negligible exception-it is when they are putting off their harness and not when they are-girding it on; when they have won the battle and not before they have started it. But we have not rewarded modesty and silence. We have rewarded "vain knowledge and filled our bellies with the east wind"-in Norway, in France, in the Far East, and more than once in the Middle East. If Tobruk has brought us to our senses at last what is at present just a burning humiliation may be the roint from which our forward march begins.