Tuesday, January 23, 1940

CHURCHILL TALKS TURKEY TO THE NEUTRALS. Britain’s First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, gave Europe’s neutral nations a harsh warning in a radio speech Saturday -- join the Allies in “united action” to stop Hitlerism, or else fall prey to Nazi aggression. Addressing the threatened peoples of the Low Countries, Scandinavia, and elsewhere, Mr. Churchill offered a pessimistic summary of the neutrals’ prospects for remaining free and at peace (the quotation is from Sunday’s Associated Press account) --

“At present [the neutrals] plight is lamentable and it will become much worse. They bow humbly and in fear to German threats of violence, comforting themselves meanwhile with the thoughts that the Allies will win....Each one hopes that if he feeds the crocodile enough, the crocodile will eat him last.  All of them hope that the storm will pass before their turn comes to be devoured. But I fear greatly that the storm will not pass. It will rage and it will roar ever more loudly, ever more widely. It will spread to the South, it will spread to the North. There is no chance of a speedy end except through united action, and if at any time Britain and France, wearying of the struggle, were to make a shameful peace, nothing would remain for the smaller states of Europe...but to be divided between the opposite, though similar, barbarisms of Nazidom and Bolshevism.”

I’m of two minds about this kind of talk. On the one hand, Mr. Churchill’s tough rhetoric, beautifully crafted as it is, seems like just the sort of talk to spread alarm and distrust in, say, Belgium and Holland. The unintended effect of such oratory might be to drive the Low Countries away from useful, private military contacts with France and Britain. And it’s hard not to sympathize with the Dutch in particular, who managed to stay neutral throughout the World War, and are hoping against hope for similar success in staying out of this one. On the other hand...as alarming as Mr. Churchill’s views are, might he be right? He certainly has been a better prognosticator of Hitler’s intentions than Prime Minister Chamberlain, who last August closed up Parliament and went on a long fishing vacation just before the Polish crisis came to its final boil. (Churchill, for the record, denounced Chamberlain for his carelessness).

CHURCHILL’S TRIBUTE TO THE FINNS. Mr. Churchill’s tribute to the valiant Finns is also worth mentioning -- “The service rendered by Finland to mankind is magnificent. There, exposed for all the world to see, is the military incapacity of the Red army and the Red air force. Many an illusion about Russia has been dispelled in these few fierce weeks of fighting in the Arctic Circle.”

Good words. But unless I missed it, he said nothing, alas, about Britain helping with Finland’s need for more troops, more planes and tanks, more munitions and supplies. And no mention that Britain’s own military men have warned that if the Finns do not get lots of military aid before May, the Russians will yet score a breakthrough. When will the Chamberlain government offer the Finns more than kind sentiments? And isn’t it hollow to ask the neutrals to do for the Allies what Britain has not yet been willing to do for the Finns?

WHAT WAS CHURCHILL AFTER? Barnet Nover doesn’t see any advantage for the Allies in Mr; Churchill’s speech, and raises some questions about it Monday in his Washington Post column --

“He could hardly have entertained the belief that such a speech would make friends for the Allies in the Netherlands and Belgium, in Norway and Sweden. If anything, it is likely to antagonize them. What, then, was Churchill after? Was it merely to pose an issue which becomes daily sharper in the Europe of 1940 -- the division of Europe between the aggressors, on the one hand, and their actual and potential victims on the other? Or was he merely playing a long shot? For even if Churchill’s bid is, as it is likely to be, immediately and unequivocally rejected by spokesmen of the small European neutrals., it may give Germany a pretext to justify that aggression against the Low Countries or Sweden or Switzerland which has long been feared. The answer to this question may soon be forthcoming -- in Berlin.”

HITLER’S OPTIONS FOR AN ATTACK ON BRITAIN. With the Western Front as quiet as a cathedral on the moon, the speculations go on as to whether, and when, Hitler will take the offensive. The New York Times’ Berlin correspdent, Otto D. Tolischus, offers his own analysis, a fine one, in the Times Sunday “week in review” section. Mr. Tolischus says the Fuehrer and his generals are supposed to have reached the conclusion than an attack should be directed at Britain. Their reasoning is that “even if they defeat France...they still must defeat Britain to win the war,” but “if they defeat Britain first, France falls automatically.” Plus, the strength of modern fortifications such as the Maginot Line would make a German attack on France spectacularly bloody, and almost surely futile. The article mentions two possible ways the Nazi war machine will try to subdue the British --

“(1) A paralyzing air attack on Great Britain, smashing ports and industries and crippling her war-potential. This, however, is believed possible only if Germany is able to provide her bombers with an escort of speedy, powerful pursuit planes capable of flying to England and back...(2) A direct invasion of England with an expeditionary force in the manner of William the Conqueror, which already has been suggested in the German press. However, this project, as well as a decisive air attack, is held possible with Germany’s present equipment only if Germany controls the Channel coast and ports at least as far as Calais, where her airplanes would have closer landing fields and where long-range guns might have a chance to keep a lane clear of the British Navy....It is difficult to conceive how this would be accomplished unless Belgium and presumably the Netherlands were overrun first.”

BUT DON’T RULE OUT AN ATTACK ON FRANCE. Mr. Tolischus also mentions in his New York Times’ article a lesser possibility, though not one to be ruled out -- a direct attack on the Maginot Line “in an effort to bleed France, whether the Germans could break through or not.” There is, after all, always the chance the Nazis really could defeat the French defenses through a murderous war of attrition, since they now have a two-to-one advantage in manpower. “It would perhaps be the hardest way of trying to win the war, but if France should fall Germany would be in control of what she regards as England’s continental bridgehead, from where an attack might be launched against England herself.”

Ominously, Mr. Tolischus adds that time is not on Hitler’s side. “Unless such an attack is staged by Spring,” he writes, “it will be too late to stage it at all.” Thereafter, Germany’s military superiority, especially in airplanes, will decline, as Britain’s increased production of war materials brings the Allies closer and closer to being on par with the Reich.

ALL, OR NOTHING AT ALL. Writing in Sunday’s New York Herald Tribune, Major George Fielding Eliot rejects the “loose talk” that the U.S. could participate military in the European war by giving the Allies financial and economic assistance, or even aerial or naval support -- without sending an expeditionary army to France. He even seems to agree with the isolationists that the lesser aid measures proposed by the Roosevelt administration shouldn’t be carried out unless we’re ultimately willing to fight --

“[W]e might remind ourselves that our history and national character do not incline us toward half measures, do not indicate that we are likely to wage half a war. We might, therefore, usefully reflect not only upon the nature of the propositions now being bruited about, but also on the certainly that unless we wish to get into this war all the way we will do well to avoid taking the first steps in that direction. If it is to our vital interests to get in, let us get in with our whole strength devoted toward the single end of victory. If it is to our greater interest to stay out, let us not deceive ourselves that we can go halfway down the path of war without proceeding to its end.”

THOSE RASCALLY FINNS. For almost two months now, Soviet Russia has waged undeclared war against Finland. Now, after weeks of unprovoked bombing, strafing, shelling, blasting, and shooting by the Red Army, the Russians are now threatening the Finns with...a declaration of war. Why? According to a Finnish-language broadcast on the Moscow radio, monitored by the International News Service, Finnish troops in the Suomussalmi sector “stole weapons from the Russians” in the process of wiping out two divisions’ worth of Soviet soldiers. A woman’s voice warned the Finns that unless the weapons “are returned to their rightful owners, war will be declared.”

I’m not making this up.