A MURDEROUS RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE IN KARELIA. Stymied by Finnish defenders north of Lake Ladoga, the Russians launched a blistering new offensive against the Mannerheim Line Thursday night. They hit the Finns with everything -- six hours of artillery fire (perhaps the heaviest barrage since the World War), more than 130 bombing planes, plus fighter planes, dozens of tanks, waves of assault troops, and smoke screens. The United Press says that the Red Army trotted out a new weapon as well, armored sleds “filled with men and machine guns and pushed ahead of the tanks.” The attack was aimed at Summa, near the western end of the sixty-mile Karelian Isthmus, and beyond that Finland’s second largest city, Vibourg, some twenty miles back from the front.
Both the initial U.P. and Associated Press accounts said the outcome would not be known for several days. But a dispatch in Saturday’s New York Times by K.J. Eskelund offers without contradiction Finnish claims that the offensive has already “collapsed.” The “queer-looking” armored sleds are said to have been shattered by Finnish fire, and a night-time parachute attack behind Finnish lines involving hundreds of Red Army soldiers went awry in the darkness and unfamiliar terrain -- a few of the parachutists surrendered, “but most...fought until they were killed.”
If Saturday’s account is true, it says something again about the Finns’ masterful ability to continuously withstand Red assaults. The attack itself says something about the seemingly inexhaustible supply of men and machines the Soviets can send into the fight. On Friday President Kallio of Finland once again offered Russia “an honorable peace.” One hopes against hope that Stalin will cut his losses and take the Finns up on it.
AN ALLIED ATTACK IN THE BALKANS? Rumania, Yugoslavia, Greece, and Turkey are meeting in Belgrade this week-end to discuss regional security. And just before the opening gavel sounded, a startling story appeared in Thursday’s New York Herald Tribune about an alleged plan for a British and French attack in that region. Reporter Joseph Barnes cites “confidential information” given to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, to the effect that Britain and France now have 500,000 trained soldiers on duty in the Near East. These troops are supposedly at the heart of an Allied blueprint to “strike at Germany in the spring from the southeast,” while Turkey launches a synchronized attack on southern Russia.
If true, this report could shed some light on other news from Britain. Could the recent, mysterious resignation of War Minister Leslie Hore-Belisha, architect of Britain's passive war strategy, have to do with his opposition to such a daring scheme? And might Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, have had more than wishful thinking on his mind when he predicted last week that one day Britain would take the offensive against the Germans?
RUMANIA ON THE HOT SEAT. Whatever happens in the Balkans, the men who rule there feel increasingly squeezed by both sides in Europe’s war. Sam Brewer reports from Belgrade in Friday’s Chicago Tribune on the strategic dilemmas Rumania faces, and the impact of those dilemmas on the conference --
“Rumania’s problems are a damper on the conference’s activities. The delegates fear German troops near the frontier and Germany’s diplomatic pressure may force her to drop efforts toward Baltic coöperation and devote herself to feeding the German machine. The Nazis are demanding more oil from Rumania. Great Britain and France threaten to withdraw their guarantees of Rumania’s integrity if she forces their companies to produce more oil that might be sent to Germany. Rumania faces pressure from three other sides. Russia has demanded the return of Bessarabia; Bulgaria wants the Dobruja region returned, and Hungary has called upon her to return Transylvania. All were given to Rumania after the world war. Rumania’s control of the mouth of the Danube river also is eyed covetously by Russia. Rumania wants to be really neutral, but Germany is very near and Britain and France are far away. Also, she remembers the empires’ guarantees to Poland and Czecho-Slovakia.”
LIPPMANN WARNS OF WAR WITH JAPAN. No one seems more alarmed at the expiration of the U.S.-Japanese commercial treaty than New York Herald Tribune columnist Walter Lippmann, who has written twice now on the matter. His latest column on the subject, in Saturday’s paper, claims U.S. policy in the Orient is badly mismanaged --
“Having ended our treaty relations for the purpose of impressing the Japanese, we shall become increasingly unimpressive if they now go forward to do everything to which we object. We have threatened to act, and in foreign relations where the vital interests of great powers are involved, a threat which is not carried out may be quite as dangerous as one which is carried out. It would be as dangerous to let the Japanese army think we are pacifist bluffers as it was to let Ribbentrop and Hitler think the British were pacifist bluffers; it may incite them to do things that the American nation would find intolerable. On the other hand, in carrying out a threat against a great power there is always the likelihood of reprisal, and that makes war a real possibility....Let no one think there is any cheap and comfortable way out of this dilemma. The fact is that it is a dilemma which cannot be resolved by running away from the Japanese and must not be resolved by running head on into them....The answer is that it cannot be resolved as long as we make the pretensions of a great power in world politics and at the same time conduct ourselves as if we were a feeble, little nation.”
Twice now also Mr. Lippmann has singled out for criticism Senator Vandenburg, Republican of Michigan. He is the strict isolationist who introduced a congressional resolution last summer to abrogate the commercial treaty. Mr. Lippmann says that Senator Vandenburg wanted on the one hand to use an embargo to force Japan to withdraw from China and to employ U.S. troops to enforce international Nine-Power Treaty rights in the Far East. On the other hand, the Senator played a large role in opposing arms sales to the Allies last fall and maintains that a German victory in Europe would make no difference to America. The isolationists don’t understand the effect that our policy in the Atlantic has on our policy in the Pacific, Mr. Lippmann asserts –
“It will be no secret to the Japanese that the United States can take no risks in the Pacific Ocean, certainly no risk that could possibly lead to war, as long as the outcome of the naval war in the Atlantic is in doubt. To become involved in the Orient without absolute certainty that the Atlantic Ocean is securely in the hands of our friends would be to commit the unpardonable blunder if advancing into danger without safeguarding our rear.”
VANDENBURG VERSUS LIPPMANN. Meanwhile Senator Vandenburg, a candidate for the G.O.P. presidential nomination, replied Friday by letter to an earlier criticism from Mr. Lippmann. According to the United Press account, the Senator shunted aside responsibility for ending the commercial treaty, noting that his own resolution had been shelved in committee and that the Roosevelt administration had taken the initiative in cancelling the treaty. His own approach, the Senator claimed, was more cautious, and he still hopes the Japanese will negotiate a new treaty that takes stock of current “realities.” But significantly, the Senator doesn’t rule out an embargo, and acknowledges what it could lead to --
“Whatever our sympathies may be and whatever our sense of deep outrage over the conquest of China, our official responsibility as a matter of foreign policy is not to force Japan to retreat from China. It is to protect American interests....If the American people are ever deliberately and consciously ready to take what might thus be the first step toward war itself (imposition of an embargo), we can meet that situation when the issue is unavoidably precipitated.”
NOVER SCORES “LAME” HITLER SPEECH. Fuehrer Hitler’s surprise address last Monday at the Berlin Sports Palace didn’t impress Washington Post columnist Barnet Nover, who wrote on Friday --
“The only offensive which the Nazi regime has so far carried out in the west is the oratorical offensive that began with Hitler’s speech of October 6 and reached a rather lame anti-climax this week. However potent Hitler’s oratory may have been in the past, it has lost its magic. Success this time would not be the result of overwhelming odds applied against a weak and relatively helpless opponent but against a combination which is today the equal and may tomorrow be the superior of the Reich. And in such a struggle none of Hitler’s past victories provide any sure guide of action. No wonder he hesitates and seeks to pull one more rabbit out of his hat.”
It seems reasonable to say that Hitler doesn’t like a fair fight -- which makes me wonder if his latest threats against Britain and France aren’t intended to be mis-direction. It just might be that before the Allies could do anything in the Balkans, the Fuehrer might launch a major offensive there himself this spring, seeking through conquest a monopoly on Rumanian oil, as welll as other resources denied to him by the British blockade. Geography would give the Nazis much better odds on that front.
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