Thursday, February 22, 1940

BRITAIN TALKS TOUGH TO NORWAY. Prime Minister Chamberlain led British indignation Tuesday over Norway’s claim that the Altmark was actually a German “state service ship.” Thus, Oslo holds, the vessel was within her rights to be in Norwegian coastal waters. The Nazi prison ship yielded 299 British prisoners when boarded by Royal Navy sailors last week-end. (Earlier accounts put the total variously at 324 and 326). Chamberlain’s speech to the House of Commons merits a lengthy front-page article in Wednesday’s New York Herald Tribune, which makes one main point -- Britons of all political parties are fiercely united in their approval of the Altmark raid, and in their consternation at what Chamberlain called Norway’s “complete indifference” to German violations of her neutrality.

The Herald Tribune summarizes Chamberlain’s position as this -- “Because [the Altmark] was armed and carrying British prisoners she should not have been granted the freedom of those waters but she should have been searched and the prisoners should have been removed.

It’s difficult to say whether the Norwegians believe for a second their ridiculous demand that Britain turn the freed prisoners over to Norway’s control, or if Oslo is acting purely out of fear of Hitler. But Chamberlain implied that if Norway won’t protect her coastline from German incursions, the British Navy will. A Wednesday New York Times story by Raymond Daniell on Chamberlain’s speech explicitly makes that point. A Times dispatch from Paris says as well that the Allies might be “forced to take action to prevent Norwegian waters from being used as a refuge for German vessels.”

IS OIL THE KEY TO VICTORY? Author Frazier Hunt writes Wednesday for the International News Service that the fates of Germany and the Allies might be settled not on Europe’s battlefronts, but in the Arab kingdoms of the Near East. That’s where the French “Army of the Orient” waits to defend French interests in the region, and possibly to attack German and Russian interests as well --

“This war might be won by [French] Gen. Maxime Weygand’s army of mystery tucked away in scores of villages and cities in this ancient Syrian land. A single three-letter word holds the secret of this war. It is -- ‘OIL’. The side controlling oil wins the war if it can cut off the supply from its enemy. That is largely the reason the great soldier, Weygand, is here with his army gathered from every corner of the French empire. For the task of the army is not only to help guard the Allies’ priceless oil fields in Iraq, Arabia, and Iran, but also to help Rumania hold her oil away from Germany and -- to venture a long prophecy -- possibly some day to cut off the supply of oil from the Baku and Batum fields in southernmost Russia and prevent its reaching Germany.”

Mr. Hunt sees Rumania as possibly becoming a major battlefield, due to the belligerents’ competing interests there. If the Allies succeed in cutting off Germany’s overland oil supply, he says, “the war is over.” Thus, “I believe this is one of several reasons why France sent Gen. Weygand here to build up an army so as to be able to strike deep into the Balkans when the moment comes. If Germany attacks Rumania and the latter can hold out until Weygand rushes to the rescue with the Anglo-French forces being massed in the Near East and with the probable help of the Turks, it may prove to be a vastly different story than the easy conquest of Rumania [by Germany] in 1915.”

“CENSORSHIP” IN BRITAIN AND GERMANY. The Chicago Tribune’s editors are fond of calling Britain and France “dictatorships” on par with Russia and Germany -- because of the Allies’ routine wartime restrictions on speech and the press, and the understandable decline of partisan politics in London and Paris. But are Chamberlain and Daladier really just on par with Hitler and Stalin? Or even close? Note what an article in the current issue of Newsweek has to say about radio-listening in Britain --

“A man known only as ‘Lord Haw-Haw’ is a national figure in Britain today: he figures in a current revue and is the subject of a popular song and countless letters in the newspapers. ‘Lord Haw-Haw’ is heard nightly on the German radio, broadcasting in English, and got his sobriquet because of his supposed super-Oxford accent -- although listeners have traced its origin everywhere from Edinburgh to Chicago. Britons religiously listen to him nightly -- the newspapers even list his name and wave lengths -- and laugh.”

Contrast that with the Reich government’s view of radio programs from abroad -- “In Germany, listening to foreign broadcasts has become increasingly less of a laughing matter. The penalty is prison and in extreme cases – for habitual listening or organizing listening sessions -- death.”

I remember that William S. Shirer, the C.B.S. Berlin correspondent, gave a good example late last month of how nuts the Germans are about propaganda broadcasts. On one sector of the Western Front, French loudspeakers began trumpeting anti-Hitler messages across the Rhine to the German lines. Nazi gunners were ordered to open fire on the amplifiers, and, when the initial attempts didn't work, a mini-offensive was launched to destroy the loudspeakers. The bombardment went on for days, until it finally succeeded. It was the biggest shooting spree on the Front in some time. The same thing happened two weeks ago, says Newsweek, but the French loudspeakers were “entrenched behind pillboxes” and kept talking right along.

Obviously, one side in this war has much more confidence than the other in the ability of its own people to think for themselves. And that side deserves to be called a democracy.