BRITISH TROOPS HEADING TO FINLAND? It’s only two hundred soldiers, but they make front-page news in Monday’s New York Herald Tribune -- the first British volunteers who are heading out “soon” to fight the Russians in Finland. They’re part of a 5,000-man contingent enrolled by the Finnish Aid Society. Its London headquarters “was swamped with men and women applicants yesterday and ran out of application forms,” says the report. While the Society signs up new volunteers at the rate of fifty a day, a Labourite Member of Parliament wants to make the recruitment illegal. He probably won’t succeed, on the technicality that the Russo-Finnish conflict is not a declared war. And in any case, according to the Herald Tribune, the volunteer army doesn’t at all weaken Britain’s ability to fight Germany, since its recruits are “either over-age for military service under British colors, or for some other reason ineligible for military service.”
Meanwhile, in Finland the bitter Russian assaults on the Mannerheim Line have gone on for ten days without any sign that the Finns are cracking. The Associated Press says that the Soviets have started using “tanks which throw flaming naptha and steel shields which are pushed ahead by the infantry”, neither to any avail as of yet. And the United Press says that Finnish defenders are tipped off to impending Russian attacks by “the sound of drunken singing...from the Russian lines.”
THE WAR THAT GOES ON AND ON. Remember the Sino-Japanese war? Hallett Abend offers a status report in the analysis section of Sunday’s New York Times. He sees “no signs of an early ending,” and that’s bad news for Japan. Mr. Abend writes that in the extreme northwest and extreme southwest parts of China have Japan’s armies broken the stalemate, but in the critical regions of coastal China, the Yangtze Basin and the Shansi frontiers, nothing has really changed.
Japan has succeeded mainly at exacting a terrible toll on on Chiang Kai-shek’s regime and China’s people. Foreign analysts estimate over a million Chinese soldiers have been killed in thirty-two months of fighting, another two million wounded, and perhaps two million civilians killed by Japanese air raids. Mr. Abend himself estimates from Japanese records that total Chinese military casualties are a mind-boggling 6,500,000. According to official Japanese sources, about 100,000 Japanese troops have been killed in the undeclared war so far, apparently not including another 18,000 who died fighting Russian units in the border war with Outer Mongolia last summer. Chinese officials ridicule Japan’s figures as gross understatements, but note that even if the Japanese have only lost 100,000 men, that would mean more than 475,000 total casualties, which would explain “the Japanese labor shortage and the crippling of many essential industries.” China’s regular army is vastly outgunned by their well-equipped enemy, but guerrilla fighters harass Japanese troops everywhere.
Mr. Abend says that China is bone-tired, but Japan can’t break her -- “All reports from Chungking emphasize the growing war weariness of many important government circles....This does not mean that Japan is about to win the war or that China is about to surrender. Far from it. The prospects now are that China will continue to resist and feebly counter-attack for many years and as time passes Japan will invariably lose the strength necessary for a knockout blow.”
It’s a terribly depressing scenario, and though the Times analysis doesn’t mention it, it adds up to a good argument for a U.S. embargo on all trade with Japan. Why on earth are we using our dollars to help the Japanese Army wage this bloodbath?
THE TRIBUNE SEES ECHOES OF 1916. The Chicago Tribune gets around Sunday to commenting on President Roosevelt’s plan to send Undersecretary of State Welles to talk with Germany, Italy, and the Allies. Not surprisingly, the editors don’t trust the President’s motives, comparing the Welles mission with Col. House’s peace effort made on behalf of President Wilson in 1916. (Isolationists charge that Col. House gave secret assurances to the French and British that America would enter the World War on their side). The Tribune says history may be repeating itself --
“It has been remarked that all of Mr. Roosevelt’s actions this year, until he gives reason to prove the contrary, must be interpreted in relation to the third term. His intervention in the affairs of Europe will be contemplated with a feeling of great uncertainty. Every one must still hope that Europe can find a peaceable adjustment before this war releases all the forces of destruction still held measurably in check. Alongside this hope must be the fear that, step by step, the United States will repeat in 1940 or 1941, if peace does not come, the movements of 1916 and 1917 which led it into the war. As the policy of 1940 continues closely to parallel that of 1916, the apprehension will increase.”
COLUMNISTS WEIGH IN ON WELLES. Dorothy Thompson writes in Monday's New York Herald Tribune that the President’s peace initiatives are primarily political, and only secondarily concerned with Europe – “The 1940 Presidential campaign is extremely dull so far. The war in Europe has pushed domestic affairs into the background. The strongest card that the President has is his foreign policy, and the strongest argument that can be advanced for a third term, or for a Democratic candidate of Mr. Roosevelt’s own choice is the advisability of continuity in foreign policy....Mr. Roosevelt knows as well as any other person that no such peace can be made as long as two men hold the power that they do, at present, in the world. There can be no peace except on the basis of the distribution of power. There will be no possibility of continuing peace as long as Hitler and Stalin can let loose whatever forces they choose whenever they choose. Hitler’s mania let loose this war, and Europe cannot and will not make peace with Hitler.”
But Ernest K. Lindley asserts in Monday’s Washington Post that the Welles mission is worth a shot anyway -- “The chances that Sumner Welles will find even a toe-hold for an effort to stop the European war may not be more than 1 in 100 or 1 in 1,000. Nothing is lost from exploring the possibilities. If the chances of success were only 1 in 1,000,000, the attempt would be worth making....Unless it is stopped soon, the Nazi-British-French war almost certainly will spread over almost all Europe.”
REPUBLICANS HAVE ONE PRIORITY -- WINNING. The primaries are only a few weeks away, and a new Gallup survey in Sunday’s Washington Post shows the young district attorney, Thomas Dewey, still holding a commanding lead among Republican candidates for President. The current poll shows Dewey with 56% of G.O.P support, trailed by Senator Vandenberg with 17% and Senator Taft with 17%. This represents only a slight erosion of Dewey’s support from a month ago, when he stood at 60%, with 16% for Vandenberg and 11% for Taft. Former President Hoover draws 3% in the current survey. New York publisher Frank Gannett, who announced his candidacy this past month, shows up at 1%.
Dr. Gallup says one big reason for Mr. Dewey’s popularity is “the widespread belief (among Republicans) that Dewey would have a better chance of being elected next November than some of the other G.O.P. leaders.” When asked which candidate would be most likely to win, 59% of Republican voters picked Mr. Dewey, versus 21% for Senator Taft. Also, according to Gallup, Senators Vandenberg and Taft are seen as conservative, while “almost as many Republicans consider Mr. Dewey a ‘liberal’ in politics as consider him a ‘conservative’....[T]he prevailing sentiment of Republican voters is toward a greater degree of liberalism than the party favored in 1936.”
And in case none of the major candidates suit you, Gallup also lists “other Republican eligibles named most often” in the current survey -- “Former Gov. Alf. M. Landon; Gov. John Bricker of Ohio; Representative Joseph Martin, Jr., of Massachusetts; Gov. Arthur H. James of Pennsylvania; Senator Charles L. McNary of Oregon; Representative Bruce Barton, of New York; Senator Gerald P. Nye, of North Dakota; Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia, of New York; Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, jr., of Masachusetts; Senator Styles Bridges, of New Hampshire; Gov. William H. Vanberbilt of Rhode Island; John D. Rockefeller, jr.; Representative James W. Wadsworth, of New York; Theodore Roosevelt, jr., of New York; Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes; Representative Hamilton Fish, of New York; Publisher Frank Knox, of Illinois; Senator Arthur Capper, of Kansas; Associate Justice Owen J. Roberts; Wendell L. Wilkie and Alfred P. Sloan, of New York; Senator Warren R. Austin, of Vermont.”
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