“PEACE AT (ALMOST) ANY PRICE.” The nations of the Balkan Entente (Rumania, Greece, Turkey, and Yugoslavia) have decided on “peace at any price except independence.” That’s the verdict of Sam Brewer in the Chicago Sunday Tribune on the Belgrade conference. Even though Turkey and Rumania both favor making the Entente a formal military alliance, the Yugoslavs are cool to the idea. More importantly, Mr. Brewer reports, “Germany and Italy have pulled such strings as they could to avoid having too united a front in the Balkans.”
The official conference communique, published Monday, shows Rumania did obtain a promise from the other three powers to maintain a “common vigil” in support of Rumania’s current borders. And in a gesture of good neighborliness, the Rumanians agreed to cede a strip of the Dobruja region to Bulgaria -- it’s a portion of territory the Bulgarians have been demanding since Rumania took it away in 1913. But the conference came no closer to finding a common stance on Hungary’s demand that the Rumanians cede Transylvania. And while the United Press describes the Entente as “rallying to support Rumania’s defense of its frontiers,” one is hard-pressed to find anything in Monday’s papers that specifies any practical steps the conferees have bound themselves to take in Rumania’s behalf. If the Russians march into Bessarabia, or the Germans move in to seize the oil fields, what will Rumania’s Entente partners do? Keep on maintaining that common vigil, I guess. (Although, to be fair, Turkish Premier Saydam has on past occasions threatened to go to war with any country that invades the Balkans. We’ll see.).
Whatever they do in the future, the Entente did declare this week-end to be four-squarely in favor of the “maintenance of peace” in the region. Good luck to them.
THE DISUNITED ENTENTE. Dorothy Thompson writes Monday in her New York Herald Tribune column on the big reasons the Balkan states haven’t formed an effective bloc -- (1) their lack of a common enemy, and (2) powerful neighbors who don’t want to see it happen --
“However weak their nations may be individually they have sufficient strength as a bloc to give pause to any potential aggressor. And they are also aware that the more united they are the better their chances of getting aid from the Allies should they be attacked....[But] as it happens not all of the Balkan nations are afraid of the same potential aggressors. Rumania, today, is more fearful of Russia than of Germany, which can get more out of Carol’s kingdom by squeezing than by invasion. Yugoslavia, on the other hand, is more fearful of Germany than of Russia. Greece happens to be far away enough from both of these great powers to believe that her peace and neutrality might be preserved simply by doing nothing. The nation she most fears is Italy. The result is disunity. And it is a disunity which not only Russia and Germany but also Italy have sought to foster.”
FINLAND THROUGH REPORTERS’ EYES. If you want to know what the Finnish war looks like up close, read a pair of harrowing first-person accounts in Monday’s papers --
K.J. Eskelund, New York Times, reporting from the Mannerheim Line. “Only the sanguinary battles of Verdun and Ypres in the World War may be compared with this shell-shattered hell....The Finns here are almost completely hidden among trees while it is necessary for the Russians to cross a bare flatland to attack, their movements being visible over the range of about a mile. Russian prisoners tell of the fear with which they start these attacks after seeing hundreds of their comrades set off before them and never return. They are unable to see the Finnish lines while advancing in the bitter cold with bullets incessantly shrieking around them. Now and then the Finnish artillery concentrates a volley and everyone throws himself on the ground. When the survivors approach the Finnish lines the fire increases.”
Donald Day, Chicago Tribune, witnessing a bombing raid at Sortavala. “I caught a glimpse of the burning city still miles away. Zigzagging to avoid fresh bomb holes and dodging tiny fire engines pumping water from Lake Ladoga, I entered the town. I passed entire blocks of burning buildings and hundreds of men fighting fires or attempting to save furniture, food, and merchandise. Soviet planes still were over the town dropping bombs, but the explosions were almost unnoticed by the firemen, home guards, and other men who were salvaging property and rescuing people from buildings or bomb shelters and sending them to safety in the suburbs....Altho I saw hundreds of women with small children hurrying thru the streets towards...buses and trucks, I saw no sign of panic, tho many of the children were cold and hungry from a day spent entirely in bomb shelters, most of them unheated.”
One man is responsible for all this slaughter and horror -- Joseph Stalin. One man could bring it to an end with a single command -- Joseph Stalin.
HINTS FROM A NAZI NEWSPAPER? The new issue of Time magazine finds a possible portent of what’s to come in a quote from Völkischer Beobachter, Berlin’s Nazi Party organ. In an article on the spiritual ties between modern-day Nazis and Frederick the Great, the essential ingredients of a German offensive are spelled out by General von Brauchitsch, commander of the army --
“The great King seeks battle. He prefers to attack. In this, four elements predominate -- speed of movement, surprise, concentration of forces at a decisive point, and thrust into flank and rear.”
If the Germans followed this formula, they would definitely not strike at the Maginot Line. But it now seems unlikely that the Nazis could combine these “four elements” into even a flanking attack against France, period, given the additional French fortifications now built along the Belgian border. Meanwhile, Time sees another excerpt from the Brauchitsch article as warning the German people of a long war ahead, in which the Reich might not always have an advantage in men and material over the Allies --
“Rightly we speak ever and again in our day of the Frederician spirit. It was this spirit that filled every officer, corporal, and man, which made the Army follow the King for seven long years and which enabled it to make ever new exertions. It permitted a smaller number to triumph over a larger one.”
NO EASY CHOICES FOR HITLER. Raymond Daniell writes in a Sunday New York Times news analysis that the Allied blockade of Germany is working quite well. And it spells ultimate defeat for Hitler, unless he can overcome it through military force. And the most likely ways the Fuehrer could do so would play right into the Allies’ hands --
“With the Maginot Line barring the German way in the West, expansion north or south is the only logical course Herr Hitler’s armies can take. The only thing against this plan of campaign is that it would not be completely distasteful to the Allies. Britain and France, while unwilling to violate the neutrality of any country, would not regard it as a calamity if an invasion of Sweden gave them the opportunity to carry out a flanking operation against Germany, nor would a Rumanian campaign be regarded as foredoomed to failure so long as Turkey remained steadfast in her agreements. The fact that the Allies, who have an alliance with Rumania and an understanding with Norway and Sweden that if they are attacked because of the help they are giving to Finland the Allies would come to their rescue, would welcome a German attack on these countries is the strongest reason for thinking it will not materialize.”
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