THE BRITISH LAUNCH AN ALL-NIGHT AIR RAID. The British have successfully raided a major German air base -- for seven hours, too. Associated Press reporter Tom Yarbrough says it might be “the overture of the great aerial offensives which have been predicted in any great modern war.” Objective of the attack was the Reich’s Sylt Island base, which Wednesday morning was said to be a mass of “burning hangars, workshops, and slipways.” The number of warplanes involved is a secret, but four successive, almost continuous, waves of bombers were sent against the Germans. The New York Times account quotes the British Air Ministry as claiming the base was “severely damaged,” and that one British plane failed to return.
This raid is described as an answer to Germany’s 85-minute bomber attack last Saturday on the British anchorage at Scapa Flow. The Times story noted that Britain is being quite forward about this -- “Since the start of the war, British leaders have warned Germany that if she should intentionally or carelessly bomb or kill civilians, as happened during the attack on Scapa Flow, she must accept responsibility for the consequences. Prime Minister Chamberlain repeated this statement in Parliament with the full knowledge that British planes as he spoke were on their way to the German base under orders to bomb this military objective with the greatest possible force.”
DESPITE “PEACE PLAN”, LOTS OF TOUGH TALK. Prime Minister Chamberlain spoke for an hour to the House of Commons Tuesday, but he answered the alleged eleven-point German peace plan with four words -- “we intend to fight.” According to Raymond Daniell in Wednesday’s New York Times, “he gave the impression that he did not care a fig what the two ‘dictators’, Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini, talked about at Brennero yesterday.” (Yet even when he is at his most resolute, Chamberlain still has that irritating Caspar Milquetoast-way of mincing words -- “We are not likely to be diverted from the purpose for which we entered this war.”)
Premier Daladier, meanwhile, won another confidence vote, this time in the Chamber of Deputies by a vote of 239-1 -- but with over 300 abstentions. The confidence motion urged the Premier to “immediately” take forceful action to “carry the war to victory in close accord with our allies.” The abstainers say they are waiting to see what kind of new cabinet Daladier is putting together, in response to what the Associated Press describes as “the Chamber’s insistent demand for a more energetic administration of the nation’s war machine.”
And according to Sigrid Schultz in Wednesday’s Chicago Tribune, the Nazis themselves are pooh-poohing the news stories about peace proposals. Hitler, she writes, followed up his meeting with Mussolini by meeting with “the leaders of the army, air force, navy, government, and the Nazi party.” The Nazis are expecting “action.”
THAT ELEVEN-POINT PEACE PLAN. The Allies ridicule it, and the Germans themselves now deny even offering it. But for what it’s worth, here is the peace proposal that Hitler is alleged to have communicated to Under Secretary of State Welles, as published in Tuesday’s New York Herald Tribune --
“1. General and simultaneous disarmament on land and sea and in the air.”
“2. Formation of a small, independent Poland in the central part of the former state around Warsaw, comprising a population of about 10,000,000 or 11,000,000. Gdynia would be a Polish port, giving access to the Baltic. The Poles would have a free port at Danzig, and Polish commerce to the Baltic would be facilitated.”
“3. The Czechs, Slovaks, and Hungarians would form a tripartite state allied to the Reich, in which Germany would hold certain industrial and communications rights for twenty-five years.”
“4. Austria would remain forever in the Reich.”
“5. Germany would get back within twenty-five years her colonies lost in the World War, or at least get certain colonial concessions or protection of German emigration to certain zones in Africa.”
“6. A Danubian confederation would be formed, with the participation of Germany and Italy as great guardian powers, the confederation to include Rumania, Bohemia, Yugoslavia, Slovakia, and Hungary.”
“7. The Balkan status quo would be guaranteed thereafter, with protection for such frontiers as Rumania’s Bessarabia and Transylvania regions, obtained from neighbors after the World War.”
“8. Absolute liberty of religion; Germany’s remaining Jews would migrate under the direction of Britain to Palestine, Italian East Africa, and French-owned Madagascar.”
“9. Absolute liberty of trade after the war, with no trade barriers for raw materials and with direct contacts for economic collaboration with the United States; also facilitation of German and Italian emigration, such as Italians to France’s Tunisia and Germans to Africa.”
“10. Special treatment of Italian commerce at Djibouti (French port for Ethiopia), and also free passage of the Suez Canal, beginning in 1945.”
“11. A new status for Italians in Tunisia, French North Africa protectorate.”
THE PEACE PLAN IS MERE MOONSHINE. Dorothy Thompson writes in Wednesday’s New York Herald Tribune that the peace proposal, unacceptable as it is to the Allies, can’t even be regarded as a sincere declaration of Nazi aims --
“From Rome, and from the Vatican, comes an 11-point peace program. The American correspondents in Rome report that this is the peace program presented by Hitler to Sumner Welles, and by Ribbentrop to the Pope, in his recent visit to Rome. The American correspondents in Rome state that Sumner Welles had asked Mussolini to try and get Hitler to mitigate these terms....Now, the interesting thing about the German terms from the Vatican is that they ignore Russia altogether. They divide central and eastern Europe into a sphere of influence to be shared by Italy and Germany -- chiefly Germany -- while the rest of Europe returns to Mussolini’s original conception of a four-power pact....Hitler is playing two games -- on the one side he is conciliating and trying to use Russia, and on the other he is prepared to make a common front against Russia...In other words, the peace proposals made to Welles and to the Vatican were just so much dust thrown in the eyes of the western Allies and the neutrals.”
Once again Miss Thompson blasts the Roosevelt administration’s stance on all this, asserting that the U.S. has joined the Vatican in the “ridiculous” position of attempting to “moralize the world.” In her view, “the United States is still unwilling to face the fact that the struggle now going on is absolutely bound to change the social and economic structure of most of the world and will have the most profound repercussions upon the hemisphere from Alaska to Cape Horn before it is over. We are neither militarily or morally prepared for the world of the next decade, which will not be a comfortable middle-class world based on the morals of the nineteenth century, whatever else it is or may become.”
WILL RUSSIA BECOME AN AXIS PARTNER? Columnist Barnet Nover of the Washington Post acknowledges the possibility of a Rome-Berlin-Moscow Axis, but believes it is much less of a danger than some have predicted --
“It is of more than passing interest that the talk of the German-Russian-Italian combination, while loud and vehement in Berlin, has not even been whispered in Moscow and Rome. This may either mean that the Russian and Italian dictators have not yet made up their minds as to whether they are prepared to make such an arrangement or do not favor it except for very limited objectives. And if it is formed for limited objectives, it is hardly likely to give the Allies any real cause for alarm....The whole campaign appears to be part of the ‘white war’ whereby Hitler hopes to achieve the aims he has not yet dared to seek by military means. Perhaps he is still convinced that in this war of nerves the morale of the British and French people will be the first to crack...But the reaction in London and Paris to this ‘white offensive’ show that now, as from time to time since his peace bid of October 8, Hitler is going to be disappointed.”
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