THE GERMANS RACE WESTWARD. They’ve driven through northern France all the way to Abbeville, at the mouth of the Somme River and only fifteen miles from Le Treport on the English Channel. Wednesday’s papers say German forces also took Arras and Amiens as well. Radio reports this morning indicate the Allies have retaken Abbeville and Arras, but the bulletins sound as if these are local attacks, not the start of the generalized counter-offensive which the Allies have been promising.
And of course the big question is how the Germans managed to blast another fifty miles westward in just a couple days’ time. The map on the front page of Monday’s New York Herald Tribune showed the Nazis still fighting along the Oise River line, far from the coast. But Wednesday’s map in the Washington Post shows a line of German advance reaching from St. Quentin to Amiens and on to Abbeville.
1,000,000 TRAPPED ALLIED SOLDIERS? George Axelsson writes in Wednesday’s New York Times that the arrival of the Germans at Abbeville “has practically isolated the combined Allied armies in Belgium and the northwest tip of France.” Mr. Axelsson casts the consequences of this in especially dire terms -- “Unless they can fight their way out, this should seal the fate of the Belgian army and numerous divisions of Frenchmen, altogether totalling perhaps between 500,000 and 1,000,000 men, including whatever British are left in the area.” But one radio report today says the Allies are “minimizing” German claims of entrapment.
One hopeful bulletin -- a French force driving northward in the St. Quentin area is only thirty-five miles from advance Allied positions in Belgium, raising the tantalizing possibility that the front-line units of the Germans themselves might be cut off.
But Louis P. Lochner of the Associated Press is traveling with the German Eighth Army in Belgium, and writes a report Wednesday on just how much pressure Allied forces are facing -- “Cannon boomed, shrapnel rent the air, and German scouters roared overhead directing the artillery. Ugly clouds of yellow-white or grey smoke indicated where the deadly loads were deposited on the roads upon which Allied troops were withdrawing. Invisible to us, because they were hidden by trees, were German infantrymen relentlessly pushing after the enemy. Where we stood English artillery observers had been only a day before. Thus quickly do the fortunes of war change in this area.”
ONE REASON FOR PESSIMISM. The C.B.S. Berlin correspondent, William Shirer, also just got back from traveling with German troops. In last night’s broadcast, he ascribed the Nazis’ success to the “unbelievable” speed with which the Germans are bringing reinforcements and arms and ammunition up to the front lines – and without any harassment from Allied warplanes. Mr. Shirer spoke of witnessing “miles and miles” of Nazi transport jamming the roads heading for the front. By contrast, he says, German aircraft are inflicting blistering damage on French and British support troops, giving the Nazis a major advantage before battles are fought.
NO PANIC IN BRITAIN, BUT IN FRANCE... Edward R. Murrow reported from London Tuesday for C.B.S. that the “terse and laconic” official communiques bringing the bad news from France have left Britons surprised and bewildered. But they are not panicking. There is, he said, a cold-blooded urgency about the need to hold on until they can fight for victory. The change in British opinion doesn’t reflect itself in “hysteria or patriotic outbursts," but instead in bitterness -- not only directed at the Nazis but also the “men in this country who failed to realize the nature of the German threat,” presumably Chamberlain and his cronies.
Contrast that somber spirit with the reaction in France, where the mood seems to border on hysteria. In a partially-censored dispatch from Paris, Associated Press correspondent Henry C. Cassidy writes Wednesday that after the Germans penetrated to Abbeville, “slowly moving lines of automobiles” snaked southward from Paris as civilians fled the city, and rail stations were packed with refugees heading south and west. The A.P. also reports on an “anguished appeal” for foreign help issued by Premier Reynaud. In addressing the French Senate, he condemned the “incredible faults” in the French high command which have led to “the disaster, the total disorganization,” of the French units which failed to stop the Germans at the Meuse River. David Darrah’s report in the Chicago Tribune leads off with Reynaud’s cry -- “France cannot die! If a miracle is needed to save France, I believe in miracles because I believe in France!” This is supposed to instill confidence?
BRITAIN BECOMES A “DICTATORSHIP.” C.B.S.’s Edward R. Murrow calls it a “revolution,” and the Chicago Tribune calls it “100 per cent totalitarianism.” The British government calls it necessary to meet the “grave” crisis. Parliament has passed, on Prime Minister Churchill’s demand and after only two-and-a-half hours of consideration, a drastic enabling act which grants the British government complete control over all persons and property. The law also will give the minister of labor the authority to draft any individual to perform “any service required”, and to inspect employers’ premises and books on demand. Joseph Cerutti writes from London in Wednesday’s Tribune that there is “growing concern in the country concerning the tightening of burocratic control over the freedom of speech and the functioning of the press.” But Mr. Murrow says the British press is applauding the action. For example, he says, the Daily Herald’s reaction to the law is that “Hitler started the war eight years ago, we start it today.” The consensus seems to be that to fight a dictator, you’ve got to become dictatorial yourself.
HITLER’S HOROSCOPE SAYS... An odd paragraph in an unbelievable week of news, from Sigrid Schultz’s story in the Chicago Tribune on Wednesday –
“German astrologists have predicted that the planet Mercury, which they take to represent England, will go thru terrific crises starting Thursday. They see as part of these crises Germany’s attack on the British Isles. Furthermore, the star gazers have forecast the end of the war on June 4. The speed of the German drive in the west has increased the faith of astrologists that Germany will be the winner.”
Whatever their reasoning, Nazi sources have told Miss Schultz they believe Hitler will order attacks on Britain “by the end of the week.”
WOULD BRITAIN SURRENDER HER FLEET? In his Washington Post column Wednesday, Ernest Lindley thinks the unthinkable -- if Britain is beaten to her knees by Germany, what happens to the massive British fleet could become a life-or-death matter to the United States. He also posits a chilling look at just how the Nazis might seize Britain’s navy with air power alone --
“Within a few weeks the Nazis may be able to line up in Norway, Holland and Belgium and on the French channel coast 6,000 or 7,000 bombing planes and fighter escort planes....If that happens we may expect the most gigantic blackmail in the history of the world: ‘Surrender the British fleet intact or Britain will be devastated.’ Whether the British would give up at the first threat is extremely doubtful – especially with a man of Churchill’s fighting spirit at the head of the government. But suppose the Nazis convert London, the nerve center of Britain, into a shambles and then say: ‘Are you ready now to give up and surrender the fleet?’”...[And] even if the British are able to withstand such punishment as no urban people have ever endured, the possibility cannot be eliminated that Great Britain will be successfully invaded and beaten to her knees.”
Mr. Lindley adds that Germany’s superiority in warplanes need not worry the United States, “unless, or until, it is accompanied by sea power.” And German control of even part of the Allied fleets would give the Reich the world’s greatest navy, as well as the greatest army and air force. Thus, he believes, we should give moral and material support to the Allies, but ask for something in return -- “the most solemn assurance that the Allied fleets will never be surrendered, and that if by air power they are forced off their present bases they will fall back on the Western Hemisphere and Singapore.”
THE CONVENTIONS SHOULD BE POSTPONED. Walter Lippmann has a number of thoughtful proposals in his New York Herald Tribune column on Tuesday, including bringing prominent Republicans into President Roosevelt’s cabinet and establishing a bipartisan Council of National Defense in the Executive Branch to oversee defense programs and policy. Another idea, and a good one, too, is that since the war’s decisive phase appears very close, Democrats and Republicans ought to postpone this summer’s party conventions for a few weeks --
“The Democratic Convention is called for July. The Republican Convention is called for the end of June....On the Democratic side postponement would seem to be absolutely necessary. For if the party renominates Mr. Roosevelt for a third term in the midst of the world crisis, it will inject into our domestic politics an issue which will dangerously disrupt the unity of the nation. If, on the other hand, the Democrats do not renominate Mr. Roosevelt...he will be a lame-duck President from July to January, unable to lead the nation or to speak for it with authority. That will be dangerous, too. Therefore, the Democratic convention should be put off until September...this is the only way to uphold the authority of the President and yet to put the third-term issue in cold storage during the critical period of the war. If it is not so imperative but it is desirable that the Republicans should also postpone their convention, if not until September then at least until August. For if the Republicans have to nominate in June and write their platform, how can they seriously expect to know what is to be the situation of this country in November?”
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