THE SHOCK OF BELGIUM’S SURRENDER. I haven’t seen any newspaper extras yet, but radio reports this morning are blaring the big, bad news -- King Leopold has surrendered the Belgian Army to the Germans. This first came out around 3:30 a.m. New York time in a radio address by French Premier Reynaud. The premier made a point of saying that Leopold capitulated without consulting either the British or the French. And the Belgian surrender effectively dooms half a million French and British troops in the Flanders pocket to surrender or annihilation.
No doubt Berlin will waste no time saluting the little king for his “valor,” “sensible attitude,” etc. The only thing that occurs to me right now is that Leopold couldn’t have done a better job of serving Hitler’s cause if he’d been the most ardent Fifth Columnist on the Continent. Remember that just nine days ago the New York Times ran an Edwin L. James commentary describing how the King ended Belgium’s protective alliance with France in 1936 and thereafter trusted Hitler’s assurances that Belgian neutrality would be respected. When Britain and France implored Leopold last year to work on a common defense plan, he wouldn’t hear of it. Then, when Hitler invaded, he insisted on all the troops and supplies the Allies could give him. They did so, at the expense of weakening the “little Maginot Line” in northern France, where the Germans broke through.
And now, the King orders his troops to cease fighting, right at a time when his surrender threatens the safety of hundreds of thousands of Allied soldiers. I’ll bet a peace dollar that in inside of a month he’ll be making a radio speech, at Nazi behest, denouncing the British and French for “betraying” him.
A RAY OF HOPE FOR FRANCE. Premier Reynaud maintains that “France’s faith in victory is still intact,” and an Associated Press dispatch Monday says that on one part of the battlefront, at least, the French are holding their own against Hitler’s onslaught. At the Somme River line, running from the coast to Abbeville to Amiens to Peronne and St. Quentin, “determined resistance blocked German attempts to take new territory.” The A.P. also reports that at Amiens, the French have ousted the Germans from a bridgehead over the Somme. There have also been glowing reports that some Allied forces n the Flanders pocket, for example the Belgians at Courtrai, have fought new German attacks to a standstill. Alas, that was before today’s report of the Belgian surrender.
It’s been a week since General Weygand was appointed generalissimo of the Allied armies, and just a day since he sacked fifteen generals he held responsible for the French debacle at the Meuse River. Seven colonels have been promoted to lead the revitalized French forces -- Martin, Besse, Durand, Mast, De Gaulle, Meany, and Buisson. A French spokesman describes Weygand is “confident and full of hope,” and it’s obvious that at the very least France is right now fighting better and more confidently.
BOULOGNE, CALAIS, DUNKERQUE. Although the main German drive on France has stalled, Nazi tank forces continue to race up the Channel coastline, aiming at three prominent French ports and trying to snuff out any chance that British and French troops in the Allied pocket can be rescued by sea. Sigrid Schultz writes in Monday’s Chicago Tribune on German claims to have taken Calais, “only 22 miles across the English channel from the chalk cliffs of Dover.” That would be an eight-minute hop for German bombers, she adds, and well within range of Germany’s big guns.
Ralph W. Barnes of the New York Herald Tribune agrees that Calais provides with “one more ideal base” for operations against England, but notes that London and Paris deny the Nazis have it as of yet. But even the French admit now that the Germans are in Boulogne, and Mr. Barnes also writes that “the fall of Dunkerque was said here [in Berlin] to be imminent.” Another story in Monday’s Herald Tribune, by Frank R. Kelley in London, says that “swarms of Nazi bombers” have tried to blast Calais and Dunkerque, but were driven off by Royal Air Force fighters.
HOPES FADE OF CUTTING OFF GERMANS. Several Sunday papers had offered the possibility that a drive northward by French troops from the Somme River would break through a narrow “neck” in the German westward salient, relieving troops in the Allied pocket and cutting off some 30,000 Nazi soldiers and 1,000 tanks from supplies. The New York Herald Tribune quoted a tantalizing estimate in a French newspaper that the gap between the Flanders pocket and the main French forces had been cut to twelve miles. But Henry C. Cassidy of the Associated Press writes in a Monday dispatch that the general position of the lines “had not changed materially in the last day.”
And this morning’s radio reports bring worse news -- while the French have re-taken several villages in the vicinity of Peronne and Ham in their advance northward from the Somme, the Germans have made the “neck” noticeably wider by pummeling the Flanders pocket back several miles.
A “PINCERS WITHIN A PINCERS.” William Shirer said in his C.B.S. broadcast from Berlin last night that the Germans appear to be making a new push against the middle of the Allied pocket, directed at the French city of Lille. Nazi forces have been attacking for the last two days from positions both east and west of the city, and Mr. Shirer reported they’ve taken Bethune and Lens, which are both just south of Lille. The fall of Lille would all but split the Allied pocket in half, and presumably kill off any remaining hope of rescuing the trapped British and French armies by attacking northward from the Somme.
CAN THE NAZIS CONQUER BRITAIN? Monday’s New York Times reports on Britain’s “growing concern for the defense of the homeland” against a German invasion, which some correspondents are saying could happen within days. But Hanson W. Baldwin writes in Sunday’s Times that it won’t be an easy undertaking for the Germans, and could well fail --
“The odds might be against the attackers. The British Navy can still make its might felt, even in the Narrow Seas; there are close to 1,000,000 armed men in various degrees of training in Britain today; she still has large metropolitan air squadrons, ready for defense....But even if an invading army -- dropping from the skies, landing from fast ships, transported by planes – should successfully establish a foothold on English soil for the first time since Harold died at Hastings with an arrow through his eye in the Norman conquest of 1066, the war again would not necessarily be over. For certain it is that any invaders must fight for every inch of British soil; certain it is that their losses would be heavy. And were the tight little isles at last to be conquered – something that is...still only the substance of a dream, the dream that Napoleon dreamed and Hitler now dreams again -- there is still the British Empire, immensely powerful with great potential strength.”
50,000 U.S. PLANES ARE NOT ENOUGH. President Roosevelt sought in Sunday night’s fireside chat to reassure listeners that our national defenses would be built “to whatever heights the future may require.” But Barnet Nover writes in his Washington Post column Monday that even if the President’s goal of a 50,000-plane air force is met, it’s much more important to our national security to help Britain and France stay afloat --
“It is estimated that, working at top speed, our airplane industry will not be able to turn out 50,000 planes before 1943 and it may be even longer before we have an adequate number of fliers to man those planes. But long before 1943 the outcome of the war in Europe shall probably be decided. If the Allies win we shall have no need to continue to rearm at a frenzied pace. If the Allies lose the most frenzied pace may not be enough...it is in the plain national interest of the United States to do everything possible to enable the Allies to continue the struggle whether in doing so it enables them to win or not. Only in that way can be buy time....For if Hitler wins there is no reason to believe that he will give this Nation and this hemisphere any more time to strengthen their defenses than he gave Great Britain and France. It is not his nature to be so generous.”
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