NAZIS AT THE GATES OF PARIS. William Shirer reported in his C.B.S. broadcast from Berlin last night that the Germans are now only twelve and a half miles from Paris. This is within artillery range, and it’s closer than they came in 1914. For the first time since 1870, he said, “a German army is literally at the gates of Paris.” A radio report this morning puts the Nazi armies at ten miles from the capital’s northern suburbs. Parisians who are left in the half-deserted city have a harder time getting information on where the Germans are -- the only morning paper still publishing in the city is the European edition of the New York Herald Tribune, and it’s printed in English.
Is there any hope left of saving Paris from occupation? An Associated Press report Wednesday says the British still think so, and are sending “every gun that can shoot” and every available man to the French front. Harold Denny writes in Wednesday’s New York Times that the British were still hoping yesterday for a new “miracle of the Marne,” on par with the gallant French stand twenty-six years on the Marne River which saved Paris in the nick of time, after the Kaiser’s troops had closed to within twenty miles. A gallant Allied defense along the Marne saved the capital from the German offensive of 1918 as well. Mindful of this, Wednesday’s Washington Post headlines the fighting as the “Third Battle of the Marne” -- expressing an editorial hope, it seems, that the same thing might happen again.
GERMANS ADVANCE ON A WIDE FRONT. Alas, this morning’s radio reports make it clear that France’s defenses south of the Marne aren’t holding. Nor are they holding in other places, for that matter. Last night’s war communique from the French high command (now headquartered south of Paris in the Loire Valley) says Nazi tanks have stormed across the Marne just east of the capital and south of Chateau-Thierry. Twenty miles northwest of Paris, the invaders have reached Beaumont, passing the line of their 1914 advance. Farther east, the Germans have taken Rheims, the famed cathedral city smashed in the World War which had been re-built with American funds. This Nazi force is pushing southwestward toward Verdun, threatening to outflank the Maginot Line. In the west, the French are fighting desperately to contain a forty-mile-wide German break-through to the Seine which threatens Paris with encirclement.
PARIS PREPARES FOR A SIEGE. Alex Small writes from Paris for the Chicago Tribune that the poilus are preparing to bitterly contest the capital --
“While contesting every inch of ground in the fierce encounter going on in the lower stretches of the Seine river and the middle distances of the Marne river, Gen. Maxime Weygand’s men are forging an iron ring around Paris. It faces not only to the north but for miles and miles to the south, and it appears the world will see a spectacular siege. The French do not intend to give up even if the two German thrusts down to the east and west of Paris penetrate deeper and deeper in an encircling movement. Every road leading into Paris, from all points of the compass, is being blocked, entrenched, and barricaded for a heroic defense that may make the struggle which the Basques put up two years ago at Bilbao, Spain, look like a minor episode. Along the highways junk and machinery have been parked across roadways in echelons, and machine gun nests and trenches have been constructed in woods and other places.”
One feels horrified for the prospect of Paris' great monuments -- the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, the Louvre, Notre Dame, so many others -- being threatened with complete destruction. And the Nazis have warned that if Frenchmen defend Paris they “will bear full responsibility” for whatever happens. Yet you have to admire the courage of the French in preparing for this desperate battle.
FRENCH TROOPS ARRIVE TO DEFEND PARIS. Walter Kerr offers a haunting (and partially censored) word-picture from Paris in Wednesday’s New York Herald Tribune of the terrible exodus of French civilians, and the arrival of exhausted troops to take up the city’s defense --
“All night and all day men, women, and children piled out of town by train, bus, truck, automobile, bicycle, baby carriage, and on foot. They took with them what they could -- everything from a loaf of bread and a bottle of wine for the evening meal to mattresses, chairs, clothing, bird cages, dogs and cats. And almost as the last of them were leaving (here 95 words were censored, and the dispatch continued with what was obviously a picture of the soldiers of the Army of the North.) Their faces were covered with dust that was damp from sweat. There were great dark circles around their eyes. Their unshaven chins sagged with weariness. They marched along, not in step, but with a lieutenant or captain in command. Two platoons I saw were led by sergeants. Later in the evening soldiers were coming in from the northwest, hundreds of them in trucks and some in fast-moving armored cars.”
ITALY TAKES THE WAR TO AFRICA. Finally, two days after Italy’s declaration of war, Mussolini’s legions have started firing shots. A United Press dispatch from Wednesday says that Fascist troops in Italian East Africa have begun a drive to seize France’s East African port of Djibouti, and are said to have broken the initial French defenses. Italy’s air force has launched eight raids against Britain’s naval base in Malta as well. But the Italians have taken some punishment, too -- the Associated Press says that British warplanes have bombed aerodromes in Italian Libya and Eritrea, and have also done damage in raids on Italy herself, at Genoa and Turin.
HAS MUSSOLINI DUG HIS GRAVE? At his University of Virginia speech Monday, President Roosevelt made clear the feelings of decent people about Italy’s entry into the war (“The hand that held the dagger has struck it into the back of his neighbor.”). Barnet Nover, too, doesn’t mince words in his Wednesday Washington Post column --
“Our grisly era offers no more nauseating spectacle than in provided by Italy’s entry into the war. With that cold-blooded act, taken at the precise moment when the Allies find themselves at the lowest ebb in their fortunes and fighting with their backs to the wall, a nation which, in happier days, had made many great and lasting contributions to civilization reached the bottom level of degradation. And the Italian tragedy is all the grimmer because the move was only made possible because a people famed for its earthy common sense and rampant individualism had been reduced to the status of lickspittles and automatons.... Mussolini’s act of low cunning will plague his people as long as decency and honor and sportsmanship continue to have any meaning. It may produce temporary successes for it was timed right. But even as to that one should not be too sure....The pit Mussolini has dug with such cynical shamelessness for France and Great Britain may be his grave.”
HITLER’S TERROR TACTICS. A page of photos in this week’s issue of Time magazine doesn’t mince words, either, about exactly what monstrous things the Germans are doing to civilians in the current blitzkrieg. The writing accompanying the photos makes it clear that German assaults in civilians in the Low Countries and in France aren’t unfortunate side effects of war. They’re Nazi policy --
“‘War is the continuation of politics by other means,’ said the great Prussian strategist Clausewitz. It took a great German politician, Adolf Hitler, to grasp the full meaning of Clausewitz’ doctrine. The killing of civilian refugees in order to clog the enemy’s roads is a military conception. The indiscriminate -- and enormously expensive -- bombing of isolated civilian communities and utterly non-military objectives, such as the Germans last week visited upon Belgium and France...is a ghastly but logical extension of Jew-beating, priest-jailing Hitler’s terror politics. His blasting of remote refugees and scattering of suicidal parachutists in his foes’ rear is for the psychological purpose of spreading the impression that nobody is safe anywhere. By it he hopes to cause demoralization, spread defeatism.”
The photos show things like the bloodied body of a young Belgian girl, and the shattered remains of a French hospital. Yes, it’s intended to be propaganda in support of all-out U.S. aid to the Allies, and isolationists will cluck their tongues disapprovingly at it. But propaganda can be enlisted in the aid of a good cause. This cause passes the test.
SENDING A GRAPHIC MESSAGE. Also from this week’s issue of Time -- “In Washington, Ga. (pop. 3,158) readers turned to the seven-column editorial page of their News-Reporter, found the first four and the last two columns in type as usual, one blank column headed: ‘We will tolerate no fifth column here.’”
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