MUSSOLINI DECIDES -- IT’S WAR. The biggest story last night and this morning on the radio, even bigger than the latest Nazi advances in France, is Italy’s declaration of war on the Allies. Mussolini made the announcement himself Monday evening from his balcony at Rome’s Piazza Venezia, pledging his fascists to fight “the plutocratic and reactionary democracies of the West.” Judging what newsmen have been saying for days now, apparently the Duce has decided that France and Britain are just about finished, and a Nazi victory is only weeks away.
The funny thing is, for all the fascist bellicosity of the last eighteen hours, there aren’t any reports yet of actual fighting by the Italians. A Berlin report last night claimed Italy had attacked the French Riviera, but the local radio says this morning that story is “unsupported.” About the only thing Mussolini has done so far is to land Italian troops on two islands off the Yugoslav coast, Zara and Lagosta. But it’s no invasion -- both islands already belong to Italy.
FRENCH GOVERNMENT FLEES PARIS. There’s plenty of fighting to be had in northern France, and judging from this morning’s bulletins it’s all going badly for the Allies. German tanks have penetrated into the “Paris region,” though the main battle line is still thirty-five miles north of the city. The government has fled to Tours, some 150 miles south. Several Paris newspapers have ceased publication. A Ministry of Information communique says that Premier Reynaud has gone to “join the French armies.” Another report says that the Nazis are bombing the French capital, for the second time in a week.
The map on the front page of Monday’s New York Times shows why Paris is in such peril. German armored forces have pushed a deep wedge into the left side of the French defenses, near the Channel. They’ve sent advance units all the way south to the banks of the Seine, at Point de l’Arche, and into the suburbs of Rouen. In the center, the Nazis are crossing the Aisne River in force and are now south of Soissons and near Chateau-Thierry, scene of a critical victory by American troops in the World War. (An interesting map inside the New York Herald Tribune shows the Nazi advance toward Paris with New York area place-names inserted to show how close the battle line now is to the capital. The map shows that if Paris were New York, the German advance would as of Monday be south of New Haven and almost to the north shore of Long Island. And it’s gotten closer to Paris since then.)
A “DEATH BLOW” TO FRANCE? Sigrid Schultz writes in Monday’s Chicago Tribune that the Germans are now calling this attack a “death blow.” They also say the battle is raging across a 200-mile front. According to G.H. Archambault in Monday’s New York Times, Hitler isn’t holding anything back now, and the numbers involved are staggering -- “By 10 o’clock on this Sunday morning, with the June sun torrid in a speckless sky, it had become known generally that the Germans had thrown at their forces into the fight -- nearly 100 divisions, not far from 2,000,000 men, and this in addition to all their armored units.”
What’s especially frightening about this is that, although the Monday press accounts indicate that German attacks are being checked here and there, nobody’s talking about where the German advance might definitely be stopped, and how the break-throughs will be contained. John Elliott of the New York Herald Tribune cites a French War Ministry spokesmen as saying that “the loss of territory was not important if thereby the enemy was worn down.” But judging from the first five days of this battle, it looks like the poilus who are being worn down, not the Germans.
NORWAY SURRENDERS. Not that it matters too much right now, but the papers splashed Norway made across their front pages one last time on Monday -- to report the capitulation of what remains of the kingdom to German occupiers. A combination of Norwegian, British, and French troops had continued resistance above the Arctic Circle, and last month the Allies even scored a victory of sorts, driving a small Nazi force out of the ore port of Narvik. But according to a Monday Associated Press report, King Haakon has announced the Norwegians “cannot go on fighting in north Norway” and has fled with his government to England.
IF ONLY FRANCE CAN HOLD ON. Major George Fielding Eliot’s Monday article in the New York Herald Tribune arouses a flicker of hope that if France can – somehow – hold on through these bitter days and buy some time, she might make herself impregnable to further Nazi attack --
“Time is the enemy of Germany. Germany must win in the field before time weakens her at home and arms her foes against her. It is the French Army which she must beat. The Allied navies are a long-range threat...The Allied air forces can do no more than hold their own, if that; they can do nothing if deprived of bases in France and the British Isles. Britain has no army worth speaking of, because a succession of British governments dared not ask the people to bear the burdens of military service, and what army there was has been temporarily put out of action. The French Army, weakened as it is by the losses of the Meuse-Flanders battles, is the most dangerous enemy to Germany at this moment. That is why Germany is straining every nerve to destroy it or neutralize it....There is no time to waste. France has millions of fully trained reserves, more than Germany; more also of officers and non-commissioned officers; and she has the greatest military commander of modern times, Gen. Weygand. He needs equipment, and he needs time. Give him a breathing space, take from him but for a few short weeks the pressure of imminent peril, and he will forge a military instrument that Germany cannot hope to destroy. Give him time to do that, and...the Allies have won the war.”
ROOSEVELT’S “TWO FAULTS.” Last week’s issue of Life magazine had a transcription of editor Henry R. Luce’s radio talk on preparedness which was carried on the N.B.C. Blue network three weeks ago. With bend-over-backwards courtesy, he describes the two flaws in President Roosevelt’s makeup which must be overcome as we face the difficult work ahead --
“The arming of America must fully get under way now under the leadership of our President. Franklin Roosevelt is in many respects a very great leader. But he has his faults. Who hasn’t? There are two faults -- two of the defects of his virtues perhaps -- which we want him to guard against now. One fault is his tolerance of incompetent people. A very nice fault – but one we cannot afford just now. The other fault is his intolerance of extremely able people who don’t happen to agree with him. During the last few years Franklin Roosevelt hasn’t got on at all well with most of our ablest industrialists. It may have been their fault or it may have been his. Never mind. Today we need the services of the ablest industrialists in America for the most efficient arming of America.”
Mr. Luce recommended setting up a “really non-partisan War Industries Board,” which the President has since established.
Last week’s Life also offers -- most poignantly in light of today’s news –- an eight-page spread of beautiful color photos of Paris.
WAR NEWS BOOSTS THIRD TERM. I missed this item in last Wednesday’s Washington Post, but a new Gallup poll indicates that the shock of the Nazi offensive could prove a huge boost to the President’s chances for a third term -- if he wants it. Dr. Gallup writes that the latest third-term survey, taken this month, shows 57% saying they’d vote for the President this fall, and 43% who’d vote against him. This is almost a complete turnaround from the poll on this question taken just before the war started -- in that one, the numbers were 40% for a third term, 60% opposed. Gallup’s been taking polls on the third term for over a year, and up until recently they’ve shown a majority against it. As recently as April, a minority (47%) favored another term for the President.
Nor surprisingly, Dr. Gallup sees a direct cause-and-effect relationship between third term sentiment and the war. He expects it to continue -- An intensification in the emergency abroad would, in all likelihood, tend to increase third term sentiment, while a lessening of the crisis would likely cause sentiment to continue leveling off or to drop back to where it was before the Nazi blitzkrieg.” (One wonders how many isolationists would be screwy enough to consider a German victory “a lessening of the crisis,” on the grounds that it would end the war.)
On the other hand, it surely doesn’t hurt President Roosevelt that another Gallup poll indicates 79% of Americans feel he’s doing a “good job” of handling the war crisis.
DEWEY OR TAFT? OR NEITHER? In Sunday’s Washington Post, columnist Mark Sullivan doesn’t see any clear leads on what will happen at the Republican Convention in five weeks --
“The outcome of the Republican National Convention is almost as uncertain as if no primary had been held; almost as uncertain as if the 1,000 delegates were meeting spontaneously, without previous instruction or commitment. True, Mr. Dewey will have something like three hundred votes on the first ballot, and Mr. Taft something like the same. But in both cases this means little. Either may be nominated -- but also neither may be nominated. Neither has in sight the 200 or so additional delegates necessary to carry him to the 501 which would be a majority....It is a fact, and a significant fact, suggestive of what may happen, that neither of the two leaders, neither Mr. Dewey nor Mr. Taft, ever had the nomination clinched. Neither ever achieved such an impression on the country as made his nomination inevitable. This condition existed from the beginning. It became intensified about May 10. That was the date of the German blitzkrieg into Holland and Belgium -- which event affected much more than the fate of those unhappy countries.”
Mr. Sullivan says the blitzkrieg upset Republican plans for a 1940 campaign based on domestic issues, and created a “changed mood” among the G.O.P. that has opened the way for the emergence of dark horse candidates. He names one -- “A sign of the changed condition is the attention attracted by Wendell Willkie. He was a late entrant. If his strength depended upon delegates accumulated in primaries, he would have practically nothing. Yet in public attention he grows almost sensationally. It is not that this necessarily means much at the convention. But it is clear that if the country and the party had been strongly impressed by any other aspirant, t here would not have been this turning to Mr. Willkie.”
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