LAST STAND AT DUNKERQUE. The Germans are throwing everything they’ve got at Dunkerque, yet the Allies hold on. Henry C. Cassidy of the Associated Press writes Monday that about fifteen Nazi divisions, comprising some 200,000 troops, are “wallowing waist-deep” in the protective floodwaters surrounding the burning port city, as they grimly assault a much smaller number of French and British troops who now appear to be trapped there. But “latest reports said the Nazis were mowed down and beaten back” by Allied shelling, machine-gun and rifle fire, and strafing from warplanes.
The Allied exodus from Dunkerque is over, but the city served a good use -- according to the New York Herald Tribune, British War Secretary Anthony Eden says that four-fifths of the British Expeditionary Force escaped the German trap in Flanders, along with “tens of thousands” of French soldiers. This morning’s radio news says that a total of 280,000 Allied troops got out. That might not be a major victory, but it certainly mitigates the effects of defeat.
Germany used forty divisions in the Flanders battle, but the radio also says today that twenty-five of them have now been moved to “new theatres of action.” Everyone seems to think the French will hear from these forces again very soon, say, in only twenty-four to forty-eight hours.
COULD THE U.S. BE INVADED? “YES, BUT...” Monday’s Chicago Tribune notes that America’s rearmament program is now at $4,500,000,000 and counting, and the paper investigates just how the nation might be invaded, by “a European power with a fully equipped force of 500,000 men.” (I guess it would be considered un-neutral of the Tribune to admit the obvious and acknowledge they’re talking about Germany). Here’s how they think it could happen --
“The only possible blitzkrieg on the United States, the experts agreed, would come by way of Newfoundland. It would require, first, the defeat of the American fleet so that it could not prevent the arrival of troop ships. Because of weather conditions, the invader would have to plan to land troops at Newfoundland no earlier than June 1. By December winter would again block the route. The enemy would have six months in which to conquer America – a true blitzkrieg. The invading army...would have to cross Cabot Strait to Nova Scotia and then, gaining and holding control of the St. Lawrence, fight thru Montreal and Quebec and down into the Lake Champlain region” – and risk fighting a new Battle of Saratoga.
But the Tribune assures us that their unnamed experts are “unanimous in saying that a blitzkrieg by the northern route could not possibly be accomplished in the face of a well armed and organized American-Canadian force, or a force of long range bombing planes.”
WHERE WILL HITLER STRIKE NEXT? Hanson W. Baldwin takes a crack at the question of the hour in Sunday’s New York Times --
“If Hitler turns toward England immediately in a vast do-or-die gamble, he may, indeed, launch his attempt before the British have completed their preparations to meet him, but the French Army will be on his flank, and, it seems certain that a large part of the German strength would have to be earmarked to meet an attack from France. Nor can such an attack be too much discounted; regardless of Hitler’s future intentions, the Allies may beat him to the punch. Consequently, France would seem to be the first target. This conclusion is supported by the sudden and virulent outbreak of German press attacks against that country....French and British resistance still seems strong. Hitler has won a great victory, but the decisive battles of the war may still remain to be fought.”
AMERICA MUST PLAY A BIG ROLE. Dorothy Thompson writes in her New York Herald Tribune column Monday that the shock of the German offensive requires the United States to take a “leading place” in the world, at the risk of her continued existence --
“I am not among those who think that we are threatened with an imminent invasion, either from Mars or from the Nazis. It is something quite different with which we are threatened -- the complete collapse of the world of which we are an integral part, and the redistribution and reorganization of that world, socially, economically, politically, financially, and spritually, in such a manner as will menace our institutions, our way of life and our possibility of independent survival...The question is not whether we should go to war. It is an idle question, because even if we should at this moment, we could not. In spite of the fact that the blitzkrieg against the whole existing order has been systematically and openly prepared for seven years, it has been the fashion to demur at those who have harped upon it as a prime fact to be considered in the world today, and to call them panicky, war mongers, and hysterical....What we need now is not panic, not denunciation, not unconsidered action, but awakening, analysis, and preparation...for the most likely eventualities.”
Miss Thompson adds that we’re nearing what amounts to a moment of truth -- “Very soon we shall have to take a leading place in the world or a back seat. If it is to be the former, we must begin by making over ourselves and living in reality and not illusion....The reality demands sacrificial devotion, intensely hard work by every one, spiritual and intellectual conviction, and out of it the greatest happiness there is -- that which comes from uncoerced dedication to a common and lofty cause.” Agreed, but it seems to me what she’s calling for will require some very “coerced” measures -- such as compulsory military service and perhaps even a stern law such as Britain’s putting all property and livelihood in the hands of government. Will this country support that, even if Hitler wins in Europe?
THE POLLS SHOW A SHIFT. A graph in the News of the Week section in Sunday’s New York Times shows just how dramatically public opinion in the U.S. has shifted this spring. Based on findings in the Gallup and Princeton polls, it shows, for example, a dramatic rise in the number of people who think America isn’t doing enough to aid the Allies -- under 20% in March, and 71% now. Last September, only 10% of those surveyed thought Germany would win the war, but since her spring offensive, that number is up to 32%. Three-fourths of Americans believed when the war broke out that the Allies would win; that number has plunged to 38%. About half of those polled thought in September that the U.S. would get into the war – that number dropped to 30% in the winter but is again up to 51% today.
Hadley Cantril, the Director of the Princeton Public Opinion Research Project, summarizes the findings in an accompanying Times story -- “People are not by any means as sure as they were that the Allies will win, and there is a growing feeling that this country will participate in the war and that we should do more than we are now doing to help the Allies. In short, the attitude of aloofness has nearly disappeared, even though the great bulk of the American people are still quite unwilling to go to war.”
Meanwhile, in Sunday’s Washington Post, Dr. Gallup offers more fresh evidence that Americans are concerned about military preparedness. His newest survey on the question of compulsory military service shows half in favor, and half against. This is a jump from 39% support for the idea in a poll last October. Specifically, the question asks if the U.S. should require every able-bodied twenty-year-old man to serve in the armed forces for one year. Not surprisingly, young men are the least likely to support compulsory service. Gallup’s poll also shows that a wide majority (85%) approve starting military training at the hundreds of Civilian Conservation Corps camps.
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