NEW NAZI PEACE TERMS. Hitler’s peace speech of nine days ago didn’t offer Britain specific terms for an armistice. But according to Capt. M.M. Corpening in Saturday’s Chicago Tribune, the Germans have since communicated a specific set of peace proposals to Sweden’s King Gustav, to be relayed to the British. (This part of the story rings true, since Gustav issued an appeal two weeks ago calling on both sides to negotiate an end to the war). According to Capt. Corpening, the terms are --
"1. The British Empire is to stay out of Europe proper. 2. The Cameroons and the former German East Africa are to be returned to Germany. Former German Southwest Africa is to remain with the South African Union. 3. The Belgian Congo is to go to Germany. 4. Germany guarantees the British empire protection of its colonies from the ‘yellow peril.’ 5. Norway is to remain a German province. 6. Belgium is to become a protectorate under King Leopold. 7. Germany is to keep that part of France now occupied except Paris. 8. Holland is to be a protectorate with no molestation of the Dutch foreign possessions. [Also,] Italy is to have a free hand in the affairs of Spain and Greece under German supervision. In addition, Italy is to be given all of the Adriatic coast."
The Tribune quotes "sources close to the German high command" as saying if the Churchill government refuses this offer -- a sure thing -- than Germany will invade Britain "as soon as weather permits" and expects to conquer the British Isles within thirty days.
MORE FERMENT IN EASTERN EUROPE. According to the International News Service, Rumania has offered to cede a portion of Transylvania to Hungary, and hold a plebiscite to determine the status of the rest of the province. This bid of appeasement is being brokered by Germany in an attempt to settle the off-and-on crisis between the two Balkan countries. But at the same time, the I.N.S. says there’s now "acute tension" between Rumania and Yugoslavia, because the now shamelessly pro-Nazi Rumanian government has offered to aid Italy in event of an Italian-Yugoslav war.
And on top of that, C.L. Sulzberger reports in Saturday’s New York Times that the ever-expanding Soviet Union now wants to create a three-country bloc of Rumania, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia. It would be directed against the Axis and operated under Russian leadership, of course. But Mr. Sulzberger adds that "it would be difficult for Russia to accomplish any such manoeuvre, particularly in the face of Axis opposition. Rumania is distinctly unsympathetic both to Russia and communism and, if anything, would like to move even closer to the Axis. Bulgarians are increasingly Pan-Slavist and pro-Soviet, but the government is pretty much on the German side of the fence and would be more so if concrete results, such as the return of Southern Dobruja, should come out of the Balkan talks in Germany. More or less the same applies in Yugoslavia, where the Regency dislikes the idea of a preponderant Axis, but absolutely detests the idea of Bolshevism."
"ECONOMIC WAR" WITH JAPAN? The United Press reports Saturday that Japan is taking President Roosevelt’s virtual embargo on export of oil, petroleum products, and scrap metals as an "unfriendly act" and has threatened quick retaliation. The U.P. says that Japanese retaliation could include "cutting off this country’s main source of rubber and tin in the Dutch East Indies." The Administration’s act doesn’t directly target Japan -- its stated purpose, as described by the U.P., is "to conserve national defense essentials."
But a Friday New York Herald Tribune story notes that this move comes almost exactly one year after the U.S. announcement abrogating the nation’s 1911 commercial treaty with Japan -- a circumstance surely noted by Japanese militarists. But then, there’s a larger purpose, as the embargo is "taken as a further indication that the United States intended to continue its firm policy toward Japan in the Far East as well as being a severe blow to the German, Italian, and Russian war economies." And it’s starting right now. In fact, it started several days before the President’s formal announcement, when Treasury Secretary Morgenthau told the press that the sailing of two American oil tankers to Spain had been held up, and said that from now U.S. tankers would not be permitted to travel to Spain or Japan.
It makes perfect sense not to sell essential war materials to the dictators, while embarking on a crash defense program to protect ourselves from those very same dictators. But watch the isolationists bawl that we shouldn't take such a common-sense step because it is "un-neutral."
WHAT ABOUT THE ORPHANED COLONIES? (I). Harold H. Hinton describes in Saturday’s New York Times a bottleneck at the Havana conference. There, Secretary of State Hull is said to be trying to work out a compromise with a number of Latin American delegations, led by Argentina, over a multilateral trusteeship plan for "orphaned" colonies in the Western Hemisphere whose owners have been, or will be, subjugated by Axis aggression. The U.S. wants to set up a pan-American trusteeship if a colony’s status is threatened, while Argentina calls for "self-determination" by the colony’s population.
Meanwhile, a Washington Post editorial takes issue with the Administration’s position in Havana --
"There is much that is very hazy about the scheme...[It] is evidence of some rather befuddled thinking on the part of experts in the Department of State. As the draft convention is worded it can be said to envisage a collective mandate over, for instance, the British colony of Newfoundland. Nobody seems to have inquired whether the sturdy people of that ‘oldest British colony’ would acclaim the prospect of being governed by a mixed commission from, shall we say, Guatemala, Haiti, and Peru....Bermuda, to cite another possible development, might also come to be governed by a group of Latin American countries. And if the stories of ‘Fifth Column’ activities in some of these countries are to be believed, some of these governments might have a political complexion which we ourselves would not welcome on territory close the coast of the United States."
WHAT ABOUT THE ORPHANED COLONIES? (II). But in Friday’s Washington Post, columnist Barnet Nover endorses the original Havana proposal and says it’s definitely better than suggestions that the U.S. simply seize the colonies before the Germans can get their hands on them --
"Unilateral action by this nation...whether justified or not, and on whatever grounds justified, would be used by other nations to excuse past and future acts of aggression.... The idea of trusteeship for [orphaned] colonies has taken root....The mandate system established under the covenant of the League of Nations and operated under League supervision had much to recommend it. Such a mandate system as is now being discussed at Havana would have most of the advantages and few of the disadvantages of the League type. Aside from the circumstance that it would meet an increasingly serious strategic danger head on it would, if put into effect, bring into being the most far-reaching and constructive system of inter-American cooperation ever devised. Events are moving fast here at Havana."
No comments:
Post a Comment