A MAJOR BATTLE NEARING IN EAST AFRICA. Judging from Associated Press coverage, the British are nonchalant so far about the Italian offensive in eastern Africa. On one of the battlefronts, British Somaliland, Fascist troops have marched steadily through desert heat and have taken two strategic points, the Karris Pass and the Godajere Pass. They are now fifty miles from Berbera, the colony’s chief port and the region in which the British are expected to make their chief defense. The British command in Cairo put out a statement expressing remarkable disinterest in the advance thus far -- "The more the Italians dissipate their forces and their means, the more they lengthen their communications and complicate their administrative difficulties, the better it is for us."
Wednesday’s New York Times indicates the Italians have moved ninety miles forward and have taken the village of Adadleh. But the British are claiming to have repulsed their enemy in the jungle-covered region around the Karin Pass.
Beyond the day-to-day reports, there are some hopeful signs in the African campaign so far -- Italy doesn’t have anything like air supremacy in this campaign, and the British at Berbera have a steady and unmolested source of supply from Royal Navy ships coming up through the Red Sea. So far the Italian push doesn’t look much like a blitzkrieg. At least not yet.
A FOURTH DAY OF BIG NAZI AIR RAIDS. C. Brooks Peters of the New York Times describes yesterday’s 500-plane German raids on England’s southern coast as "a pulverizing process seemingly designed to pave the way for more serious activities." An Associated Press dispatch is more explicit -- the Nazi raids are apparently aimed at "smashing out an invasion bridgehead" by concentrating their bombs on the destruction of airports, oil tanks, antiaircraft batteries, and search lights. Main difference between Wednesday’s raids and earlier ones is that Nazi fliers are hitting the industrial Midlands as well. The Germans claim to have scored their greatest victory ever, of course, and maintain they now control the air over southern England. The British ridicule the claims.
But as the Times of London commented yesterday, ‘This is in fact the beginning of blitzkrieg." The huge raids are already a common-enough occurrence that the Chicago Tribune ran an "Air War Box Score" on Wednesday’s front page, listing the conflicting claims made by both sides of planes destroyed. And those claims are as different as night and day -- the British say that in four days of bombing, they’ve shot down 265 German planes and lost only 68 of their own. The Nazis, on the other hand, say they’ve shot down 327 British planes, while losing only 79 themselves.
HITLER’S "SUPREME BID." Washington Post columnist Barnet Nover thinks the raids are definitely intended to be the precursor to an invasion, if they succeed --
"The mystery of Hitler’s next move is a mystery no longer. What happens now in the Battle of Britain which began last Thursday and which, during the past three days, has developed with ever-increasing fury will depend on circumstances. If Hitler does not invade England it will be only because the raids carried out by his air force during these latter days have failed to achieve their maximum purpose. For both the nature and the ferocity of these raids point to the inevitable conclusion that they were designed to be the prelude to an all-out attack. Not otherwise would the southern and southeastern coast of England have been made the major objectives of this aerial assault carried out on a scale never before witnessed in the annals of modern warfare. For it is on that coast fronting the English Channel...that the Germans are likely to land if an attempt to invasion is made."
Mr. Nover also contends that it’s not just propaganda to say the British are unlike the enemies Hitler has faced thus far -- "They are not shot through with defeatism was were the French; they do not appear to be riddled with Fifth Column elements as were the Belgians and other victims of the Nazi blitzkrieg. Great Britain will be no easy nut for Hitler to crack. And there is at least a chance that he may break his teeth on it."
A REMINDER OF THE STAKES. In case anybody needs it, the Washington Post reminds us in a Wednesday editorial of just how important it is for Britain to prevail against Hitler, and how important it is for us to help her do so --
‘The stakes of this battle, which may prove the greatest and most decisive of the war, are of incalculable magnitude. Great Britain now stands alone in the path of Hitler’s hope of European mastery. If that last bastion of freedom is overcome, the whole of Europe will be under the domination of the totalitarian dictators. On the contrary, if Britain triumphs, a blight which for years has been spreading over the world will be arrested. So none who has the cause of freedom and democracy at heart can be indifferent to the titanic struggle now under way in the skies over England. Its outcome will affect the lives of every human being and of generations yet to be born."
A U.S. DRAFT WOULD HELP HITLER? There’s more peculiar isolationist logic circulating in Congress this week, starting with Senator Wheeler’s assertion that passing the Burke-Wadsworth conscription bill would give Hitler ‘his greatest and cheapest victory to date.’ According to Chesly Manly in Wednesday’s Chicago Tribune, the Montana Democrat claims a military draft would "slit the throat of the last democracy still living," and, thus...well, I don’t know what. It seems that somehow a rapid build-up of America’s armed forces would hearten the Nazis, who hate America. Or something. In any case, Mr. Manly writes that the isolationists are now offering a compromise, in which conscription would be deferred until next year, while the army seeks to meet its troop goals through permitting one-year enlistments (instead of the current three years) and raising basic pay from $21 to $30 a month.
The isolationists have already delayed the build-up of the army (which presumably Hitler must be very glum about) and have forced the military to change its plans toward greater reliance on the National Guard. A story in Wednesday’s Washington Post by John G. Norris cites General Shedd, assistant chief of staff for personnel, as telling a House committee that "the amount of time required by Congress in considering the conscription bill had made it necessary for the Army to postpone previous plans to have 900,000 men in uniform by early October. It now hopes to have such a force under arms by January 1...‘and even that is an optimistic program.’ The present program, he said, calls for mobilizing some 200,000 guardsmen -- virtually the entire militia -- and about 388,000 draftees by late December."
One-year enlistments didn’t help George Washington very much during the Revolutionary War, but the isolationists still argue that if "we’re really in danger," enough volunteers will come to the colors to save the country. The trouble is that an army, in the age of lightning war, needs large numbers of highly trained men who can be put into battle immediately. Short-term enlistments mean more turnover and confusion in military ranks, and fewer trained men to count on. And that really could give Hitler a cheap victory.
SOUNDING OFF ON THOSE ‘TANK’ SIGNS. The Chicago Tribune comes much closer to hitting the target with a wittily sarcastic response to those embarrassing army maneuvers in New York --
"The Washington program has a strange slogan: ‘War in three months; ready for it in four years.’ In the National Guard maneuvers in New York trucks are labeled ‘Tank.’ That is for the information of the referees. They are to score a tank so labeled with the striking power of a tank. Three months from now we’ll still have the signs but not the tanks....The National Guard troops now in the field for training use gas pipes for antitank guns against the tank signs. That’s a better break for the boys with the trucks than for the boys with the gas pipes. The trucks can run over the pipes....There is a hurry to conscript men who cannot be armed and to call out the National Guard. There will be a month or so of nice weather for it and then there’ll be a matter of winter housing, presumably in the south. It hasn’t been attended to. The easiest way will be to print some more signs. ‘This is a cantonment.’...War in three months, some tanks and airplanes in a year, full army equipment in four years, and some new battleships in five years. That’s our war program. Just now the congressional appropriations are our first line of defense. It is to be hoped that the hostiles can read signs."
If government and industry don’t produce war equipment at a much faster pace, and soon, it promises to be a major scandal, and a hot issue in the campaign this fall. But that’s not nearly as relevant to the army’s need for manpower as the isolationists make it out to be. Certainly much can be done to train young men in the interim, and thus conscription would help make us more secure. We shouldn’t wait until the danger is imminent before we take such action, as the Tribune and its allies bid us to do.
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