BRITISH WITHDRAWAL IN SOMALILAND. As far back as last week-end, the Italians were boasting that the port of Berbera in British Somaliland had become "another Dunkerque," where British troops were trapped by advancing Fascist armies. Unfortunately that appears to be pretty much true. According to an Associated Press report Tuesday, the 7,000 British defenders of Berbera have been withdrawn via ship, "under heavy Italian attack by tank, artillery, and aircraft." The British say rather hollowly that they held on in Berbera long enough to make Italy pay the "highest price" for her victory. British Somaliland itself is not of much strategic value, but officials in London fear "loss of prestige among the races of the Middle East."
And that could be militarily significant, according to Larry Rue’s account in Wednesday’s Chicago Tribune. The British admit this defeat "will result in a great loss to British prestige not only in Somaliland, Abyssinia, and Egypt, but thruout the Arab countries whose assistance at this time might contribute something toward final victory," he writes. Mr. Rue adds a number of precise details about the final days of the Somaliland fight, noting that Mussolini’s troops outnumbered the British defenders by as much as 15-to-1.
The A.P. predicts the Italians will fight for much bigger stakes next time -- staging "an aerial attempt to conquer Aden," the highly strategic British port at the lower tip of the Arabian peninsula.
GREECE RUSHES TROOPS TO FACE ITALY. It’s all so depressingly familiar. One of the Axis countries starts howling propaganda about a smaller neighbor’s "atrocities," and military aggression typically follows. This time, Greece is the expected victim, and Italy the apparent-aggressor-to-be. According to Cyrus Sulzberger in Wednesday’s New York Times, the Greek military has cancelled officer leaves, ordered its troops to "remain on watch" and is rushing units to the frontier of Italian-occupied Albania. The cause, reports the Times, is "Italian allegations of Greek terroristic activities in Albania, which Greek officials expect will prompt a warning note from Italy at any moment. "This may all be an unjustified flurry in the war of nerves being waged against this country," Mr. Sulzberger writes. "It may be something more." Whatever the reality, "alarming" reports of Italian troop movements on the Greek frontier, including the arrival of at least one armored division, have spooked Athens.
Curiously, the Germans have given the Greek government assurances that "no trouble should be expected," according to Mr. Sulzberger.
"NEVER IN THE FIELD OF HUMAN CONFLICT..." Prime Minister Churchill’s fifty-minute speech to the House of Commons on Tuesday saluted, with typical eloquence, the R.A.F. men who, according to Wednesday’s New York Herald Tribune, carried the air war to thirty German bases on the continent of Europe yesterday --
"Our bomber and fighter strength after all this fighting is larger than it ever has been....The attitude of every home in our island, in our empire, and indeed in the abodes of the guilty, goes out to the British airmen who, undaunted by odds, unwearied in their mortal danger, are turning the tide of world war by their prowess and their devotion. Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few. All hearts go out to the fighter pilots whose brilliant actions we see with our own eyes after day; but we must never forget that all the time, night after night, month after month, our bomber squadrons travel far into Germany, find their targets in the darkness by the highest navigational skill, aim their attacks – often under the heaviest fire, often with heavy loss – with deliberate, careful discrimination, and inflict shattering blows upon the whole of the technical and war-making structure of the Nazi power."
Churchill also made news with an offer to give the U.S. leases for naval bases in the West Indies and Newfoundland, an offer which dovetails nicely with the establishment earlier this week of a U.S.-Canadian Joint Defense Board. Now, if only we had some well-trained, well-equipped troops to put into those bases.
WHAT WILLKIE SAID ABOUT PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES. Here’s the exact wording of the debate challenge by Wendell Willkie which has been mentioned quite a bit on the radio the last couple of days. He said near the end of his acceptance speech last Saturday --
"The President stated in his acceptance speech that he does not have either ‘the time or the inclination to engage in purely political debate.’ I do not want to engage in purely political debate, either. But I believe that the tradition of face-to-face debate is justly honored among our American political traditions. I believe that we should set an example, at this time, of the workings of American democracy. And I do not think the issues at stake are ‘purely political.’ In my opinion they concern the life and death of democracy. I propose that in the next two and a half months the President and I appear together on public platforms in various parts of the country to debate the fundamental issues of this campaign. These are the problems of our great domestic economy, as well as of our national defense....And also I would like to debate the question of the assumption by this President, in seeking a third term, of a greater public confidence than was accorded to our Presidential giants – Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Cleveland, Theodore Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson. I make this proposal respectfully to a man upon whose shoulders rest the cares of the state. But I make it in dead earnest."
President Roosevelt’s replies so far, by contrast, have been anything but earnest. He first said he hadn’t heard anything of Mr. Willkie’s speech because he had been reviewing troops for five hours. A couple of days ago, he protested he was "too busy" with official duties. Since then, according to Percy Wood in Wednesday’s Chicago Tribune, Mr. Willkie has renewed the challenge -- "It is true that Franklin D. Roosevelt is President of the Untied States. It is equally true that he is running for a third term for President of the United States....The democratic process basically rests upon discussion..."
It’s a sound point, especially in this year of grave crisis. As democracy is threatened with extinguishment around the globe, it’s incumbent on Americans right now to display the highest possible example to the world of how a free people should choose their leaders. Mr. Willkie has set a fine standard with his own campaign. It’s time for the President to put aside ordinary political calculations and prove himself worthy of the challenge.
A GOOD SIGN FOR WILLKIE. A new Gallup survey in Wednesday’s Washington Post says that Willkie leads Roosevelt by a notable margin, 53% to 47%, in the bellwether state of Ohio. (The President had carried Ohio in 1936 with 61% of the vote). Dr. Gallup notes that Ohio "has cast its electoral votes for the winning candidate in every election since 1900, which means that anyone who had correctly forecast the Ohio winner in the last ten elections would have been picking the national winner as well."
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