LONDON HIT WITH 4,000 TONS OF BOMBS. Judging from the radio news this morning, it sounds like our worst fears are being realized. The Germans appear to be trying to demolish London via air attacks, just as Hitler boasted in his speech on Wednesday. Last night’s raid on the British capital went on for eight hours and eighteen minutes, from late afternoon until almost dawn. Some 1,500 planes caused what one news report calls "severe damage," though the specifics are censored. Apparently the Nazis have shifted the focus of their ongoing attacks from airports and armament works to industry and harbor works. No doubt now the civilian death toll is skyrocketing. And the rest of the country continues to be hit hard as well.
The Germans have shown signs in the last few days that they are going back to a strategy of mass air raids, after a period of seeming hesitation and small-scale raids by isolated striking groups. James M. Minifie writes in Saturday’s New York Herald Tribune that Saturday’s raids over England "followed one after the other so fast that the southeastern section of England was virtually under continuous attack." But, he says, the Nazis haven’t come anywhere close to driving the R.A.F. out of the skies, and that German losses are approaching the 4-to-1 mark -- in this case, the British shot down forty-five Nazi warplanes in six separate raids over London yesterday. And as Percival Knath writes in Saturday’s New York Times, British planes continue to hit Berlin, staying over the city for three hours in a single raid earlier that day.
AN UNSETTLING REMINDER. But the stories of Britain inflicting huge losses on the Germans remind one of the newspaper dispatches from last January, which told of the heroic Finns forcing the Russians to pay a terrible price for their invasion. Yes, the Finns killed tens of thousands of Russians and destroyed tons of military materiel. But the Russians kept coming, the Finns ran out of ammunition, their soldiers collapsed from fatigue, and eventually Stalin’s armies prevailed. Could this be something akin to what Hitler is trying to do now? Does Germany have the resources to duplicate Stalin’s success? And if she does, then do the glowing reports of R.A.F. successes mean anything in the long run?
THE HUMAN COST OF BOMBING (II). Drew Middleton writes in Saturday’s Chicago Tribune that the latest wave of London bombings doesn’t seem to be doing much damage to military targets. But it is destroying the lives of the people who inhabit the East End slums. One sad image stands out --
"People of the slums walked silently past bombed houses in the stifling heat. An old man and a young woman, eyes red from weeping, stood outside one house. ‘I’m not going to leave. I’m not,’ the old man kept saying. ‘I’ve lived here 59 years. I’m not going. They’ll steal my clothes.’ An air raid warden said helplessly, ‘I took ‘em to a relief center where they have beds and food. They came right back. They won’t leave.’"
ISOLATIONISTS DELAY CONSCRIPTION. What perfect timing. With London facing the greatest crisis in its history, isolationist Congressmen in the House have thrown a monkey wrench into the Burke-Wadsworth bill. They're trying to delay -- and probably successfully -- the U.S. Army’s efforts to draft enough young men to meet defense goals this fall. The House passed Burke-Wadsworth yesterday evening, by a sizeable margin of 263 to 149 -- but with an amendment introduced by Representative Hamilton Fish, a leading isolationist, to delay the start of conscription for sixty days. The amendment passed by the much narrower margin of 207 to 200, and was sold to the House as giving volunteer recruitment a "fair trial" before a military draft is instituted. According to John G. Norris in Saturday’s Washington Post, the bill, as amended, also requires President Roosevelt to issue "an immediate call for 400,000 volunteers" to serve one-year enlistments, and for the Army to carry out an "intensive campaign" toward this end. If the number of volunteers fails to total 400,000, the President may draft the number of men necessary to reach that number.
It’s more of the kooky reasoning typical of the isolationists, masquerading as common sense. I remember the Chicago Tribune and other isolationist organs thundering last month about the Administration’s lack of planning on national defense. But now, they support an amendment which is designed to introduce elements of happenstance and variability into our plans for manning a modern army. Is there anything in America right now that can less afford to be dependent on the changing desires of individuals? And won’t the Fish amendment surely create result an Army that relies on one-year enlistments, insuring more of the chaos that the isolationists rage against? It’s almost as if the isolationists don’t want a strong U.S. army. And judging from some of their anti-war rhetoric and their constant pooh-poohing of Nazi dangers to our part of the world, it’s a reasonable suspicion that at least a few among this crowd see the Fish amendment as a form of sabotage -- and approve of it for that very reason.
HOW THE FISH AMENDMENT HURTS AMERICA. The Washington Post editors smell politics in Representative Fish’s amendment to the conscription bill, and they don’t mince words about it --
"Congress has already voted approximately $15,000,000,000 for defense preparations. It has recognized that we are unprepared for self-defense in a world where military conquest is running riot. Yet our Congressmen have voted to postpone the operation of an effective military training program until after they have conducted their political campaigns. In other words, the House is willing to falter and fumble because this happens to be an election year. The vote on the Fish amendment thus becomes a grave confession of weakness. It reflects discredit upon the quality of statesmanship in the House. What is far more serious, it suggests that our democratic system is not equal to the stern task of preparing the Nation for defense in the national emergency."
The Post explains concisely just what harm the Fish amendment does -- "It would make hash out of the careful plan represented by the Burke-Wadsworth bill. No one should forget that that under this bill voluntary soldiers would still be sought. Many thousands of men are needed to bring our professional Army up to full strength. These must be obtained through three-year voluntary enlistments. The Fish amendment . . . would bring a drive for one-year enlistments. We would thus acquire a reserve army composed of both volunteers and drafted men. And the Regular Army which must train these one-year recruits would be denied the essential increase in its professional personnel . . . . It appears, moreover, that the Fish amendment would limit the total number of men to be drafted or accepted as volunteers to 800,000. That number is far below the reserve force which the Army believes is essential to national defense."
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