TROUBLE IN FRENCH INDO-CHINA. Both the New York Herald Tribune and the New York Times headline this week-end’s French-Japanese clashes as a Japanese "invasion" of French Indo-China. That’s overstating what happened -- the Herald Tribune’s own story, by Victor Keen, makes it clear that the Japanese merely attacked a French blockhouse in the northern border city of Dong Dang. But Mr. Keen’s account also relays a jumble of contradictory assertions. One was that the attack took place "two hours before the expiration of Japan’s seventy-two-hour ultimatum demanding undisclosed military concessions from the French colony." But a dispatch from Haiphong claimed later that the Japanese action was a mistake, because France and Japan had reached an "agreement" concerning Indo-China the day before. The Japanese assert, not very convincingly, that they were peaceably marching through Dong Dang per their rights under the agreement when those warmongering French fired upon them.
The Haiphong dispatch claims that this new pact grants Japan the right to keep 6,000 troops on bases in Tonking province, station her forces at Haiphong, and to send armies to attack south China through an Indo-Chinese route. In return, Japan "guaranteed the territorial integrity of Indo-China and French sovereignty there" -- probably the same way Soviet Russia "guaranteed" Rumania’s new borders after seizing Bessarabia, i.e., by marching through them at will.
A NAZI "VICTORY" ON THE HIGH SEAS. The mighty warriors of Germany’s armed forces haven’t yet managed to triumph over the R.A.F. But they did manage a victory of another kind last week, as described in Monday’s Chicago Tribune --
"Two hundred and ninety-three persons, including 83 evacuated children bound for safety in Canada died last Tuesday night, 600 miles out in the storm lashed Atlantic when their ship was torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine....Only 113 of the 406 persons on board survived. It was the first loss of children under Britain’s scheme to remove them from the war zone. The children who perished were from 5 to 15 years old. Men, women, and children were swept from lifeboats by heavy seas. Others died from exposure as rain and hailstorms swept them from 10 p.m. on the night of Sept. 17 until dawn the next day when a British warship reached the scene."
C.B.S.’s William Shirer said in his broadcast from Berlin last night that the German press is blaming the sinking squarely on Churchill. The Berlin radio jeered that Churchill should have known German submariners would blast the children to bits if they sailed westward on the Atlantic toward safety. Thus, in Nazi logic, Churchill is a "murderer."
IS HITLER POSTPONING THE INVASION? Charles M. Lincoln writes in Sunday’s New York Times about renewed signs in Germany that the invasion of Britain won’t come off anytime soon --
"The [British] navy waits; a million five hundred thousand [British] soldiers wait. They would welcome a straightout fight. They believed they would have come to grips long before this. They now think that perhaps there will be no fight....That Hitler has really abandoned his dearest dream cannot be safely assumed. He may make the attempt at any moment. He may never make it. What is going on right now between himself and the governmental and military groups which surround him we cannot know. But more and more, in Berlin, are heard the words ‘in the Spring,’ ‘Britain is vulnerable elsewhere,’ ‘the Mediterranean.’ Yesterday a highly placed German said, in Berlin: ‘Let’s leave open for the moment whether the Britain of the future may be regarded as European.’ What do these, and similar expressions coming from the German capital, signify? They certainly do not resemble the bombast of a few months ago. Whether Germany is to defer, or put aside, her attempt to invade England remains unanswered. But it would seem, from what has thus far transpired, that if the attempt is to wait upon mastery of the Royal Air Force and the breaking of the British people it will have to wait a long, long time."
Mr. Lincoln assures us that the bombing raids on England will continue, but that the air war could take on a new character in 1941, and a new intensity, as Britain builds her own arsenal -- "She has received 3,000 planes from the United States, will receive many times that number. Australia is producing 650 planes a month; Canada, ‘a large number.’ In England 600,000 are in the aircraft effort. The Empire training plan calls for 20,000 pilots and 30,000 air crews from Canada. Winter months may see many of them training on American soil. If Britain comes through the present crisis by next Spring she will be immensely strong in the skies....Next year should see air battles which will make the current conflicts seem trivial."
A NAZI "AFRICAN STRATEGY" MIGHT WIN. It seems reasonable that since time is so evidently on Britain’s side, the Nazis would be foolhardy to not invade as quickly as possible. Unless, that is, Hitler has opted for a new, round-about strategy for total victory. And that’s what appears to be more likely every day. I’m worried now that Germany will quickly join with Italy to create a number of new Mediterranean and African battlefronts, seeking to cut off Britain’s ties to her empire by taking Gibraltar, the Suez Canal, Malta, Aden, and other strategic points. The Axis will probably also try to grab the oilfields of Syria and other Near East outposts. What’s frightening about this is that the British are nowhere near as prepared for this as they are for on a head-on attack Would Britain’s navy and her already-stretched-thin land armies in Africa be enough to contain a combined German-Italian offensive? They seem barely able to contain the Italians as is. If the Axis moves southward this fall, Britain might be in desperate straits economically by next spring.
WILLKIE'S ALLEGED DOWNTURN. Also in Sunday’s New York Times, Turner Catledge isn’t buying the increasingly popular notion that Wendell Willkie is going downhill -- "The idea persists in Washington that the Willkie campaign and that if it does not make an upward turn soon another Democratic landslide may be the result in November. It should be borne in mind that this is the attitude of the capital, the home-base of the New Deal and a community which, at times, can get farther away from the rest of the country than would seem geographically possible."
But Mr. Catledge notes that recent national polls seem to bear out the mood in Washington. And Fortune magazine’s current survey is no comfort to the Republicans either -- 53.2 percent for President Roosevelt, only 35.6 percent for Mr. Willkie. Like the Gallup poll announced this past week-end, Fortune’s analysis offers the G.O.P. a ray of hope -- "In the number of people answering ‘don’t know’ -- 10.8% more than those having no opinion on Roosevelt -- like Willkie’s chances to be elected." But the Fortune survey was taken before the Willkie acceptance speech last month, and there’s been no evidence of a Republican surge since then.
Still, Mr. Catledge warns rightfully that "there are too many questions which can only be answered on election day, to warrant one in counting the chickens now." We’ve got a long way to go.
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