A PIVOTAL WEEK IN THE BALKANS. David Brigham writes in Monday’s New York Times that "the coming week may decide the outcome of the Hitlerian push to the Mosul oil fields." There are at least two possible outcomes, writes Mr. Brigham -- "If Hitler’s diplomatic efforts are successful, he will proceed without opposition to the aid of the Italians in Greece through Bulgaria; if, on the other hand, the Turks continue in their adamant attitude before the ‘proposition’ believed here to have been brought back by Franz von Papen, the German ambassador to Turkey, things will not be so easy." Bulgaria is now the key -- Rumania officially signed up with the Axis in Berlin on Saturday and Hungary did last week. A map on the Washington Post’s Sunday front page shows how important it would be for Nazi troops to have free passage through Hungary, Rumania, and Bulgaria. It would take the Germans within a few miles of the vital Dardanelles straits and an invasion route into western Greece. If Turkey is cowed to stay out of the war, Axis forces could then dash onward toward the oilfields of Irak and the British Near East army in Palestine.
Will the Bulgarians join the Axis? The Times says the country’s premier and foreign minister are to arrive in Berlin today or tomorrow. They might sign up with Hitler’s gang, or they could come up with some kind of independent declaration of "non-belligerency," meaning they’re not going to cheer Nazi troops when they march through the country on their way southward, but they’re not going to do anything about it, either. It’s unlikely Soviet Russia would, either, even though they’ve pressured the Bulgarians not to ally themselves with Hitler.
Meanwhile, Germany made a tad more progress in consolidating her Balkan position on Sunday, when the "protectorate" of Slovakia agreed to take part in the Berlin-Rome-Tokyo alliance. Sigrid Schultz notes in Monday’s Chicago Tribune that "all of Germany’s neighbors, except Switzerland, now are under direct leadership of the Nazis or are allied with them." And the Swiss are not being forgotten. According to Miss Schultz, the official Voelkischer Beobachter complained Sunday that "an attempt is being made by the Swiss to deny the genuinely German character of the German-Swiss population." It’s the same kind of press attack the Nazis made previously against Czecho-Slovakia, Poland, and...so many others.
GREEKS MIGHT SEIZE HALF OF ALBANIA. If the Nazis permit Mussolini’s military vaudeville show to continue, that is. The Associated Press reports that Greek troops advanced an astonishing nineteen more miles through southern Albania on Sunday. They’ve now on the outskirts of Argirocastro, the Italians’ chief base in that part of the country. J. Wes Gallagher reports in an A.P. dispatch filed from Greece that the Greek infantry are "cracking through the Italian mechanized forces in at least two sectors with such fierceness that the enthusiastic Greeks believed they would soon have half of Albania in their hands."
That ominous rumble you hear is coming from Berlin -- a third A.P. story published Monday quotes a semi-official German publication as asserting that Greek Premier Metaxas has "made himself openly a tool of the British policy of spreading war." Earlier Nazi statements about the Italian invasion of Greece were curiously diffident, and German spokesmen had previously gone out of their way to say there had been "no change" in German-Greek relations.
A CATALOGUE OF POSSIBLE SABOTAGE. The new issue of Time magazine has a wrap-up on incidents of possible Axis sabotage reported at U.S. factories since August --
(1) An explosion on Aug. 7 cripples the King Powder Co., Kings Mills, Ohio. The company makes dynamite and blasting powder. Three killed.
(2) An Aug. 16 explosion damages the Atlas plant in Joplin, Mo. Atlas makes a million pounds of TNT each month for Great Britain. Five killed.
(3) An Aug. 22 blast kills four at Du Pont’s dynamite plant at Gibbstown, N.J.
(4) In the worst accident of all, fifty-one workers are killed on Sept. 12 in Kenvil, N.J., at the Hercules plant, in "the biggest explosion since World War I."
(5) A blast damages the Army’s Picatinny Arsenal on Sept. 23. Two killed.
(6) On Nov. 12, blasts at three plants, all within the same hour, kill fourteen in Allentown, Pa., Edinburg, Pa., and Woodbridge, N.J.
(7) Last Sunday, an explosion heavily damages a chemical plant at Bridgeville, Pa., and a fire destroys a bomb-making facility nearby in Johnstown. Two injured.
And that’s not all, Time reports -- "explosions and fires in an oil-field tank in Ohio, an oil well in Oklahoma, fire in the uncompleted fourth floor of the War Department’s office building in Washington, gasoline found in fire extinguishers in the Bath (Me.) Shipbuilding yards, where Navy destroyers are made, fire destroying some $1,000,000 worth of Army stores in the Municipal Auditorium at Atlanta, Ga., emery dust in precision tools at Todd Seattle Drydocks." Time’s own verdict -- "Some may have been accidents, but together they did not look accidental." Yes, and the continued silence of the F.B.I. and Justice Department, combined with the reckless over-exuberance of the Dies Committee, isn't very reassuring.
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