MORE HUMILIATION FOR ITALY. Can Mussolini possibly be doing a worse job of bungling his own war effort? As recounted in Saturday’s New York Herald Tribune, the Duce now pushes out his military chief of staff, Marshal Badoglio. The Herald Tribune's Rome correspondent Allen Raymond sums up the regard Italians have for the man known as "Italy’s Hindenburg" -- "For a generation past [he] has been a symbol, in military circles here for meticulous preparations, worked out in painstaking detail, as well as for almost legendary gallantry in action." So why cashier a highly regarded officer, during a time of military crisis? Because he was inconveniently right -- "The invasion of Greece was begun against his advice...Mussolini had decided to go ahead in spite of expert opinion that the invasion was ill-timed and badly prepared." Badoglio's successor, General Cavallero, appears to be much more of a yes-man to the Duce, as well as a copycat of German blitzkrieg tactics.
All this can only be good news to the Greeks, who according to the Associated Press have just finished "overwhelming" units of retreating Italians in a battle for the southern Albanian seaport of Porto Edda. But that’s not even the worst of it for the poor Italians. An International News Service dispatch by George Balint says that the Nazis have intervened in the Greek war -- by secretly communicating peace proposals to Athens that would entail "German mediation and certain concessions to Greece." The Washington Post says the overture is "as humbling to Italy as it is flattering to little Hellas." No doubt. How much more embarrassment can a would-be Fascist empire take?
BUT BRITAIN’S TROUBLES GO ON, TOO. The recent novelty of there being some good news for the anti-Hitler cause shouldn’t hide the fact that Britain is still taking a beating and continues to be in urgent need of U.S. help. Ernest K. Lindley sums things up in his Washington Post column Friday --
"The war remains in a critical stage, its eventual outcome extremely doubtful. The British are taking terrible punishment from the air. An adequate defense of night bombing has not been developed; and at this time of year the nights are 16 or 17 hours long in England. The new German system of concentrating on one city one night and another the next is causing more destruction than the earlier methods of bombing attack. British industrial production has been falling off, and the damage to port facilities is becoming serious. At sea the long hours of darkness favor submarine operations. While merchant ship losses on the North Atlantic sea lanes have not yet reached the heights of the spring of 1917, when Great Britain almost lost World War I to the U-boats, they are heavy."
Mr. Lindley says that, not surprisingly, "the British are eager to get, as soon as possible, every plane we will let them have." Not surprisingly, too, the Roosevelt Administration is emphasizing in its current round of conferences with industrial leaders that "the time factor" is more important than future projections of military aid -- in Lindley's words, "Five hundred bombing planes delivered before February 1 may be more valuable than 2,000 delivered in the last two months of 1941."
WHAT WILL HAPPEN IN 1941? Lindley’s Washington Post column also sets forth what could happen in the months ahead, and what most likely will --
"Allowing always for surprises, the prevailing view in informed quarters here is that the next big German action will not be launched until spring. The three more obvious alternatives are:
(a) A drive through the Balkans into Asia-Minor and Iraq – the drive which seemed to begin a few weeks ago but now almost certainly has been laid up for the winter.
(b) A drive through the southern part of the Soviet Union.
(c) An invasion of Great Britain.
Both (a) and (b) would have as their main purpose access to petroleum, although (a) might also head to Suez. Certainly the second, and conceivably the first, would mean war with the Soviet Union. The third alternative, invasion, remains the one which, if successful, would yield the greatest result. Many observers here [in Washington] believe that when everything is taken into account, Hitler still looks upon invasion of Britain as the best bet – after the British have been worn down by two or three months more of aerial bombardment and counter-blockade."
If this turns out to be true, then America doesn’t have much time left to get help to Britain before the final showdown erupts.
BRITAIN VOTES DOWN NEGOTIATIONS. It’s not just home-grown isolationists who are still pushing for a negotiated peace between Britain and Germany. According to Raymond Daniell in the New York Times, the House of Commons actually took up the idea last Thursday, at the instigation of a "little handful of pacifists." Very little, indeed -- this band of four, led by an Independent Labourite named McGovern, argued before the House that continued war was driving Britain closer and closer to Fascism, and thus making the Empire almost as morally objectionable as the Third Reich itself. Plus, carrying on the war would increase the danger of both sides eventually becoming exhausted by "grief and poverty." It would be "a great moral gesture," the argument went, for Britain to offer the Fuehrer talks for a fair and just peace.
The final vote to reject a peace conference (341-4) reiterates British determination to struggle on to final victory, whatever the cost. I think it also endorses something unspoken as well -- that even a stalemate in this terrible war is actually worth fighting for. A "negotiated" peace would leave Hitler in control of the European continent and allow the Germans time and rest to do their dirty work elsewhere. There’s no doubt given Hitler’s past practices that eventually it would once again be Britain’s turn to be attacked, at much worse odds than the present conflict gives her. A stalemate, on the other hand, at least allows Britain to remain free, and increased U.S. aid will help prevent economic collapse.
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