Tuesday, December 24, 1940

TODAY’S ITALIAN DEFEATS (PART XXXVII). British troops continue their advance into Italian-held Libya, and the Associated Press reports that the Royal Air Force continues to pound some 20,000 besieged Fascist troops in the fortress of Bardia -- which appears likely to fall shortly. British planes are also bombing Marshal Graziani’s tougher defenses farther west, at Bengasi. This sounds bad enough, but the A.P. makes Italian prospects sound absolutely catastrophic -- "Since there was no apparent move by the Italian leader to send aid to his beleaguered forces in the Eastern Libyan port it was assumed by military sources that the Bardia garrison had been chosen to hold up British forces while Marshal Graziani prepared a ‘last ditch’ stand in Western Libya." Can Mussolini’s armies really be that close to being completely chased out of northern Africa? That’s dumbfounding, but given the extent of the Italian military collapse since October, I suppose it’s now credible.

Italy appears to be putting up a stiffer fight in Albania, where fresh troops have been sent into battle with Greek forces around the towns of Tepelini and Klisura, while wave after wave of Italian bombing planes have been sent out in a desperate attempt to stop the Greek advance. According to Ben Ames of United Press, some 50,000 Italian troops are said to be "locked in a mountain trap" by blistering Greek attacks on three sides. For all of the increased Fascist resistance, the Greek advance appears to continue, albeit slowly.

And Marshal Graziani has just submitted a report to Mussolini which explains that Italian troops have fought well in Egypt and Libya, but were outnumbered in men and machines. An A.P. dispatch says he gives backhanded credit to the British Navy’s blockade for helping to turn the tide -- "The Fascists failed to start an offensive on Matruh, Egypt, early in December because they lacked armored cars, tanks, and other mechanized equipment which had not arrived from Italy in due time."

WHO STANDS AGAINST BRITAIN? Britain has ordered about $2,500,000,000 worth of steel and other equipment from the U.S., and is expected now to receive de facto credits of $3,000,000,000 in additional war supplies during the coming year. But Harold Callender writes in Sunday’s New York Times just who’s trying to derail this urgently-needed aid --

"While all signs indicate that a large majority of the public wants to help Britain win, but without going to war, the dissenting minority, though it may have diminished, remains highly vocal in and outside Congress, and it has not been silenced by the proposed shift of the British credit question from the sphere of finance to the sphere of barter. Some, like Brig. Gen. Robert E. Wood, would prefer that this country press for peace negotiations now instead of placing American industrial resources behind Britain for a perhaps prolonged struggle to defeat Hitler. The new ‘No Foreign War Committee,’ a foil to the White Committee to Aid the Allies, opposes the President’s barter-loan scheme and asserts that Americans again, as in 1917, are being ‘played for suckers.’ Senator Holt of West Virginia suspects some Americans want to plunge into the war to help Britain, and Senator Nye argues that Britain needs no credits and that anyhow she herself declared ths war."

Mr. Callender also aptly sums up the current differences between interventionists and isolationists, and hints at where both sides might even find agreement -- "Mingled together in the minds of the dissenters are fear of America being in war, doubts about the outcome of the struggle and a traditional suspicion of everything British. Some deny that Britain is America’s first line of defense; others question the endurance of that line. Even many who ardently favor helping Britain would recoil from carrying that help so far as fighting by her side and from measures entailing risk of war. The basic division is between those who think the greatest danger for America is involvement in war and those who think the greatest danger lies in a Nazi victory."

HITLER’S WOES SINCE JULY. Why did the German Foreign Office abruptly issue an angry denunciation of American foreign policy last week, after months of contemptuous indifference on the question of U.S. aid to Britain? Washington Post columnist Barnet Nover says it reflects a growing lack of confidence among the Nazis. In detailing this he offers what amounts to a six-month roundup of Axis troubles, contrasting mightily with their spring and summer triumphs --

"The last few months have been most unsatisfactory from the German point of view. The serial assault on Great Britain has failed to bring that great nation to her knees. But the alternative policy of an attack on Britain’s Mediterranean positions has also proved unworkable. In the first place, Hitler’s diplomatic offensive met with failure; secondly, the Greek resistance placed an unexpected obstacle in the way of an Axis advance to the Near East through the Balkans; and most recently, the defeat of the Italians in Egypt and Libya has made it impossible for Hitler and Mussolini to carry out a pincers movement against the Suez Canal. Indeed, Mussolini will be fortunate if he emerges from the African struggle with his whole skin. Because of these developments Hitler has had to revert to this original plan of winning the war by an assault on Great Britain. He must do so soon for if he waits too long American production may weigh the scales against him. But if such an assault is to be undertaken in the proximate future there must be an intensification of the efforts to wear down Great Britain by means of bombing raids on British centers and U-boat and bombing attacks on British shipping."