CHURCHILL TALKS TURKEY TO THE NEUTRALS. Britain’s First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, gave Europe’s neutral nations a harsh warning in a radio speech Saturday -- join the Allies in “united action” to stop Hitlerism, or else fall prey to Nazi aggression. Addressing the threatened peoples of the Low Countries, Scandinavia, and elsewhere, Mr. Churchill offered a pessimistic summary of the neutrals’ prospects for remaining free and at peace (the quotation is from Sunday’s Associated Press account) --
“At present [the neutrals] plight is lamentable and it will become much worse. They bow humbly and in fear to German threats of violence, comforting themselves meanwhile with the thoughts that the Allies will win....Each one hopes that if he feeds the crocodile enough, the crocodile will eat him last. All of them hope that the storm will pass before their turn comes to be devoured. But I fear greatly that the storm will not pass. It will rage and it will roar ever more loudly, ever more widely. It will spread to the South, it will spread to the North. There is no chance of a speedy end except through united action, and if at any time Britain and France, wearying of the struggle, were to make a shameful peace, nothing would remain for the smaller states of Europe...but to be divided between the opposite, though similar, barbarisms of Nazidom and Bolshevism.”
I’m of two minds about this kind of talk. On the one hand, Mr. Churchill’s tough rhetoric, beautifully crafted as it is, seems like just the sort of talk to spread alarm and distrust in, say, Belgium and Holland. The unintended effect of such oratory might be to drive the Low Countries away from useful, private military contacts with France and Britain. And it’s hard not to sympathize with the Dutch in particular, who managed to stay neutral throughout the World War, and are hoping against hope for similar success in staying out of this one. On the other hand...as alarming as Mr. Churchill’s views are, might he be right? He certainly has been a better prognosticator of Hitler’s intentions than Prime Minister Chamberlain, who last August closed up Parliament and went on a long fishing vacation just before the Polish crisis came to its final boil. (Churchill, for the record, denounced Chamberlain for his carelessness).
CHURCHILL’S TRIBUTE TO THE FINNS. Mr. Churchill’s tribute to the valiant Finns is also worth mentioning -- “The service rendered by Finland to mankind is magnificent. There, exposed for all the world to see, is the military incapacity of the Red army and the Red air force. Many an illusion about Russia has been dispelled in these few fierce weeks of fighting in the Arctic Circle.”
Good words. But unless I missed it, he said nothing, alas, about Britain helping with Finland’s need for more troops, more planes and tanks, more munitions and supplies. And no mention that Britain’s own military men have warned that if the Finns do not get lots of military aid before May, the Russians will yet score a breakthrough. When will the Chamberlain government offer the Finns more than kind sentiments? And isn’t it hollow to ask the neutrals to do for the Allies what Britain has not yet been willing to do for the Finns?
WHAT WAS CHURCHILL AFTER? Barnet Nover doesn’t see any advantage for the Allies in Mr; Churchill’s speech, and raises some questions about it Monday in his Washington Post column --
“He could hardly have entertained the belief that such a speech would make friends for the Allies in the Netherlands and Belgium, in Norway and Sweden. If anything, it is likely to antagonize them. What, then, was Churchill after? Was it merely to pose an issue which becomes daily sharper in the Europe of 1940 -- the division of Europe between the aggressors, on the one hand, and their actual and potential victims on the other? Or was he merely playing a long shot? For even if Churchill’s bid is, as it is likely to be, immediately and unequivocally rejected by spokesmen of the small European neutrals., it may give Germany a pretext to justify that aggression against the Low Countries or Sweden or Switzerland which has long been feared. The answer to this question may soon be forthcoming -- in Berlin.”
HITLER’S OPTIONS FOR AN ATTACK ON BRITAIN. With the Western Front as quiet as a cathedral on the moon, the speculations go on as to whether, and when, Hitler will take the offensive. The New York Times’ Berlin correspdent, Otto D. Tolischus, offers his own analysis, a fine one, in the Times Sunday “week in review” section. Mr. Tolischus says the Fuehrer and his generals are supposed to have reached the conclusion than an attack should be directed at Britain. Their reasoning is that “even if they defeat France...they still must defeat Britain to win the war,” but “if they defeat Britain first, France falls automatically.” Plus, the strength of modern fortifications such as the Maginot Line would make a German attack on France spectacularly bloody, and almost surely futile. The article mentions two possible ways the Nazi war machine will try to subdue the British --
“(1) A paralyzing air attack on Great Britain, smashing ports and industries and crippling her war-potential. This, however, is believed possible only if Germany is able to provide her bombers with an escort of speedy, powerful pursuit planes capable of flying to England and back...(2) A direct invasion of England with an expeditionary force in the manner of William the Conqueror, which already has been suggested in the German press. However, this project, as well as a decisive air attack, is held possible with Germany’s present equipment only if Germany controls the Channel coast and ports at least as far as Calais, where her airplanes would have closer landing fields and where long-range guns might have a chance to keep a lane clear of the British Navy....It is difficult to conceive how this would be accomplished unless Belgium and presumably the Netherlands were overrun first.”
BUT DON’T RULE OUT AN ATTACK ON FRANCE. Mr. Tolischus also mentions in his New York Times’ article a lesser possibility, though not one to be ruled out -- a direct attack on the Maginot Line “in an effort to bleed France, whether the Germans could break through or not.” There is, after all, always the chance the Nazis really could defeat the French defenses through a murderous war of attrition, since they now have a two-to-one advantage in manpower. “It would perhaps be the hardest way of trying to win the war, but if France should fall Germany would be in control of what she regards as England’s continental bridgehead, from where an attack might be launched against England herself.”
Ominously, Mr. Tolischus adds that time is not on Hitler’s side. “Unless such an attack is staged by Spring,” he writes, “it will be too late to stage it at all.” Thereafter, Germany’s military superiority, especially in airplanes, will decline, as Britain’s increased production of war materials brings the Allies closer and closer to being on par with the Reich.
ALL, OR NOTHING AT ALL. Writing in Sunday’s New York Herald Tribune, Major George Fielding Eliot rejects the “loose talk” that the U.S. could participate military in the European war by giving the Allies financial and economic assistance, or even aerial or naval support -- without sending an expeditionary army to France. He even seems to agree with the isolationists that the lesser aid measures proposed by the Roosevelt administration shouldn’t be carried out unless we’re ultimately willing to fight --
“[W]e might remind ourselves that our history and national character do not incline us toward half measures, do not indicate that we are likely to wage half a war. We might, therefore, usefully reflect not only upon the nature of the propositions now being bruited about, but also on the certainly that unless we wish to get into this war all the way we will do well to avoid taking the first steps in that direction. If it is to our vital interests to get in, let us get in with our whole strength devoted toward the single end of victory. If it is to our greater interest to stay out, let us not deceive ourselves that we can go halfway down the path of war without proceeding to its end.”
THOSE RASCALLY FINNS. For almost two months now, Soviet Russia has waged undeclared war against Finland. Now, after weeks of unprovoked bombing, strafing, shelling, blasting, and shooting by the Red Army, the Russians are now threatening the Finns with...a declaration of war. Why? According to a Finnish-language broadcast on the Moscow radio, monitored by the International News Service, Finnish troops in the Suomussalmi sector “stole weapons from the Russians” in the process of wiping out two divisions’ worth of Soviet soldiers. A woman’s voice warned the Finns that unless the weapons “are returned to their rightful owners, war will be declared.”
I’m not making this up.
Saturday, January 23, 2016
Thursday, January 21, 2016
Sunday, January 21, 1940
SWEDES JOIN THE FIGHT AGAINST RUSSIA. According to an Associated Press story yesterday by Wade Werner, “increasing numbers” of Swedish volunteer pilots have joined the Finnish defense effort, and are taking on Soviet planes and troops in Lapland, above the Arctic Circle. They are protecting Finnish forces against swarms of Russian bombers, “up to 450 in one day,” which have hit the north and south of Finland in the last week or so. The Finns also say the Swedes are “taking a toll” on Russian ground units. Swedish volunteers number about a thousand so far -- they are supplied by their government and commanded by their own officers. They have been joined by much smaller numbers of Finnish-Americans, Norwegians, Danes, and Italians.
FINLAND’S STILL WINNING -- FOR NOW. An A.P. story Friday said that this same Russian force, which in December had tried to cut Finland in half across her “waist” and had succeeded in penetrating 65 miles inside the Russian border, is now “fighting a bitter rear-guard battle an a desperate attempt to escape to the [Russian] frontier.” The Finns say the Russians have been driven back 28 miles in bitter cold, which continues to give the defenders an advantage. “The Russians, hungry and frost-bitten, were said by the Finns to be poorly equipped, whereas the defenders were clad in heavy boots, many pairs of woolen socks, heavy uniforms and sheepskin coats,” reports the A.P.
Once again, it sounds like the Finns are holding their own. But another report from the A.P. on Saturday cites British military authorities as declaring it would take an influx of 30,000 more trained soldiers, 200 planes and a “generous supply” of military equipment to “save” Finland from an eventual Russian breakthrough -- if all of it were to arrive before May. Outside of Sweden, will the many countries which have offered verbal support to the Finns put their money -- and men -- where their mouths are?
THE MURROW-SHIRER JOINT BROADCAST. In case you didn’t catch it, the C.B.S. did an interesting broadcast Thursday night from Holland featuring its two top European correspondents side-by-side. Edward R. Murrow, Columbia’s man in London, joined William Shirer, the network’s Berlin reporter, to speculate on how the Allies and the German Reich will fare in the weeks ahead.
The two men spent several minutes tossing good-natured barbs at one another but made one serious point above all – there doesn’t seem to be any way Britain, France, and Germany will negotiate a peace settlement before the war gets serious. Mr. Murrow says there is “plenty” of official talk in London about negotiating a peace, but only if the Germans get rid of their Nazi rulers first. Mr. Shirer says the British offer isn’t trusted either by German officials or ordinary burghers, who now believe emphatically that either Germany must win the war or be “smashed completely.” The German “peace offensive” is over, and don’t underestimate the sacrifices the Germans will make to “avoid another Versailles,” Mr. Shirer warns. On top of that, Mr. Murrow observes that “people are beginning to get mad in Britain” as well, and are no longer willing to draw such a clear-cut distinction between the German government and its people.
The upshot is that the Germans expect “plenty of action in the spring,” Mr. Shirer says, but what kind of action is anyone’s guess. Mr. Murrow says the British “get a different theory every twenty-four hours,” but they confidently figure that their blockade is squeezing the Nazis pretty hard, and that Hitler’s regime will eventually crack without a major battle. Mr. Shirer, meanwhile, notes a promise made the other day by Dr. Frick, German minister of the interior, that “no lives will be thrown away” in the war. Thus, Mr. Shirer speculates that a Nazi attack won’t be directed at France, i.e., a bloody affair aimed at breaking the Maginot Line. Instead it could well be an immense air offensive aimed at destroying Britain. The two reporters marveled at Amsterdam, a city devoid of blackouts and war shortages, and hoped they could return to a peaceful Holland in the spring. Alas, if the Germans do launch an all-out air attack on Britain in the coming months, they will likely seize Belgium and the Netherlands as air bases for that effort.
WESTERN FRONT IS “QUIETER THAN EVER.” Whatever happens in the days ahead, last week’s scare over an impending German attack on Belgium and Holland seems to have come to nothing. And a wireless from Paris in Saturday’s New York Times says that the situation on the French-German front line has never been “so marked, with days and nights equally quiet, as now.” The dispatch adds that “despite periodical scares there is no trustworthy indication that anything is going to happen soon. More French commentators are now echoing the questions suggested...in recent weeks: Will the Germans attack in the Spring? Are there valid reasons why they should? The truth is that nobody knows.”
“ROULETTE WITH DESTINY.” New York Herald Tribune columnist Dorothy Thompson served up a blistering rebuke Friday to isolationists in Congress who have succeeded thus far in denying additional U.S. loans to Finland on that grounds that such aid is “unneutral” --
“In one of the most critical moments of history Congress has chosen to behave with extreme frivolity. In a moment when every small neutral in Europe is trembling in fear of an extension of undeclared war; when all Scandinavia fears a breakthrough of the Russian armies, and when Holland and Belgium fear an assault from Germany; the world’s greatest neutral has slapped Finland’s face in the most ostentatious way and in view of the whole earth....Finland would never have applied for a loan had there been the slightest indication that it would have been refused. The refusal is a staggering political blow. It is the greatest political victory that Stalin has had thus far. It is at the same time, aid and assistance to the most immoderate forces in Germany. The moderates have been trying to stay Hitler’s hand by telling him that another aggression against a neutral state would outrage all neutral countries, particularly the United States....If we turn down the loan to Finland, we shall stand for international anarchy, and hope that by repressive measures at home we can stop it from spreading here -- while we give notice to the world that the United States is scared....We are not behaving like ourselves.”
SCREWY WEATHER (II). New York City is facing a rare bout of zero-degree temperatures, while in Chicago the mercury has dipped to minus fourteen -- that city’s coldest weather in several years. The New York Times also reports “such meteorological oddities as icicles in Alabama and a reading of 39 above zero in Alaska.” Eighty-two persons have died in twenty-four states due to the widespread cold wave. Still, our own country can’t hold a candle to the Finnish interior, where soldiers are braving temperatures as low as fifty-eight degrees below zero -- the coldest there since 1878.
Was it only a couple of months ago (Nov. 6, to be exact) when the Associated Press reported the claims of climatologists that the world was getting steadily warmer, and that the warming trend might signal “the start of one of the major changes in climate which the earth has not known since geological time, long before recorded history”?
REST IN PEACE, SENATOR BORAH. In life, he was a controversial figure -- adored by isolationists most recently for his leading, though futile, role last fall to prevent Congress from repealing the arms embargo provisions of the Neutrality Act. He also angered supporters of President Roosevelt plenty of times, such as in 1938 when he rallied opposition to the President’s abortive plan to put new justices on the Supreme Court. The grey-maned “Lion of Idaho” represented his state for a third of a century in the Senate, and was consistent in his isolationism throughout his service -- he had crusaded against membership in the League of Nations in 1919.
But when Borah died of a cerebral hemorrhage last week at the age of 74, his friends and adversaries united to pay him fair tribute. President Roosevelt said it well enough -- “Although, perhaps on this or that or the other political problem, we may have differed from time to time -- yet his purpose, my purpose, and the ultimate objectives of, I think, everybody in this room, interested in the future of America -- those purposes were identical. And the Nation has lost one of its great leaders in his passing.”
FINLAND’S STILL WINNING -- FOR NOW. An A.P. story Friday said that this same Russian force, which in December had tried to cut Finland in half across her “waist” and had succeeded in penetrating 65 miles inside the Russian border, is now “fighting a bitter rear-guard battle an a desperate attempt to escape to the [Russian] frontier.” The Finns say the Russians have been driven back 28 miles in bitter cold, which continues to give the defenders an advantage. “The Russians, hungry and frost-bitten, were said by the Finns to be poorly equipped, whereas the defenders were clad in heavy boots, many pairs of woolen socks, heavy uniforms and sheepskin coats,” reports the A.P.
Once again, it sounds like the Finns are holding their own. But another report from the A.P. on Saturday cites British military authorities as declaring it would take an influx of 30,000 more trained soldiers, 200 planes and a “generous supply” of military equipment to “save” Finland from an eventual Russian breakthrough -- if all of it were to arrive before May. Outside of Sweden, will the many countries which have offered verbal support to the Finns put their money -- and men -- where their mouths are?
THE MURROW-SHIRER JOINT BROADCAST. In case you didn’t catch it, the C.B.S. did an interesting broadcast Thursday night from Holland featuring its two top European correspondents side-by-side. Edward R. Murrow, Columbia’s man in London, joined William Shirer, the network’s Berlin reporter, to speculate on how the Allies and the German Reich will fare in the weeks ahead.
The two men spent several minutes tossing good-natured barbs at one another but made one serious point above all – there doesn’t seem to be any way Britain, France, and Germany will negotiate a peace settlement before the war gets serious. Mr. Murrow says there is “plenty” of official talk in London about negotiating a peace, but only if the Germans get rid of their Nazi rulers first. Mr. Shirer says the British offer isn’t trusted either by German officials or ordinary burghers, who now believe emphatically that either Germany must win the war or be “smashed completely.” The German “peace offensive” is over, and don’t underestimate the sacrifices the Germans will make to “avoid another Versailles,” Mr. Shirer warns. On top of that, Mr. Murrow observes that “people are beginning to get mad in Britain” as well, and are no longer willing to draw such a clear-cut distinction between the German government and its people.
The upshot is that the Germans expect “plenty of action in the spring,” Mr. Shirer says, but what kind of action is anyone’s guess. Mr. Murrow says the British “get a different theory every twenty-four hours,” but they confidently figure that their blockade is squeezing the Nazis pretty hard, and that Hitler’s regime will eventually crack without a major battle. Mr. Shirer, meanwhile, notes a promise made the other day by Dr. Frick, German minister of the interior, that “no lives will be thrown away” in the war. Thus, Mr. Shirer speculates that a Nazi attack won’t be directed at France, i.e., a bloody affair aimed at breaking the Maginot Line. Instead it could well be an immense air offensive aimed at destroying Britain. The two reporters marveled at Amsterdam, a city devoid of blackouts and war shortages, and hoped they could return to a peaceful Holland in the spring. Alas, if the Germans do launch an all-out air attack on Britain in the coming months, they will likely seize Belgium and the Netherlands as air bases for that effort.
WESTERN FRONT IS “QUIETER THAN EVER.” Whatever happens in the days ahead, last week’s scare over an impending German attack on Belgium and Holland seems to have come to nothing. And a wireless from Paris in Saturday’s New York Times says that the situation on the French-German front line has never been “so marked, with days and nights equally quiet, as now.” The dispatch adds that “despite periodical scares there is no trustworthy indication that anything is going to happen soon. More French commentators are now echoing the questions suggested...in recent weeks: Will the Germans attack in the Spring? Are there valid reasons why they should? The truth is that nobody knows.”
“ROULETTE WITH DESTINY.” New York Herald Tribune columnist Dorothy Thompson served up a blistering rebuke Friday to isolationists in Congress who have succeeded thus far in denying additional U.S. loans to Finland on that grounds that such aid is “unneutral” --
“In one of the most critical moments of history Congress has chosen to behave with extreme frivolity. In a moment when every small neutral in Europe is trembling in fear of an extension of undeclared war; when all Scandinavia fears a breakthrough of the Russian armies, and when Holland and Belgium fear an assault from Germany; the world’s greatest neutral has slapped Finland’s face in the most ostentatious way and in view of the whole earth....Finland would never have applied for a loan had there been the slightest indication that it would have been refused. The refusal is a staggering political blow. It is the greatest political victory that Stalin has had thus far. It is at the same time, aid and assistance to the most immoderate forces in Germany. The moderates have been trying to stay Hitler’s hand by telling him that another aggression against a neutral state would outrage all neutral countries, particularly the United States....If we turn down the loan to Finland, we shall stand for international anarchy, and hope that by repressive measures at home we can stop it from spreading here -- while we give notice to the world that the United States is scared....We are not behaving like ourselves.”
SCREWY WEATHER (II). New York City is facing a rare bout of zero-degree temperatures, while in Chicago the mercury has dipped to minus fourteen -- that city’s coldest weather in several years. The New York Times also reports “such meteorological oddities as icicles in Alabama and a reading of 39 above zero in Alaska.” Eighty-two persons have died in twenty-four states due to the widespread cold wave. Still, our own country can’t hold a candle to the Finnish interior, where soldiers are braving temperatures as low as fifty-eight degrees below zero -- the coldest there since 1878.
Was it only a couple of months ago (Nov. 6, to be exact) when the Associated Press reported the claims of climatologists that the world was getting steadily warmer, and that the warming trend might signal “the start of one of the major changes in climate which the earth has not known since geological time, long before recorded history”?
REST IN PEACE, SENATOR BORAH. In life, he was a controversial figure -- adored by isolationists most recently for his leading, though futile, role last fall to prevent Congress from repealing the arms embargo provisions of the Neutrality Act. He also angered supporters of President Roosevelt plenty of times, such as in 1938 when he rallied opposition to the President’s abortive plan to put new justices on the Supreme Court. The grey-maned “Lion of Idaho” represented his state for a third of a century in the Senate, and was consistent in his isolationism throughout his service -- he had crusaded against membership in the League of Nations in 1919.
But when Borah died of a cerebral hemorrhage last week at the age of 74, his friends and adversaries united to pay him fair tribute. President Roosevelt said it well enough -- “Although, perhaps on this or that or the other political problem, we may have differed from time to time -- yet his purpose, my purpose, and the ultimate objectives of, I think, everybody in this room, interested in the future of America -- those purposes were identical. And the Nation has lost one of its great leaders in his passing.”
Monday, January 18, 2016
Thursday, January 18, 1940
CONGRESS FIGHTS OVER A FINNISH LOAN. President Roosevelt’s proposed new loan to Finland for purchase of non-military supplies has stirred up a storm in Congress -- in some ways it sounds like a transcription disc of the arms embargo debate last fall. The isolationists are jumping up an down claiming that giving loans to Finland is “unneutral.’ Senator Nye argues that a loan would be -- you guessed it -- a ‘first step” toward sending in American soldiers to fight Europe’s wars. “If we great a loan,” he says in Wednesday’s, Chicago Tribune, “the squeeze will become greater and greater. We will have to give more and more, and then it will be easy to go the rest of the route.”
Actually, the administration has already granted the Finns $10 million in credits to purchase agricultural goods and “other civilian supplies.” One proposal before the Senate Banking Committee, for a direct government loan of $60 million, probably won’t get far. But the President now suggests another loan could be advanced to the Finns through Import-Export Bank extensions of credit. No sum was named, but the New York Times puts the amount at $25 million. The Roosevelt plan also requires authorizing the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to purchase loans and securities from the bank, as an essential part of the transaction. Chesley Manly in the Tribune quotes those who calls this a ‘subterfuge,” while the Times story refers to it as a “compromise.”
However much (or little) it would help the Finns, who this week are fighting in temperatures of 55 below zero, the debate once again exposes the peculiarities of both sides in the neutrality debate. House Majority Leader Rayburn opposes “unneutral” action on our part, but says approvingly that if the Finns don’t need U.S. agricultural products which could be bought with the loans, they could trade them elsewhere “for other products,” i.e., munitions. His reasoning appears to be that it would be bad to let Finland buy U.S. munitions with U.S. loans, but good to let Finland buy, in roundabout fashion, French munitions with U.S. loans. Such are the verbal pirouettes that pro-administration congressmen use to disguise their pro-interventionist beliefs. On the other side, Senator George said during this week’s debate, “We all sympathize with Finland...Finland is a foreign country fighting...for the principles we hold dear. But...a loan to Finland is an unneutral act.” Yes, we sympathize with the democratic Finns, fighting for their lives against a heartless, bloodthirsty dictatorship, but...not all that much.
RUSSIA’S NEXT TARGET -- THE MIDDLE EAST? H.N. Brailsford has an interesting essay in thsi week’s New Republic suggesting the possibility of just that --
“...[T]he Nazis have been trying, not without a measure of success, to embroil the Russians with the Turks. Dr. Goebbels’ organ in the press made the flattering suggestion that in the Middle East the laurels of Alexander would become Stalin’s brow. The hero operated as far afield as India, but his chief exploits lay in the lands which we describe as Turkey, Syria, Irak, and Iran. Any martial adventures in this region would automatically involve the western allies. This seemed too crude a trap, for Turkey has been for twenty years Russia’s only steadfast friend. There followed, none the less, in the organ of the Communist International, threats which were aimed first at Rumania and then at Turkey. The article was indeed disavowed. In view of the slow progress of the Finnish campaign, it may have been rather a premature disclosure of Russian policy than a false one. To lure Russia into active belligerency, not on the western front...but in the Middle East, is one use which Germany might make of Russia’s new status of outlawry.”
THE NAZI WINTER. Sigrid Schultz writes in Wednesday’s Chicago Tribune of the hardships Berliners are facing in the January weather --
“Altho the cold wave has abated slightly, the shortage of coal continued to be a serious problem in Berlin today. The capital’s technical high school was closed because of the lack of coal. A number of schools which have used up their coal reserves sent pupils home for an indefinite period. The children were instructed to report twice a week to learn if enough coal had been accumulated to heat the classrooms. The shortage of coal for heating water in apartment buildings is so acute that the authorities have ruled that hot water can be furnished twice a week at the utmost. The chief topic of conversation among men was how to shave with their tiny rationed amounts of shaving soap and the lack of hot water. Housewives bemoaned their washday difficulties in view of the shortage of soap, soda, and hot water.”
Actually, the administration has already granted the Finns $10 million in credits to purchase agricultural goods and “other civilian supplies.” One proposal before the Senate Banking Committee, for a direct government loan of $60 million, probably won’t get far. But the President now suggests another loan could be advanced to the Finns through Import-Export Bank extensions of credit. No sum was named, but the New York Times puts the amount at $25 million. The Roosevelt plan also requires authorizing the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to purchase loans and securities from the bank, as an essential part of the transaction. Chesley Manly in the Tribune quotes those who calls this a ‘subterfuge,” while the Times story refers to it as a “compromise.”
However much (or little) it would help the Finns, who this week are fighting in temperatures of 55 below zero, the debate once again exposes the peculiarities of both sides in the neutrality debate. House Majority Leader Rayburn opposes “unneutral” action on our part, but says approvingly that if the Finns don’t need U.S. agricultural products which could be bought with the loans, they could trade them elsewhere “for other products,” i.e., munitions. His reasoning appears to be that it would be bad to let Finland buy U.S. munitions with U.S. loans, but good to let Finland buy, in roundabout fashion, French munitions with U.S. loans. Such are the verbal pirouettes that pro-administration congressmen use to disguise their pro-interventionist beliefs. On the other side, Senator George said during this week’s debate, “We all sympathize with Finland...Finland is a foreign country fighting...for the principles we hold dear. But...a loan to Finland is an unneutral act.” Yes, we sympathize with the democratic Finns, fighting for their lives against a heartless, bloodthirsty dictatorship, but...not all that much.
RUSSIA’S NEXT TARGET -- THE MIDDLE EAST? H.N. Brailsford has an interesting essay in thsi week’s New Republic suggesting the possibility of just that --
“...[T]he Nazis have been trying, not without a measure of success, to embroil the Russians with the Turks. Dr. Goebbels’ organ in the press made the flattering suggestion that in the Middle East the laurels of Alexander would become Stalin’s brow. The hero operated as far afield as India, but his chief exploits lay in the lands which we describe as Turkey, Syria, Irak, and Iran. Any martial adventures in this region would automatically involve the western allies. This seemed too crude a trap, for Turkey has been for twenty years Russia’s only steadfast friend. There followed, none the less, in the organ of the Communist International, threats which were aimed first at Rumania and then at Turkey. The article was indeed disavowed. In view of the slow progress of the Finnish campaign, it may have been rather a premature disclosure of Russian policy than a false one. To lure Russia into active belligerency, not on the western front...but in the Middle East, is one use which Germany might make of Russia’s new status of outlawry.”
THE NAZI WINTER. Sigrid Schultz writes in Wednesday’s Chicago Tribune of the hardships Berliners are facing in the January weather --
“Altho the cold wave has abated slightly, the shortage of coal continued to be a serious problem in Berlin today. The capital’s technical high school was closed because of the lack of coal. A number of schools which have used up their coal reserves sent pupils home for an indefinite period. The children were instructed to report twice a week to learn if enough coal had been accumulated to heat the classrooms. The shortage of coal for heating water in apartment buildings is so acute that the authorities have ruled that hot water can be furnished twice a week at the utmost. The chief topic of conversation among men was how to shave with their tiny rationed amounts of shaving soap and the lack of hot water. Housewives bemoaned their washday difficulties in view of the shortage of soap, soda, and hot water.”
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)