“WORST DISASTER” YET FOR THE RED ARMY? As fighting continues on the frozen battlefields north of Finland’s Lake Ladoga, newspaper reports from Sunday and Monday report the Finns ever-nearer to victory -- but not yet ready to claim it. An Associated Press story from Sunday says the “beaten fragments” of four Soviet divisions in the region are “scattered in headlong flight,” while a United Press report from Monday says that the Russians have suffered between 20,000 and 25,000 casualties in the Lake Ladoga fighting, “including several thousand killed in battle and many more wounded who froze to death on the sub-zero battlefields before aid could be given to them.” The A.P.’s Monday report allows the Russians “only a bare chance” of escaping complete defeat. But the careful reader will notice that the latest dispatches no longer refer to two of the divisions being completely encircled.
“When the whole story is told, the Finns said, it will show the worst disaster of the Russian invasion.” So says the A.P. I hope it’s true.
LET SOMEBODY ELSE PROTECT THE VICTIMS. The editors of the New Republic have duly condemned Russia's aggression against Finland, but they don’t seem to care all that much what happens to the Finns themselves --
“The help that Finland needs can be provided much more quickly and in larger quantities by other nations, which are nearer and more immediately concerned. Sweden is the nearest, and Sweden apparently is helping, though not to the fullest extent of her ability -- for it must not be forgotten that Sweden has not only more manpower than Finland but the resources and plants for a considerable war industry. Britain and France come next. Did we not learn officially a few days ago that they had decided to render ‘substantial’ aid? They surely can spare enough materials and money for so crucial a campaign, in which a little help would go so long a way....And what about the Polish and Czecho-Slovak forces reorganized in France? What about even Italy, which at least pretends to fear Bolshevism? It looks decidedly as if a concerted effort were being made to play on American sympathy for the Finns to get us into the war by a back door, or at least to break down our embargo on credits to belligerents. When it is clear that Finland has received all possible help from her European friends and needs still more, it will be time -- if ever -- to consider accepting this task.”
In other words, it’s alright for the U.S. to loan the Finns $20,000,000 or so for purchase of non-military goods, as some in Congress are now proposing. But only after all possible help has been rendered to the Finns by Sweden, Britain, France, Italy, and, to top it off, the tiny remnants of the Polish and Czecho-Slovak armies. Then, if Finland still requires aid -- then we should “consider” giving the Finns a hand. I doubt if Finland’s brave fighters will hold their breath expecting any good to come from the patently counterfeit expressions of sympathy that now and then dot the New Republic.
THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE SHOWS ITS BIAS AGAIN. Larry Rue of the Chicago Tribune “reports” the following in a “news story” published in Monday’s edition --
“The accusation of Winston Churchill, British first lord of the admiralty, that the neutrals were cowards trembling before the German crocodile, was followed yesterday by a statement by William S. Morrison, British minister of food, before a labor conference, that the neutrals’ aid was essential to shortening the war. These speeches gave rise to a growing indignation that has turned into a growing opinion that the war cannot be won by either side without imposing greater sacrifices of human life, suffering and money than victory could justify.”
That “opinion” wouldn’t happen to be shared by Mr. Rue, would it? And where exactly in Mr. Churchill’s text did he refer to the neutral nations as “cowards”?
GERMANY MUST WIN OR “DIE TRYING.” Anyone who thinks that “peace without victory” is still possible in the war between Germany and the Allies ought to read the excellent analysis of Hitler’s seventh anniversary in power, by Percival Knauth in Sunday’s New York Times --
“If National Socialist history has anything to tell those who would like to use it as a guide to the future it is this: ‘Either National Socialist Germany will win this war or Germany will die.’ When Hitler said ‘Capitulation -- never!’ he meant it. Specific events cannot be foretold with any degree of certainty. But, however strong may be the rumors circulating among the German people of ‘peace before next August’, it may be said with a great deal of certainty that, if the Nazis have their way, the war will not end till Germany wins it or dies trying. Germany under Adolph Hitler has been preparing for this fundamental dispute since he acquired power.”
RETURN OF THE “WAR REFERENDUM”. A new Gallup survey in Sunday’s Washington Post says the proposed constitutional amendment to put a U.S. declaration of war to a popular vote may be making a comeback. Ten months ago the idea was favored by a solid majority of voters, 61% to 39% and then, when Germany invaded Poland, Americans were almost evenly split, 51% to 49%, on the so-called “war referendum.” Now, according to Gallup, the proposal is again favored, by almost the same margin as last March -- 60% to 40%. And a bipartisan pair of congressmen, Fish of New York and Ludlow of Indiana, have announced they will press their colleagues to consider it. The amendment would not restrict the U.S. from resisting an invasion, but would apply to any presidential request to involve the U.S. in a foreign conflict. The Roosevelt administration rightfully opposes the whole business.
Dr. Gallup summarizes the most common arguments voters make for the proposal as -- “(1) that the people do the fighting and should have the right to decide such fateful decisions for themselves, (2) that there would be less chance of America entering a war if the drafting of troops were left with the public, and (3) that ‘we have no business overseas.’” Popular arguments against the idea, says the pollster, are that “a vote would take too long,” or “the other side could have us half-licked by that time.”
A BRITISH OFFENSIVE -- SOMEDAY? Britain’s First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, bellowed the following in a speech excerpted in Sunday’s New York Times -- “We do not wish indefinitely to continue merely awaiting the blows which have struck us and then responding in good time. We hope the day will come when we shall hand that job over to Hitler, and when he will be wondering where he is going to be struck next.”
NOISE AND SILENCE ON THE THIRD TERM. President Roosevelt continues his silence as to whether or not he might run for a third term -- but has done nothing yet to scotch a “draft Roosevelt” movement gathering momentum in the Democratic Party. Meanwhile, two members of the President’s own cabinet, Interior Secretary Ickes and Labor Secretary Perkins, have endorsed a third term in recent days, while C.I.O. leader John L. Lewis declared the Democrats will face “ignominious defeat” if Roosevelt runs again. The most amusing comment of the last few days was printed in Sunday’s New York Herald Tribune, when they telephoned Mayor LaGuardia about rumors he might run as F.D.R.’s vice president this year. Quoting from the article --
“‘Listen to that,’ said the Mayor as the strains of the second movement of Beethoven’s symphony, played by the New York City Symphony Orchestra and broadcast by Station WNYC, came in over the radio in his home, 1274 Fifth Avenue. ‘Would you ruin my enjoyment of music by talking politics?’”
Saturday, January 30, 2016
Thursday, January 28, 2016
Sunday, January 28, 1940
BRITISH SHIPS SEIZE U.S. MAIL. A controversy has been smouldering between Britain and the United States over an issue which, once upon a time, led to war between the two nations. The British Navy has been in recent days seizing and inspecting mail pouches from U.S. ships headed to Europe, claiming that pro-Nazi interests in America are smuggling contraband goods into Germany by letter and parcel. A Thursday New York Herald Tribune story by Frank R. Kelley quotes officials of the British Ministry of Economic Warfare as claiming the searches have uncovered “a traffic so large that it fully justified the continued interference” in U.S. mail delivery. Britain also alleges there is “a highly organized system for collecting money from Americans of Nazi sympathies” and wirelessing it to Holland, where it is converted into food parcels for shipment to the Reich. Officials also put on display seized food parcels shipped directly from America with false customs declarations, such as “designs of stained glass.”
The State Department has formally protested the seizures, and Secretary Hull has insisted the British “bring about an immediate correction of this situation.” Meanwhile, Major George Fielding Eliot suggests in a Herald Tribune analysis that the seizures are purely due to British arrogance -- “The cold hard fact is that Great Britain has ceased to be the world-dominant naval power, though she continues to behave as if she were.” He recommends, I think appropriately so, that the Roosevelt administration provide a U.S. naval escort to mail-carrying ships. That ought to immediately deter the British from this short-sighted foolhardiness.
At least some Britons are taking a more thoughtful attitude toward the matter. Saturday’s Chicago Tribune quotes an editorial from London’s Daily Express, noting that however much canned coffee, prunes, and chocolate are finding their way to Germany through the U.S. mail, it doesn’t amount to anything more than a pitifully minor leakage in the blockade. “Nothing we are likely to find in letters or packages is worth a quarrel with America,” the editors say, adding that if the mail seizure “risks disturbing good relations, then we should stop the search.” Amen to that.
FINNISH VICTORY AT LAKE LADOGA. Big war story of the last two days has been the Red Army’s desperate fight in the icy wilderness north of Finland’s Lake Ladoga, in which two divisions are said to be trapped by Finnish forces and two other divisions are battering in vain at Finnish lines near the towns of Kollaanjoki and Tolvajaervi. According to a dispatch by K.J. Eskelund in Saturday’s New York Times, more than 1,000 Red soldiers fell in Thursday’s operations north of the lake, where fresh Russian detachments tried to cross the ice to relieve encircled troops at Kitalae. They were repulsed by a withering Finnish artillery fire. Farther south, savage new Russian attacks on the Mannerheim Line were also beaten back.
The Russian units which aren’t encircled are still significantly handicapped, by having to deal with the coldest winter weather in the area in sixty years, and by non-stop Finnish guerilla attacks on their supply lines. And Wade Werner, Associated Press correspondent, reports Saturday that as the Lake Ladoga battle unfolds, Finnish strategists feel they are “on the verge of another coup such as the one which brought destruction to two Russian divisions on the Salla front.” The United Press now says that overall, Russian casualties in the two-month Finnish campaign have topped 100,000.
What are the Russian people hearing about all this? Well, the official Soviet communique describing Thursday’s operations said simply, “Nothing of importance took place at the front.”
FULL-SCALE ALLIED HELP FOR FINLAND? The New York Herald Tribune reports one bit of good news on Friday -- the Allies might be willing to take on Russian aggression, after all. “Great Britain and France, it was disclosed [Thursday night], are dispatching a joint military mission to Finland to determine in detail what are the full military requirements of the Finns for defeating the Soviet invasion. It can now be said with assurance that the Allies are wholly prepared to meet these requirements in material and men -- though the men in question will be designated as ‘volunteers.’”
EMBARGO ON JAPAN? A number of articles ran in the papers Friday marking the official expiration of the twenty-eight-year-old commercial treaty between American and Japan. Most interesting was a story in the Washington Post by William V. Nessly describing moves in the U.S. Senate to promote an embargo on at least some Japanese trade. The Roosevelt administration has been reportedly interested in using the expiration of the treaty as a lever to prod Japan into giving up her aggression in China and agreeing to respect the U.S. and Europe's treaty rights in the Far East. No interruption in trade is planned at this time, but expiration of the treaty gives the U.S. government the ability to halt commerce without warning.
But according to the Post, a number of Senators are ready to embargo trade with Japan as soon as possible, and their ranks include isolationists as well as supporters of the President’s policy. Senator Schwellenbach, Democrat of Washington, is quoted as say the treaty’s lapse “gives us an opportunity to comply with the wishes of 75 per cent of our people by getting out of the Japanese-Chinese war.” Senator George, Democrat of Georgia, predicts that the Congress will vote to cut off sale of at least all war-related materials And Senator Pittman, chairman of the Commerce Committee, has suggested that Congress could start by boycotting war materials, and then could extend the embargo if Tokyo took reprisals against U.S. interests.
U.S. goods and purchases have been a vital part of Japan’s economic machine, says a new Commerce Department study cited by the Post -- “In 1938 and the first ten months of 1939, the United States supplied nearly 44 per cent of Japan’s imports from foreign currency countries, and bought from 27.9 to 33.7 per cent of her exports... ‘No other foreign currency country,’ [the report] said, ‘contributes anything like the share of the United States in Japan’s foreign trade.’” Thus, an embargo could be a powerful weapon to influence Japanese behavior.
THE MYTHICAL NAZI INVASION OF SWEDEN. It was only a one-paragraph Associated Press bulletin, but it prompted a screaming front-page banner headline in Friday’s Chicago Tribune -- “TO AMERICANS: FLEE SWEDEN.” The A.P. said the U.S. minister to Sweden had advised Americans to quit the country immediately because of “German troop concentrations” in north Germany facing the Swedes from across the Baltic Sea. The story caused no little consternation in Sweden, and an abrupt drop in her stock market.
But there was nothing to the tale, and a story in Saturday’s New York Times by George Axelsson set forth what actually happened. It seems the Stockholm daily Dagens Nyheter obtained the news that the U.S. minister had privately sent a circular to some Americans “urging the departure of those not having compelling reasons for remaining.” He did so of his own initiative and without consulting the State Department, which disavowed the advisory. The Times adds that the phantom German troop concentrations were “gratuitously added” to the story by the Dagens Nyheter. And for the sake of a sensational newspaper story, a nation was sent into panic, if only briefly.
MINISTERS OF WAR? The Chicago Tribune, in an editorial lauding Holland’s rebuff of Winston Churchill’s plea for neutrals to join the Allies, seemed to imply that certain unnamed churchmen in the U.S. are un-American, and should just simply get out of the country. This is apparently because they commit the sin of not being isolationist. The Tribune’s remarkable, curious, and somewhat obtuse comments, from Friday’s paper --
“Many men of peace in American churches -- clergymen and laymen -- have observed in some other pulpits and other congregations a tendency to revive the moral urge to war which made some churchmen recruiting agents for intervention in the other world war. The men of peace are trying to counteract in public opinion the warlike men of their cloth. The peaceful could tell the bellicose if they are more English than American that their consciences being so involved should lead them abroad to work personally for the cause in which they are enlisted. They should not remain here to conscript the sons of other families to assault the Siegfried line. If a nation has any moral rights it is to keep the peace. If a nation’s authorities have any moral duties one is to protect the people from avoidable war. And certainly peace has its shrine in religion.”
The State Department has formally protested the seizures, and Secretary Hull has insisted the British “bring about an immediate correction of this situation.” Meanwhile, Major George Fielding Eliot suggests in a Herald Tribune analysis that the seizures are purely due to British arrogance -- “The cold hard fact is that Great Britain has ceased to be the world-dominant naval power, though she continues to behave as if she were.” He recommends, I think appropriately so, that the Roosevelt administration provide a U.S. naval escort to mail-carrying ships. That ought to immediately deter the British from this short-sighted foolhardiness.
At least some Britons are taking a more thoughtful attitude toward the matter. Saturday’s Chicago Tribune quotes an editorial from London’s Daily Express, noting that however much canned coffee, prunes, and chocolate are finding their way to Germany through the U.S. mail, it doesn’t amount to anything more than a pitifully minor leakage in the blockade. “Nothing we are likely to find in letters or packages is worth a quarrel with America,” the editors say, adding that if the mail seizure “risks disturbing good relations, then we should stop the search.” Amen to that.
FINNISH VICTORY AT LAKE LADOGA. Big war story of the last two days has been the Red Army’s desperate fight in the icy wilderness north of Finland’s Lake Ladoga, in which two divisions are said to be trapped by Finnish forces and two other divisions are battering in vain at Finnish lines near the towns of Kollaanjoki and Tolvajaervi. According to a dispatch by K.J. Eskelund in Saturday’s New York Times, more than 1,000 Red soldiers fell in Thursday’s operations north of the lake, where fresh Russian detachments tried to cross the ice to relieve encircled troops at Kitalae. They were repulsed by a withering Finnish artillery fire. Farther south, savage new Russian attacks on the Mannerheim Line were also beaten back.
The Russian units which aren’t encircled are still significantly handicapped, by having to deal with the coldest winter weather in the area in sixty years, and by non-stop Finnish guerilla attacks on their supply lines. And Wade Werner, Associated Press correspondent, reports Saturday that as the Lake Ladoga battle unfolds, Finnish strategists feel they are “on the verge of another coup such as the one which brought destruction to two Russian divisions on the Salla front.” The United Press now says that overall, Russian casualties in the two-month Finnish campaign have topped 100,000.
What are the Russian people hearing about all this? Well, the official Soviet communique describing Thursday’s operations said simply, “Nothing of importance took place at the front.”
FULL-SCALE ALLIED HELP FOR FINLAND? The New York Herald Tribune reports one bit of good news on Friday -- the Allies might be willing to take on Russian aggression, after all. “Great Britain and France, it was disclosed [Thursday night], are dispatching a joint military mission to Finland to determine in detail what are the full military requirements of the Finns for defeating the Soviet invasion. It can now be said with assurance that the Allies are wholly prepared to meet these requirements in material and men -- though the men in question will be designated as ‘volunteers.’”
EMBARGO ON JAPAN? A number of articles ran in the papers Friday marking the official expiration of the twenty-eight-year-old commercial treaty between American and Japan. Most interesting was a story in the Washington Post by William V. Nessly describing moves in the U.S. Senate to promote an embargo on at least some Japanese trade. The Roosevelt administration has been reportedly interested in using the expiration of the treaty as a lever to prod Japan into giving up her aggression in China and agreeing to respect the U.S. and Europe's treaty rights in the Far East. No interruption in trade is planned at this time, but expiration of the treaty gives the U.S. government the ability to halt commerce without warning.
But according to the Post, a number of Senators are ready to embargo trade with Japan as soon as possible, and their ranks include isolationists as well as supporters of the President’s policy. Senator Schwellenbach, Democrat of Washington, is quoted as say the treaty’s lapse “gives us an opportunity to comply with the wishes of 75 per cent of our people by getting out of the Japanese-Chinese war.” Senator George, Democrat of Georgia, predicts that the Congress will vote to cut off sale of at least all war-related materials And Senator Pittman, chairman of the Commerce Committee, has suggested that Congress could start by boycotting war materials, and then could extend the embargo if Tokyo took reprisals against U.S. interests.
U.S. goods and purchases have been a vital part of Japan’s economic machine, says a new Commerce Department study cited by the Post -- “In 1938 and the first ten months of 1939, the United States supplied nearly 44 per cent of Japan’s imports from foreign currency countries, and bought from 27.9 to 33.7 per cent of her exports... ‘No other foreign currency country,’ [the report] said, ‘contributes anything like the share of the United States in Japan’s foreign trade.’” Thus, an embargo could be a powerful weapon to influence Japanese behavior.
THE MYTHICAL NAZI INVASION OF SWEDEN. It was only a one-paragraph Associated Press bulletin, but it prompted a screaming front-page banner headline in Friday’s Chicago Tribune -- “TO AMERICANS: FLEE SWEDEN.” The A.P. said the U.S. minister to Sweden had advised Americans to quit the country immediately because of “German troop concentrations” in north Germany facing the Swedes from across the Baltic Sea. The story caused no little consternation in Sweden, and an abrupt drop in her stock market.
But there was nothing to the tale, and a story in Saturday’s New York Times by George Axelsson set forth what actually happened. It seems the Stockholm daily Dagens Nyheter obtained the news that the U.S. minister had privately sent a circular to some Americans “urging the departure of those not having compelling reasons for remaining.” He did so of his own initiative and without consulting the State Department, which disavowed the advisory. The Times adds that the phantom German troop concentrations were “gratuitously added” to the story by the Dagens Nyheter. And for the sake of a sensational newspaper story, a nation was sent into panic, if only briefly.
MINISTERS OF WAR? The Chicago Tribune, in an editorial lauding Holland’s rebuff of Winston Churchill’s plea for neutrals to join the Allies, seemed to imply that certain unnamed churchmen in the U.S. are un-American, and should just simply get out of the country. This is apparently because they commit the sin of not being isolationist. The Tribune’s remarkable, curious, and somewhat obtuse comments, from Friday’s paper --
“Many men of peace in American churches -- clergymen and laymen -- have observed in some other pulpits and other congregations a tendency to revive the moral urge to war which made some churchmen recruiting agents for intervention in the other world war. The men of peace are trying to counteract in public opinion the warlike men of their cloth. The peaceful could tell the bellicose if they are more English than American that their consciences being so involved should lead them abroad to work personally for the cause in which they are enlisted. They should not remain here to conscript the sons of other families to assault the Siegfried line. If a nation has any moral rights it is to keep the peace. If a nation’s authorities have any moral duties one is to protect the people from avoidable war. And certainly peace has its shrine in religion.”
Monday, January 25, 2016
Thursday, January 25, 1940
THE BRITISH LOSE ANOTHER DESTROYER. For the second time in a week, a British destroyer has fallen prey to Nazi armaments. James MacDonald writes in Wednesday’s New York Times on the destruction of the Exmouth, a 1.475-ton vessel which was sunk yesterday by a German mine or torpedo, while on solitary patrol at sea. Her entire crew of at least 175 men was lost -- the first time a major British ship has been sunk with all hands. Another destroyer, the Grenville, was sent to the bottom last week-end. Britain has now lost five destroyers since the start of the war, and seventeen ships in the last ten days.
These sinkings might not mean much in terms of winning or losing the war, but C.B.S. Berlin correspondent William Shirer said in his talk last night that the Germans “plastered the news all over the evening papers.” They’re determined, of course, to make the most out of it.
RUSSIA RENEWS THE OFFENSIVE IN KARELIA. The Russians have sent fresh troops into the Karelian Isthmus and are once again attacking the Finns’ Mannerheim Line, says Donald Day in Tuesday’s Chicago Tribune. Mr. Day credits the accuracy of Finnish artillery fire with breaking the new Soviets attacks, and says that here, as in other aspects of this polar war, the Russians have so far been outclassed. “[A]ltho the soviet artillerymen have had almost six weeks to practice against he unbroken outposts of the Mannerheim line, their marksmanship has not improved. At one Finnish battery I visited there were only eight shell holes in the vicinity. None of them was near the emplacements sheltering the guns....”
K.J. Eseklund follows up in Wednesday’s New York Times with some startling figures on what this new drive is costing the Soviets -- 5,000 dead and “many thousands more” wounded in three days of “fruitless multiple offensives.” What’s driving the Red Army in these latest attacks, he says, is simple, elemental fear -- “The desperation with which thousands of Soviet soldiers are being driven to certain death against the strong Finnish positions on the Isthmus and northeast of Lake Ladoga is cited in authoritative circles as evidence that the Russian commanding generals fear the wrath of Joseph Stalin if their failure to obtain results in Finland continues.”
GIVE FINLAND SOME REAL HELP. Congress continues to look for an agreeable way to loan the Finns more money to buy non-military goods. But an editorial in Tuesday’s Washington Post points out wisely that Finland needs more, much more, to insure her survival in the face of increasing Red air raids --
“What Finland desperately needs are fighting planes and antiaircraft guns to fight off the almost daily attacks that are making a shambles of her towns and villages. If such defensive weapons are not forthcoming, all the brilliant exploits of the Finnish army may go for naught. By paralyzing Finland’s economic life, these destructive air raids may soon or late end Finland’s capacity to resist the Red onslaught, however indestructible may be the Finnish determination to continue fighting. The democratic world has been heartened by the successes which the Finns have achieved in what appeared at the outset to be a wholly one-sided struggle. That fact may be in part responsible for the belief that the Finns, by their own exertions alone, can hold out indefinitely....This belief is as dangerous as it is mistaken. Time presses. Even the most courageous people cannot fight bombing planes with bare hands or with packages of food.”
WOULD AN EMBARGO STOP JAPAN? On Friday, the U.S.-Japanese commercial treaty expires, with no renewal or renegotiation in sight. This doesn’t stop trade between the two countries right now, but it does give the Roosevelt administration authority to declare an embargo on commerce with Japan at a moment’s notice. The President and Secretary Hull hope this threat will dissuade the Japanese government and people from further aggression in China. But a New York Herald Tribune editorial in Wednesday’s edition points out a big problem with that strategy --
“To a nation [such as Japan] that has little knowledge of the devastation and misery wrought by its ruthless armies in hundreds of defenseless Chinese cities and villages, and of the American reaction to such savagery; and to a people who have never heard how resentful a large section of the American public is of the sale to the Japanese Army of the gasoline, metals, motors, and machine tools that make all this slaughter and devastation possible; an American desire to interfere with the establishment of ‘the new order’ must seem thoroughly malicious. In a nation as systematically misinformed about its army’s doings abroad and so little aware of the evil reputation which that army has given Japan in the West, it will be a simple matter for the army’s publicists to arouse a lively resentment in Japan of any measure adopted in this country to limit the army’s destructive power in China. This is something about which we in this country can do almost nothing.”
The Herald Tribune says in summary that “if this country takes steps to discommode the Japanese Army, it will earn the hostility and not the gratitude of the Japanese people.” But the editors see no alternative -- continuing to sell the tools of war and other goods to Japan’s militarists means “promoting the slaughter and enslavement of the Chinese people.” And that we cannot do any longer.
RUMORS OF NAZI-SOVIET MILITARY OPERATIONS. Also in Wednesday’s New York Herald Tribune is an article from Bucharest by Sonia Tomara, on the escape to Rumania of thirty-one American citizens who’ve been trapped in the Soviet-occupied area of eastern Poland. According to Miss Tomara, the Americans “expressed belief that the German and Soviet military commands were preparing a joint attack on Rumania.”
Also, the new issue of Time magazine reports that Finns fighting to defend the Mannerheim Line claim to have heard a Russian loudspeaker tell them, “Surrender in 48 hours or the Germans are coming.”
These sinkings might not mean much in terms of winning or losing the war, but C.B.S. Berlin correspondent William Shirer said in his talk last night that the Germans “plastered the news all over the evening papers.” They’re determined, of course, to make the most out of it.
RUSSIA RENEWS THE OFFENSIVE IN KARELIA. The Russians have sent fresh troops into the Karelian Isthmus and are once again attacking the Finns’ Mannerheim Line, says Donald Day in Tuesday’s Chicago Tribune. Mr. Day credits the accuracy of Finnish artillery fire with breaking the new Soviets attacks, and says that here, as in other aspects of this polar war, the Russians have so far been outclassed. “[A]ltho the soviet artillerymen have had almost six weeks to practice against he unbroken outposts of the Mannerheim line, their marksmanship has not improved. At one Finnish battery I visited there were only eight shell holes in the vicinity. None of them was near the emplacements sheltering the guns....”
K.J. Eseklund follows up in Wednesday’s New York Times with some startling figures on what this new drive is costing the Soviets -- 5,000 dead and “many thousands more” wounded in three days of “fruitless multiple offensives.” What’s driving the Red Army in these latest attacks, he says, is simple, elemental fear -- “The desperation with which thousands of Soviet soldiers are being driven to certain death against the strong Finnish positions on the Isthmus and northeast of Lake Ladoga is cited in authoritative circles as evidence that the Russian commanding generals fear the wrath of Joseph Stalin if their failure to obtain results in Finland continues.”
GIVE FINLAND SOME REAL HELP. Congress continues to look for an agreeable way to loan the Finns more money to buy non-military goods. But an editorial in Tuesday’s Washington Post points out wisely that Finland needs more, much more, to insure her survival in the face of increasing Red air raids --
“What Finland desperately needs are fighting planes and antiaircraft guns to fight off the almost daily attacks that are making a shambles of her towns and villages. If such defensive weapons are not forthcoming, all the brilliant exploits of the Finnish army may go for naught. By paralyzing Finland’s economic life, these destructive air raids may soon or late end Finland’s capacity to resist the Red onslaught, however indestructible may be the Finnish determination to continue fighting. The democratic world has been heartened by the successes which the Finns have achieved in what appeared at the outset to be a wholly one-sided struggle. That fact may be in part responsible for the belief that the Finns, by their own exertions alone, can hold out indefinitely....This belief is as dangerous as it is mistaken. Time presses. Even the most courageous people cannot fight bombing planes with bare hands or with packages of food.”
WOULD AN EMBARGO STOP JAPAN? On Friday, the U.S.-Japanese commercial treaty expires, with no renewal or renegotiation in sight. This doesn’t stop trade between the two countries right now, but it does give the Roosevelt administration authority to declare an embargo on commerce with Japan at a moment’s notice. The President and Secretary Hull hope this threat will dissuade the Japanese government and people from further aggression in China. But a New York Herald Tribune editorial in Wednesday’s edition points out a big problem with that strategy --
“To a nation [such as Japan] that has little knowledge of the devastation and misery wrought by its ruthless armies in hundreds of defenseless Chinese cities and villages, and of the American reaction to such savagery; and to a people who have never heard how resentful a large section of the American public is of the sale to the Japanese Army of the gasoline, metals, motors, and machine tools that make all this slaughter and devastation possible; an American desire to interfere with the establishment of ‘the new order’ must seem thoroughly malicious. In a nation as systematically misinformed about its army’s doings abroad and so little aware of the evil reputation which that army has given Japan in the West, it will be a simple matter for the army’s publicists to arouse a lively resentment in Japan of any measure adopted in this country to limit the army’s destructive power in China. This is something about which we in this country can do almost nothing.”
The Herald Tribune says in summary that “if this country takes steps to discommode the Japanese Army, it will earn the hostility and not the gratitude of the Japanese people.” But the editors see no alternative -- continuing to sell the tools of war and other goods to Japan’s militarists means “promoting the slaughter and enslavement of the Chinese people.” And that we cannot do any longer.
RUMORS OF NAZI-SOVIET MILITARY OPERATIONS. Also in Wednesday’s New York Herald Tribune is an article from Bucharest by Sonia Tomara, on the escape to Rumania of thirty-one American citizens who’ve been trapped in the Soviet-occupied area of eastern Poland. According to Miss Tomara, the Americans “expressed belief that the German and Soviet military commands were preparing a joint attack on Rumania.”
Also, the new issue of Time magazine reports that Finns fighting to defend the Mannerheim Line claim to have heard a Russian loudspeaker tell them, “Surrender in 48 hours or the Germans are coming.”
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)