HITLER ATTACKS NORWAY, DENMARK. The radio bulletins are sketchy, and the late editions of the morning papers should offer a clearer picture. But what we do know is stark enough -- Oslo, the capital of Norway, was attacked early Tuesday morning by what was described in one early report as “a mysterious naval expedition of an unknown power,” later identified as part of a German flotilla of 125 vessels in the area. Apparently four hostile warships attempted to storm their way into Oslo Fjord, but were forced to retreat by Norwegian coastal batteries. An air raid alarm was sounded in Oslo at 2 a.m. local time. A Reuters correspondent has wired that German troops were debarking at Norwegian ports at 3 a.m. local time. One bulletin quotes Norway’s foreign minister as saying his country is “at war” with Germany.
Meanwhile, the Reich sent an unknown number of troops into Denmark at 5 o’clock this morning local time (11 p.m. E.S.T. Monday night), crossing the narrow border at several points and landing troops at six seaports. Copenhagan reportedly has been occupied without incident. It is said the Danes are offering no resistance nationwide.
What to make of this? It’s no surprise that the Nazis are again using their Blitzkrieg (“lightning war”) tactics against small, peaceful countries who are ill-prepared to fight back, instead of against Germany’s evenly-matched enemies, Britain and France. Hitler is, above all else, a bully. But why attack northward? Britain’s mining of Norwegian harbors (see below) is an excuse, not a justification, for the Nazi action. And if Germany were looking for forward bases to use against Britain, invading Holland would make much more military sense. If securing resources were the goal, seizing Rumania would be more cold-bloodedly profitable. For what it’s worth, the Germans say they’re not interested in taking military advantage of the bases or resources of either Denmark or Norway. They’re only “protecting” the Danes and Norwegians from a coming British invasion. Germany’s self-justifications would be funny if the consequences weren’t so terrible.
THEY SAW CORRECTLY. One of the front-page headlines in Sunday’s New York Times read, “Norway Sees War If Her Neutrality Is Not Respected.”
ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER TREATY VIOLATION. The editors of the Chicago Tribune and other isolationist papers have been baying through the winter about the need for both sides to realize that military might cannot settle this war – that they must sit down and “negotiate” a settlement. But as the radio news has reminded us this morning, Denmark chose talks with the Nazis -- to no avail. The Danes had a bilateral nonaggression pact with Germany, signed last June 1. It outlawed war by one side against the other. Will the isolationists now finally realize that it’s futile to sign agreements with the Hitler regime? Yes, the U.S. should stay out of this war, but the Allies have no choice but to fight for the goal of overthrowing Nazi-ism. And America should aid them in that task.
ALLIES HAD MINED NORWEGIAN HARBORS. One day before the German attack, the British and French governments took the extreme step of laying mines in three places off Norway’s coast. According to an Associated Press account on Monday, the Allies justified this apparent violation of Norway’s neutrality by calling attention to Germany’s airplane and submarine attacks on neutral shipping, which the Allies call “pure terrorism.”
The A.P. quotes the Allies’ formal statement as contending that “international law has always recognized the right of a belligerent, when its enemy has systematically resorted to illegal practices, to take action appropriate to the situation created by the illegalities of the enemy. Such action is generally recognized to become lawful in view of the other belligerent’s violation of the law.”
Indeed, while this step was a daring one for the Allies, it is small potatoes compared to the Nazis’ campaign of attacks on neutral shipping bound for Allied ports, which has cost over 150 vessels and over 1,000 lives of neutral seamen. British forces mined three points, off Stadtlandet Peninsula, Bud, and West Fjord in southern Norway, and had planned to patrol the mined areas for forty-eight hours to prevent Norwegian or other vessels from inadvertently passing through the dangerous areas. The goal was not to destroy and kill, but merely to make it practically impossible for the Germans to continue shielding their ore imports from British attack by sailing them through neutral waters.
WHY NORWAY, WHY NOW? A Sunday New York Times analysis by Edwin L. James makes an interesting point that raises the question of why the British bothered to mine Norwegian harbors, and why the Germans chose now to invade. After all, Mr. James notes in an article written before these developments, Hitler has an alternate route in the warm-weather months --
“The German supply of iron ore from Sweden, badly needed in the construction of heavy artillery, constitutes one of the chief Allied problems. The plans discussed for halting the shipments from Narvik through Norwegian waters to Germany come up against the difficulty that in a few weeks now, and until next Winter’s ice comes, the Germans can import the Swedish ore through the Gulf of Bothnia and the Baltic, rather out of reach of British sea power. All during the World War the British were unable to halt these shipments of Swedish ore to Germany. A British submarine or two might get through the Skagerrak into the Baltic, but it will probably prove to be a dubious undertaking to halt the summertime shipments by direct methods.”
NEW DEALERS SPYING ON WILLKIE? The New York Herald Tribune ran a startling front-page item last Friday that got very little notice over the week-end, but definitely deserves further attention. Wendell Willkie, president of the Commonwealth and Southern Corporation, told an audience at New York’s Town Hall that “he understood that a file on his activities and utterances was being kept in Washington and that a government official recently had stated, ‘We are going to get him if it is the last thing we ever do.’”
Now, Mr. Willkie is not a candidate for the Republican nomination for President at this point, and might not ever be. Party officials have mentioned him as a possible compromise candidate if there is a deadlock at this summer’s convention between Messrs. Dewey, Taft, and Vandenberg. But given Mr. Dewey’s sizeable victory in the Wisconsin primary last week and his continued popularity with rank-and-file G.O.P. voters, he could well win the nomination outright.
But someone in the Roosevelt administration badly dislikes Mr. Willkie, and recently told a reporter for a national publication something along the lines of, “Well, you know, the Investment Bankers of America are making an attack on a certain institution here in Washington, and we don’t think they are really doing it. We think Wendell Willkie is behind that, and we are keeping a file on his activities, we are keeping a file on where he talks, and what he says and what he does with his time, and we are going to get him if it is the last thing we ever do.”
Mr. Willkie rightly says that such tactics are more typical of a “primitive, feudal society” than of a modern democracy. President Roosevelt should condemn such goings-on, and move immediately to stop them.
Saturday, April 9, 2016
Thursday, April 7, 2016
Sunday, April 7, 1940
HITLER HAS “MISSED THE BUS.” Prime Minister Chamberlain is speaking more confidently than ever about the prospects of Nazi defeat, and his latest words on the subject were the big story in Friday’s papers.
Edward Angly’s account in the New York Herald Tribune quotes Chamberlain as saying he now feels “ten times as confident of victory as I did at the beginning.” He told a Conservative Party meeting in London that Hitler had “missed the bus” by giving Britain and France seven months of relative calm in which to marshal their armaments and economic resources. If the Germans had attacked immediately following their triumph in Poland, they would have done with a wide margin of superior strength. But “those seven months that we have had enabled us to make good and remove our weaknesses, to consolidate and tune up every arm, offensive and defensive, and so enormously to add to our fighting strength that we can face the future with a calm and steady mind, whatever it brings.”
The new British “line” was also trumpeted Friday by Britain’s commander in chief, General Edmund Ironside. He told Frazier Hunt of the International News Service -- “Our army has turned the corner. A fortnight ago I , for the first time, became sure of this. We started with very little. The Germans gave us these months wherein to build before the first fight of great force. If they had launched a full attack at the very start, when we were unprepared, they might possibly have got us. But it is too late now. We are ready for anything they may start. As a matter of fact, we would welcome a go at them.”
A REASON FOR OPTIMISM? Chamberlain’s and Ironside’s remarks offer reason for hope we won’t see a big German offensive this year after all. They follow recent reports in the Chicago Tribune and the New Republic, among others, that Hitler realizes he cannot launch a major attack in the West this year. Could it be that British intelligence men are telling Chamberlain much the same thing? Could it be the government is so confident about this information that they’re crowing a little about it? Chamberlain has generally been the epitome of caution -- it doesn’t seem likely he would be talk this optimistically without good reason.
On the other hand, General Ironside did mention that Hitler is keeping “a million of his finest troops” opposite the Belgian and Dutch frontiers, and that “the Germans may try” an attack. And Chamberlain warned that prior to Germany’s defeat the Allies might face either “an intensified warfare, with whatever checks and disappointments might come to set off against our triumphs, or...a long-drawn-out and wearisome war in which for many months it might seem impossible for either side to win a decisive victory.” But the bravado of the Hitler-missed-the-bus message implies they no longer believe that a crushing German attack is coming.
“AN END OF STATIC WAR?” Barnet Nover warns in his Washington Post column Friday not to discount the possibility that Hitler will gamble everything soon on a “lightning blow” in the West --
“If Germany waits too long, the capacity to take the initiative may pass from her hands, never perhaps to be regained. When that moment has come and the Germans realize that it has come, the possibility of defeat will loom ever larger. Despite Premier Chamberlain’s boast that he is ‘ten times as confident’ of victory now as he was when the war began, it cannot yet be said that this is already the case. But it may be the case three months from now or six months from now or a year from now. It was precisely such calculations which in the past led Hitler to launch one lightning blow before either Germany or the world had had time become adjusted to the results of the previous stroke. And the same dynamic urge may be operating today. To assume that Hitler will stand still indefinitely, even behind the impregnable Siegfried Line, is to imagine a Hitler who does not exist.”
ALLIED BLOCKADE MIGHT NOT BE ENOUGH. David Darrah reports in Saturday’s Chicago Tribune on comments in the French press suggesting that Britain’s low-cost war strategy might be deficient -- “Some French critics seem to think a blockade cannot be relied on to end Fuehrer Adolf Hitler and that the war eventually will have to be won on the battlefield. They point out that the issue probably will be decided only by a combination of the blockade and combat.” Mr. Darrah writes that an editorial in L’Order “concludes that Germany is too large and has too many adjacent neighbors to be brought down by a blockade, particularly as stocks have been stored for years....only after big military offensives have forced the reich to exhaust material and munitions which cannot be replaced...will the blockade have any direct effect.”
Maybe there’s some truth to this, but what would these critics have the Allies do? Assault the Siegfried Line? Out of the question. Launch an air offensive? Premature. Bomb Baku, or seize the Rumanian oil fields? The complications of such daring moves are endless -- and the initial drive would not kill a single German soldier. If it’s true that Hitler is stymied this year from launching a land attack, the Allies are all the more so. But Barner Nover is right in one respect. Within a few short months, that could change.
NEW WAR TENSIONS IN SCANDINAVIA. Robert P. Post writes in Saturday’s New York Times that the Allies have given Norway and Sweden a “clarification” of the Anglo-French view on Scandinavian neutrality -- and it amounts to a stern warning to the Russians. The statement says that the Allies are ready to resist any new Soviet aggression against Finland or her neighbors, even if Norway and Sweden do nothing to oppose it. Further, the Allies are warning anew that shipments of iron ore to Germany down Norway’s territorial waters must be stopped. As Mr. Post explains, “The British feel that German threats against weak neighbors cannot be allowed to feed German strength.”
Another Saturday Times story, by Otto D. Tolischus, describes how Norway’s leftist “all Labor” government has been forced by events to retreat from its “communistically tinted and anti-military platform.” Mr. Tolischus adds, “it is still proceeding cautiously and reluctantly, and lags, even proportionately to population and resources, far behind Sweden...[but] it has been forced to...adopt the hated military methods and fighting slogans hitherto attributed only to the ‘predatory capitalists.’” In contrast to her past pacifism, Norway is now “searching the world market for arms and airplanes which are difficult to get and have become very expensive. She is filling up her skeleton army with recruits and she is building new naval vessels in her own yards and has been buying armed speed boats from abroad.”
The Norwegians had better hurry -- according to the International News Service, the Russians are emphatically demanding the resignation of the president of Norway’s parliament, Carl J. Hambro, on the grounds that he gave an “anti-Soviet speech” recently. This is akin to the arrogant approach that Stalin took with Finland and the Baltic States. And so far, it’s worked fine from the Soviet point of view.
Edward Angly’s account in the New York Herald Tribune quotes Chamberlain as saying he now feels “ten times as confident of victory as I did at the beginning.” He told a Conservative Party meeting in London that Hitler had “missed the bus” by giving Britain and France seven months of relative calm in which to marshal their armaments and economic resources. If the Germans had attacked immediately following their triumph in Poland, they would have done with a wide margin of superior strength. But “those seven months that we have had enabled us to make good and remove our weaknesses, to consolidate and tune up every arm, offensive and defensive, and so enormously to add to our fighting strength that we can face the future with a calm and steady mind, whatever it brings.”
The new British “line” was also trumpeted Friday by Britain’s commander in chief, General Edmund Ironside. He told Frazier Hunt of the International News Service -- “Our army has turned the corner. A fortnight ago I , for the first time, became sure of this. We started with very little. The Germans gave us these months wherein to build before the first fight of great force. If they had launched a full attack at the very start, when we were unprepared, they might possibly have got us. But it is too late now. We are ready for anything they may start. As a matter of fact, we would welcome a go at them.”
A REASON FOR OPTIMISM? Chamberlain’s and Ironside’s remarks offer reason for hope we won’t see a big German offensive this year after all. They follow recent reports in the Chicago Tribune and the New Republic, among others, that Hitler realizes he cannot launch a major attack in the West this year. Could it be that British intelligence men are telling Chamberlain much the same thing? Could it be the government is so confident about this information that they’re crowing a little about it? Chamberlain has generally been the epitome of caution -- it doesn’t seem likely he would be talk this optimistically without good reason.
On the other hand, General Ironside did mention that Hitler is keeping “a million of his finest troops” opposite the Belgian and Dutch frontiers, and that “the Germans may try” an attack. And Chamberlain warned that prior to Germany’s defeat the Allies might face either “an intensified warfare, with whatever checks and disappointments might come to set off against our triumphs, or...a long-drawn-out and wearisome war in which for many months it might seem impossible for either side to win a decisive victory.” But the bravado of the Hitler-missed-the-bus message implies they no longer believe that a crushing German attack is coming.
“AN END OF STATIC WAR?” Barnet Nover warns in his Washington Post column Friday not to discount the possibility that Hitler will gamble everything soon on a “lightning blow” in the West --
“If Germany waits too long, the capacity to take the initiative may pass from her hands, never perhaps to be regained. When that moment has come and the Germans realize that it has come, the possibility of defeat will loom ever larger. Despite Premier Chamberlain’s boast that he is ‘ten times as confident’ of victory now as he was when the war began, it cannot yet be said that this is already the case. But it may be the case three months from now or six months from now or a year from now. It was precisely such calculations which in the past led Hitler to launch one lightning blow before either Germany or the world had had time become adjusted to the results of the previous stroke. And the same dynamic urge may be operating today. To assume that Hitler will stand still indefinitely, even behind the impregnable Siegfried Line, is to imagine a Hitler who does not exist.”
ALLIED BLOCKADE MIGHT NOT BE ENOUGH. David Darrah reports in Saturday’s Chicago Tribune on comments in the French press suggesting that Britain’s low-cost war strategy might be deficient -- “Some French critics seem to think a blockade cannot be relied on to end Fuehrer Adolf Hitler and that the war eventually will have to be won on the battlefield. They point out that the issue probably will be decided only by a combination of the blockade and combat.” Mr. Darrah writes that an editorial in L’Order “concludes that Germany is too large and has too many adjacent neighbors to be brought down by a blockade, particularly as stocks have been stored for years....only after big military offensives have forced the reich to exhaust material and munitions which cannot be replaced...will the blockade have any direct effect.”
Maybe there’s some truth to this, but what would these critics have the Allies do? Assault the Siegfried Line? Out of the question. Launch an air offensive? Premature. Bomb Baku, or seize the Rumanian oil fields? The complications of such daring moves are endless -- and the initial drive would not kill a single German soldier. If it’s true that Hitler is stymied this year from launching a land attack, the Allies are all the more so. But Barner Nover is right in one respect. Within a few short months, that could change.
NEW WAR TENSIONS IN SCANDINAVIA. Robert P. Post writes in Saturday’s New York Times that the Allies have given Norway and Sweden a “clarification” of the Anglo-French view on Scandinavian neutrality -- and it amounts to a stern warning to the Russians. The statement says that the Allies are ready to resist any new Soviet aggression against Finland or her neighbors, even if Norway and Sweden do nothing to oppose it. Further, the Allies are warning anew that shipments of iron ore to Germany down Norway’s territorial waters must be stopped. As Mr. Post explains, “The British feel that German threats against weak neighbors cannot be allowed to feed German strength.”
Another Saturday Times story, by Otto D. Tolischus, describes how Norway’s leftist “all Labor” government has been forced by events to retreat from its “communistically tinted and anti-military platform.” Mr. Tolischus adds, “it is still proceeding cautiously and reluctantly, and lags, even proportionately to population and resources, far behind Sweden...[but] it has been forced to...adopt the hated military methods and fighting slogans hitherto attributed only to the ‘predatory capitalists.’” In contrast to her past pacifism, Norway is now “searching the world market for arms and airplanes which are difficult to get and have become very expensive. She is filling up her skeleton army with recruits and she is building new naval vessels in her own yards and has been buying armed speed boats from abroad.”
The Norwegians had better hurry -- according to the International News Service, the Russians are emphatically demanding the resignation of the president of Norway’s parliament, Carl J. Hambro, on the grounds that he gave an “anti-Soviet speech” recently. This is akin to the arrogant approach that Stalin took with Finland and the Baltic States. And so far, it’s worked fine from the Soviet point of view.
Monday, April 4, 2016
Thursday, April 4, 1940
CHURCHILL TAKES COMMAND... Radio reports Wednesday night say that Britain’s long-expected cabinet shakeup has been announced, and it puts First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill in charge of the army, navy, and air force. One London paper says Churchill is now the nation’s “Super War Lord.” And there are seven other changes in the new cabinet. But the British papers say there might be less here than meets the eye. There are only two new faces in the government, only one minister has been dropped, and for the most part Chamberlain’s men are merely swapping jobs. Moreover, British commentators say that Churchill’s new powers are perilously ill-defined. Maybe the shakeup’s a good thing, but at the moment it looks like it might be just another Chamberlain half-measure.
...AND CHAMBERLAIN GAINS IN POPULARITY. So says the New York Times, which favors the Prime Minister with a largely complimentary portrait in Wednesday’s paper. The article, written from London by Anne O’Hare McCormick, describes Chamberlain in the best possible light on the occasion of his address to the House of Commons to announce beefed-up blockade measures --
“After seven months of war, puzzling and worrying to many Britishers, Mr. Chamberlain’s position actually is stronger than a year ago. His parliamentary leadership is unquestioned and his personal popularity greater than the popularity of his policies. The outstanding fact of today’s session was its demonstration of the extent to which this rather commonplace figure, so lacking in showmanship or emotional appeal, dominates wartime England. If the British majority followed Mr. Chamberlain from appeasement to war and swings with him from the first uncertain phase of the conflict into its second phase, it must be because his movements accurately reflect the pace of the average British mind. Certainly his tenaciousness, whether for peace or war, is typical....public opinion apparently still prefers Mr. Chamberlain to direct the risky experiments of war to any of his possible successors.”
BRITAIN INTENSIFIES THE BLOCKADE. Certainly Chamberlain’s message to Commons Tuesday was heartily welcomed by his friends and opponents alike. According to Edward Angly in the New York Herald Tribune, the Prime Minister announced that Britain would use both her sea power and her purchasing power to completely cut off Germany’s imports. And “he made it clear that the Allies were determined to let the chips on neutrals’ shoulders fall where they might,” Mr. Angly writes.
What the former means is that the British are using their power of the purse to snatch up minerals, fats, and oils offered for sale by Germany’s neighbors -- and potentially of great use to Nazi armies. The British have bought up large amounts of these resources from the Balkan states, Chamberlain says, along with Norway’s entire exportable catch of whale oil, also coveted by the Reich. The Herald Tribune story doesn’t really explain what it means about letting the chips fall on neutrals’ shoulders, though Chamberlain did warn that British Empire products will be denied to neutral countries unless they agree to limit trade with Hitler. New trade agreements with Norway, Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Iceland address this requirement, he said.
He also explained that getting tougher with the blockade was the most humane way to fight -- “If we are to bring this war to a close with the least possible destruction and dislocation of our commerce and spiritual and material civilization, we must deprive Germany of materials most essential for the prosecution of her aggressive policy. The Allies are, therefore, determined to prosecute the economic war to the utmost of their power.”
SHINING MOMENTS IN FRENCH DEMOCRACY. The current issue of Time magazine has a fine wrap-up on the fall of Premier Daladier, and mentions one startling rumor, the mere existence of which conveys just how little faith the French have in their government’s basic competency. The passage in question -- “In any other country the fall of a Cabinet in war time is a major crisis. In France it is bad enough. But Frenchmen who in peacetime think no more of yanking a Premier than Americans think of yanking a pitcher out of the box, were not unduly upset -- even when a report got about that the Cabinet had fallen because one box of ballots had accidentally gone uncounted.”
Time doesn't say, but one assumes (or maybe just hopes) that there's no truth to this. The facts are bad enough. Apparently the French deputies forced Daladier from power without meaning to -- they just wanted to send him a message by abstaining on a crucial confidence vote. The punchline is that the whole upheaval began as an attempt to fire up the French war effort.
THE “WHITE WAR” MIGHT GO ON. A New York Times editorial sees in Chamberlain’s latest address the implication that the Allies aren’t about to go on the attack --
“Seven months after the start of the war, the Prime Minister reaffirms General Gamelin’s promise of last September that he would be ‘positively miserly’ with manpower. Unless Hitler begins the carnage, it will probably remain a ‘white war’ this Spring; and the Allies’ main effort in coming weeks will be to tighten their economic stranglehold on Germany....Perhaps it is fortunate for Europe that the war still takes this shape, and that the tragedy of ‘total war’ has not yet begun. But there is tragedy, too, in the possibility that the present methods of bloodless war may not be decisive.”
ROOSEVELT’S FOREIGN POLICY BUNGLES. Meanwhile, the New York Herald Tribune’s editors take a look at President Roosevelt’s record on foreign policy in the wake of the German “White Paper” fuss, and find that the administration hasn’t done much to help the Allies, the cause of peace, or itself --
“The trouble lies in [Roosevelt's] inability to follow a simple course consistently. This has been one of his greatest failures in domestic as in foreign affairs. Invariably he has chosen bad means to attain a good end. It seems impossible for him to avoid muddle and indirection. The fact that he failed in making plain to the Germans a year ago what they seem only now to have realized -- that American sympathies are strongly anti-Nazi -- is in no small measure because his well known sleight of hand left the Germans uncertain as to his true intentions. By the same token his record for broken promises raised doubt in the mind of the Allies as to the value of the protestations of friendship and proffered help transmitted through his ambassadors....Mr. Roosevelt, in lieu of candor, apparently encouraged one ambassador to urge upon the Allies a policy of conciliation and surrender while another urged a “strong policy.” As a result, the American concern was both understated and overstated. His own remarks were often cryptic, usually indirect, and better calculated to hide than to make plain his true meaning.”
...AND CHAMBERLAIN GAINS IN POPULARITY. So says the New York Times, which favors the Prime Minister with a largely complimentary portrait in Wednesday’s paper. The article, written from London by Anne O’Hare McCormick, describes Chamberlain in the best possible light on the occasion of his address to the House of Commons to announce beefed-up blockade measures --
“After seven months of war, puzzling and worrying to many Britishers, Mr. Chamberlain’s position actually is stronger than a year ago. His parliamentary leadership is unquestioned and his personal popularity greater than the popularity of his policies. The outstanding fact of today’s session was its demonstration of the extent to which this rather commonplace figure, so lacking in showmanship or emotional appeal, dominates wartime England. If the British majority followed Mr. Chamberlain from appeasement to war and swings with him from the first uncertain phase of the conflict into its second phase, it must be because his movements accurately reflect the pace of the average British mind. Certainly his tenaciousness, whether for peace or war, is typical....public opinion apparently still prefers Mr. Chamberlain to direct the risky experiments of war to any of his possible successors.”
BRITAIN INTENSIFIES THE BLOCKADE. Certainly Chamberlain’s message to Commons Tuesday was heartily welcomed by his friends and opponents alike. According to Edward Angly in the New York Herald Tribune, the Prime Minister announced that Britain would use both her sea power and her purchasing power to completely cut off Germany’s imports. And “he made it clear that the Allies were determined to let the chips on neutrals’ shoulders fall where they might,” Mr. Angly writes.
What the former means is that the British are using their power of the purse to snatch up minerals, fats, and oils offered for sale by Germany’s neighbors -- and potentially of great use to Nazi armies. The British have bought up large amounts of these resources from the Balkan states, Chamberlain says, along with Norway’s entire exportable catch of whale oil, also coveted by the Reich. The Herald Tribune story doesn’t really explain what it means about letting the chips fall on neutrals’ shoulders, though Chamberlain did warn that British Empire products will be denied to neutral countries unless they agree to limit trade with Hitler. New trade agreements with Norway, Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Iceland address this requirement, he said.
He also explained that getting tougher with the blockade was the most humane way to fight -- “If we are to bring this war to a close with the least possible destruction and dislocation of our commerce and spiritual and material civilization, we must deprive Germany of materials most essential for the prosecution of her aggressive policy. The Allies are, therefore, determined to prosecute the economic war to the utmost of their power.”
SHINING MOMENTS IN FRENCH DEMOCRACY. The current issue of Time magazine has a fine wrap-up on the fall of Premier Daladier, and mentions one startling rumor, the mere existence of which conveys just how little faith the French have in their government’s basic competency. The passage in question -- “In any other country the fall of a Cabinet in war time is a major crisis. In France it is bad enough. But Frenchmen who in peacetime think no more of yanking a Premier than Americans think of yanking a pitcher out of the box, were not unduly upset -- even when a report got about that the Cabinet had fallen because one box of ballots had accidentally gone uncounted.”
Time doesn't say, but one assumes (or maybe just hopes) that there's no truth to this. The facts are bad enough. Apparently the French deputies forced Daladier from power without meaning to -- they just wanted to send him a message by abstaining on a crucial confidence vote. The punchline is that the whole upheaval began as an attempt to fire up the French war effort.
THE “WHITE WAR” MIGHT GO ON. A New York Times editorial sees in Chamberlain’s latest address the implication that the Allies aren’t about to go on the attack --
“Seven months after the start of the war, the Prime Minister reaffirms General Gamelin’s promise of last September that he would be ‘positively miserly’ with manpower. Unless Hitler begins the carnage, it will probably remain a ‘white war’ this Spring; and the Allies’ main effort in coming weeks will be to tighten their economic stranglehold on Germany....Perhaps it is fortunate for Europe that the war still takes this shape, and that the tragedy of ‘total war’ has not yet begun. But there is tragedy, too, in the possibility that the present methods of bloodless war may not be decisive.”
ROOSEVELT’S FOREIGN POLICY BUNGLES. Meanwhile, the New York Herald Tribune’s editors take a look at President Roosevelt’s record on foreign policy in the wake of the German “White Paper” fuss, and find that the administration hasn’t done much to help the Allies, the cause of peace, or itself --
“The trouble lies in [Roosevelt's] inability to follow a simple course consistently. This has been one of his greatest failures in domestic as in foreign affairs. Invariably he has chosen bad means to attain a good end. It seems impossible for him to avoid muddle and indirection. The fact that he failed in making plain to the Germans a year ago what they seem only now to have realized -- that American sympathies are strongly anti-Nazi -- is in no small measure because his well known sleight of hand left the Germans uncertain as to his true intentions. By the same token his record for broken promises raised doubt in the mind of the Allies as to the value of the protestations of friendship and proffered help transmitted through his ambassadors....Mr. Roosevelt, in lieu of candor, apparently encouraged one ambassador to urge upon the Allies a policy of conciliation and surrender while another urged a “strong policy.” As a result, the American concern was both understated and overstated. His own remarks were often cryptic, usually indirect, and better calculated to hide than to make plain his true meaning.”
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