THE SHOCK OF BELGIUM’S SURRENDER. I haven’t seen any newspaper extras yet, but radio reports this morning are blaring the big, bad news -- King Leopold has surrendered the Belgian Army to the Germans. This first came out around 3:30 a.m. New York time in a radio address by French Premier Reynaud. The premier made a point of saying that Leopold capitulated without consulting either the British or the French. And the Belgian surrender effectively dooms half a million French and British troops in the Flanders pocket to surrender or annihilation.
No doubt Berlin will waste no time saluting the little king for his “valor,” “sensible attitude,” etc. The only thing that occurs to me right now is that Leopold couldn’t have done a better job of serving Hitler’s cause if he’d been the most ardent Fifth Columnist on the Continent. Remember that just nine days ago the New York Times ran an Edwin L. James commentary describing how the King ended Belgium’s protective alliance with France in 1936 and thereafter trusted Hitler’s assurances that Belgian neutrality would be respected. When Britain and France implored Leopold last year to work on a common defense plan, he wouldn’t hear of it. Then, when Hitler invaded, he insisted on all the troops and supplies the Allies could give him. They did so, at the expense of weakening the “little Maginot Line” in northern France, where the Germans broke through.
And now, the King orders his troops to cease fighting, right at a time when his surrender threatens the safety of hundreds of thousands of Allied soldiers. I’ll bet a peace dollar that in inside of a month he’ll be making a radio speech, at Nazi behest, denouncing the British and French for “betraying” him.
A RAY OF HOPE FOR FRANCE. Premier Reynaud maintains that “France’s faith in victory is still intact,” and an Associated Press dispatch Monday says that on one part of the battlefront, at least, the French are holding their own against Hitler’s onslaught. At the Somme River line, running from the coast to Abbeville to Amiens to Peronne and St. Quentin, “determined resistance blocked German attempts to take new territory.” The A.P. also reports that at Amiens, the French have ousted the Germans from a bridgehead over the Somme. There have also been glowing reports that some Allied forces n the Flanders pocket, for example the Belgians at Courtrai, have fought new German attacks to a standstill. Alas, that was before today’s report of the Belgian surrender.
It’s been a week since General Weygand was appointed generalissimo of the Allied armies, and just a day since he sacked fifteen generals he held responsible for the French debacle at the Meuse River. Seven colonels have been promoted to lead the revitalized French forces -- Martin, Besse, Durand, Mast, De Gaulle, Meany, and Buisson. A French spokesman describes Weygand is “confident and full of hope,” and it’s obvious that at the very least France is right now fighting better and more confidently.
BOULOGNE, CALAIS, DUNKERQUE. Although the main German drive on France has stalled, Nazi tank forces continue to race up the Channel coastline, aiming at three prominent French ports and trying to snuff out any chance that British and French troops in the Allied pocket can be rescued by sea. Sigrid Schultz writes in Monday’s Chicago Tribune on German claims to have taken Calais, “only 22 miles across the English channel from the chalk cliffs of Dover.” That would be an eight-minute hop for German bombers, she adds, and well within range of Germany’s big guns.
Ralph W. Barnes of the New York Herald Tribune agrees that Calais provides with “one more ideal base” for operations against England, but notes that London and Paris deny the Nazis have it as of yet. But even the French admit now that the Germans are in Boulogne, and Mr. Barnes also writes that “the fall of Dunkerque was said here [in Berlin] to be imminent.” Another story in Monday’s Herald Tribune, by Frank R. Kelley in London, says that “swarms of Nazi bombers” have tried to blast Calais and Dunkerque, but were driven off by Royal Air Force fighters.
HOPES FADE OF CUTTING OFF GERMANS. Several Sunday papers had offered the possibility that a drive northward by French troops from the Somme River would break through a narrow “neck” in the German westward salient, relieving troops in the Allied pocket and cutting off some 30,000 Nazi soldiers and 1,000 tanks from supplies. The New York Herald Tribune quoted a tantalizing estimate in a French newspaper that the gap between the Flanders pocket and the main French forces had been cut to twelve miles. But Henry C. Cassidy of the Associated Press writes in a Monday dispatch that the general position of the lines “had not changed materially in the last day.”
And this morning’s radio reports bring worse news -- while the French have re-taken several villages in the vicinity of Peronne and Ham in their advance northward from the Somme, the Germans have made the “neck” noticeably wider by pummeling the Flanders pocket back several miles.
A “PINCERS WITHIN A PINCERS.” William Shirer said in his C.B.S. broadcast from Berlin last night that the Germans appear to be making a new push against the middle of the Allied pocket, directed at the French city of Lille. Nazi forces have been attacking for the last two days from positions both east and west of the city, and Mr. Shirer reported they’ve taken Bethune and Lens, which are both just south of Lille. The fall of Lille would all but split the Allied pocket in half, and presumably kill off any remaining hope of rescuing the trapped British and French armies by attacking northward from the Somme.
CAN THE NAZIS CONQUER BRITAIN? Monday’s New York Times reports on Britain’s “growing concern for the defense of the homeland” against a German invasion, which some correspondents are saying could happen within days. But Hanson W. Baldwin writes in Sunday’s Times that it won’t be an easy undertaking for the Germans, and could well fail --
“The odds might be against the attackers. The British Navy can still make its might felt, even in the Narrow Seas; there are close to 1,000,000 armed men in various degrees of training in Britain today; she still has large metropolitan air squadrons, ready for defense....But even if an invading army -- dropping from the skies, landing from fast ships, transported by planes – should successfully establish a foothold on English soil for the first time since Harold died at Hastings with an arrow through his eye in the Norman conquest of 1066, the war again would not necessarily be over. For certain it is that any invaders must fight for every inch of British soil; certain it is that their losses would be heavy. And were the tight little isles at last to be conquered – something that is...still only the substance of a dream, the dream that Napoleon dreamed and Hitler now dreams again -- there is still the British Empire, immensely powerful with great potential strength.”
50,000 U.S. PLANES ARE NOT ENOUGH. President Roosevelt sought in Sunday night’s fireside chat to reassure listeners that our national defenses would be built “to whatever heights the future may require.” But Barnet Nover writes in his Washington Post column Monday that even if the President’s goal of a 50,000-plane air force is met, it’s much more important to our national security to help Britain and France stay afloat --
“It is estimated that, working at top speed, our airplane industry will not be able to turn out 50,000 planes before 1943 and it may be even longer before we have an adequate number of fliers to man those planes. But long before 1943 the outcome of the war in Europe shall probably be decided. If the Allies win we shall have no need to continue to rearm at a frenzied pace. If the Allies lose the most frenzied pace may not be enough...it is in the plain national interest of the United States to do everything possible to enable the Allies to continue the struggle whether in doing so it enables them to win or not. Only in that way can be buy time....For if Hitler wins there is no reason to believe that he will give this Nation and this hemisphere any more time to strengthen their defenses than he gave Great Britain and France. It is not his nature to be so generous.”
Saturday, May 28, 2016
Thursday, May 26, 2016
Sunday, May 26, 1940
DECISIVE HOURS IN FLANDERS. The battle in northern France and Belgium has taken on a depressing pattern. We hear on the radio that the Allies are “counter-attacking,” and that British or French troops have “stopped” the Germans. Then a couple of days go by...and we find out the Nazis have advanced another twenty or thirty miles.
It’s happened again. The banner headline in last Thursday’s Washington Post read, “Allies Halt Channel Drive,” and the radio was full of reports that the Germans had been thrown out of Abbeville and Arras. Well, apparently that didn’t bother the Nazis too much, because the Saturday papers say they’ve turned north from Abbeville and are now racing up the Channel coastline. According to Frank R. Kelley in the New York Herald Tribune, the British now say they’ve “temporarily” retreated from the major port of Boulogne after ferocious air and ground fighting.
Mr. Kelley also writes that “tonight the Germans said they were ‘at Calais,’ half an hour north of Boulogne, and the British did not deny it.” The French denied on Saturday that Boulogne had fallen, but the radio this morning quotes an official French spokesman as saying the situation there is “confused.” What’s clear now, on the other hand, is what the German Army is up to. The pouring of fresh troops and tanks into the coastal attack is coming dangerously close to cutting the Allied armies in Belgium off from the Channel ports. Thus, as Sigrid Schultz writes in the Chicago Tribune, the Germans are “drawing tighter the noose of steel, fire, and death” around the Allied armies in the French-Belgian pocket.
THE ARMIES IN THE “POCKET.” William Shirer said in his C.B.S. broadcast from Berlin last night that the Germans now jubilantly believe they have the “cream of the Allies armies” trapped in Belgium and northern France. Nazi sources estimate these Allied forces at more than a million -- 400,000 Belgians, 500,000 French, 200,000 British. What’s more, the Germans are optimistic that these units include the best forces of the French Army and a large part of the mechanized British Expeditionary Force. If this is even half-true, the loss of these troops and material would be an unbelievable disaster for the Allies.
HOPE FOR A FRENCH BREAK-THROUGH. But then, there’s still at least a chance that the Nazis might get trapped themselves. G.H. Archambault writes in Saturday’s New York Times that Allied are counter-attacking along the narrow “neck” of the German salient connecting the main Nazi armies with the tank units racing up the coastline. French troops are driving northward along the Somme River from Amiens and Peronne, while Allied fighters on the north side of the “neck” have attacked southward from Bapaume and Cambrai. The United Press reports from Paris that these attacks have closed the gap separating the pocket from the body of France by one-third, from thirty miles to twenty miles.
Mr. Archambault adds that “if the gap is closed, French military spokesmen said, between 20,000 and 30,000 Nazi troops and 1,000 tanks and other armored units will be caught in a trap along the Channel, where Chancellor Hitler is gambling to obtain a foothold for his threatened blitzkrieg against the British Isles.” Thus, bridging that twenty miles in Flanders might change the whole complexion of the war. But can it be done?
HITLER’S REAL “SECRET WEAPON.” Dorothy Thompson writes in Friday’s New York Herald Tribune that the Nazis are indeed using a new kind of warfare against Britain and France --
“Hitler’s secret weapon is not a thermite bomb or a surface detonator. It is bacteria, all right, but new bacteria: The germs of defeatism. It is his knowledge of the deadly slowness, the childlike credulity, and easy-going complacency of democracies and their apparent incapacity, in the twentieth century, to take an audacious decision in time. Hitler won his first war against the German republic and observed then that the characteristic of democracies is that they wake up too late.”
AID THE ALLIES NOW. Miss Thompson also writes in Friday’s New York Herald Tribune that an Allied defeat would be “the worst catastrophe for the United States in our whole history.” I wish that were mere propaganda or hyperbole, but she sketches convincingly what would likely happen following a German victory. A Nazi-dominated Europe would detach South America from North America, since the South American countries market most of their goods to Europe, not to the United States. The loss of European markets would also greatly lower living standards in the U.S., causing a sharp rise in unemployment and thus, much social unrest. And Fifth Columnists would exploit those divisions here in dangerous ways. In the end, says Miss Thompson, America would become “another Spain.” All without a shot being fired. Piling up armaments to defend the forty-eight states won’t rescue us from this. We need to send war materials to the Allies -- as soon as possible, and in massive amounts.
AN END TO LIBERTY? The Chicago Tribune worries, not very convincingly, that if we stand up to dictatorship abroad we’ll end up losing our freedom. They point to the drastic new enabling law passed the other day in Britain --
“The British parliament, at the demand of Mr. Churchill’s combination government, adopted what is called a Hitler government to fight Hitler. The bill...was the law of Great Britain in about three hours....All persons and all property are given to the government for disposal as needed. The people of Britain, in this hour of extremity, will do -- and probably willingly -- what each is told to do. Labor, services, and possessions all may be conscripted. If a house is needed it is taken....The English have abandoned the charter of 1215 in order to avoid, if they can, the experience of 1066. They have gone back to the feudal forms set up by William after the conquest and, in effect, they again hold everything as of the King. Their property rights are in his name and their services might be required by him....War, it should be understood, even without the imminent dangers threatening Great Britain, might easily bring to the United States over night just the thing which is now supreme in the land where our liberties had their political origin.”
No doubt Chamberlain felt the same way two years ago -- that risking war was the very worst of alternatives and must be avoided at all cost. Yet it’s precisely because he stipulated his policies on this mistaken belief that Britain is now having to sacrifice her freedoms today, just for the hope of staying alive.
A SERMON ON DEMOCRACY. In case you missed it, then by all means seek out a copy of Saturday’s New York Herald Tribune or Washington Post and read Walter Lippmann’s column. It’s a beautifully written and inspiring essay, almost religious in tone, on what the democracies must do to survive. This excerpt doesn’t do it justice --
“There is the question of whether a self-governing people will impose upon itself a self-discipline strong enough to insure its own defense. The question is put to a final and desperate test in Western Europe today and in the Americas it is the question on which depends the future of this hemisphere as a hemisphere of freedom. Liberty without discipline cannot survive. Without order and authority in the spirit of man the free way of life leads through weakness, disorganization, self-indulgence, and moral indifference to the destruction of freedom itself. The tragic ordeal through which the western world is passing was prepared in the long period of easy liberty during which man forgot the elementary truths of human existence....They had become too comfortable and too safe and too sophisticated to believe the first things and the last things which men have been inspired to understand through generations of suffering, and they thought it clever to be cynical, and enlightened to be unbelieving, and sensible to be soft. And so, through suffering they must rediscover these first and last things again, and be purified once more by repentance....The elementary principles of work and sacrifice and duty and the transcendent criteria of truth, justice, and righteousness – and the grace of love and charity – are the things which have made men free. Men can keep their freedom and reconquer it only by these means.”
WHAT WILL HAPPEN NEXT? Ernest K. Lindley lists the possibilities in Friday’s Washington Post --
“The major possibilities for the next few weeks include these: (1) The miracle which saves the Allied armies on the Continent from destruction; (2) Surrender by France; (3) Surrender by Great Britain; (4) Surrender by both Great Britain and France; (5) The refusal of either France or Great Britain to surrender, even though both may be overrun or bombed into shambles. In other words, their insistence on carrying on the war as world empires even if their home bases become untenable.”
Mr. Lindley adds, “It is conceivable that within weeks the British Isles will become untenable as a base for British sea power. If the British or combined fleets, or what is left of them, in the Atlantic fall back on Canada, we will be all the way into the world struggle, whether or not we declare that we are at war.” But whatever happens, “the United States must become a great arsenal as rapidly as possible” -- and must help the Allies as much as we can.
It’s happened again. The banner headline in last Thursday’s Washington Post read, “Allies Halt Channel Drive,” and the radio was full of reports that the Germans had been thrown out of Abbeville and Arras. Well, apparently that didn’t bother the Nazis too much, because the Saturday papers say they’ve turned north from Abbeville and are now racing up the Channel coastline. According to Frank R. Kelley in the New York Herald Tribune, the British now say they’ve “temporarily” retreated from the major port of Boulogne after ferocious air and ground fighting.
Mr. Kelley also writes that “tonight the Germans said they were ‘at Calais,’ half an hour north of Boulogne, and the British did not deny it.” The French denied on Saturday that Boulogne had fallen, but the radio this morning quotes an official French spokesman as saying the situation there is “confused.” What’s clear now, on the other hand, is what the German Army is up to. The pouring of fresh troops and tanks into the coastal attack is coming dangerously close to cutting the Allied armies in Belgium off from the Channel ports. Thus, as Sigrid Schultz writes in the Chicago Tribune, the Germans are “drawing tighter the noose of steel, fire, and death” around the Allied armies in the French-Belgian pocket.
THE ARMIES IN THE “POCKET.” William Shirer said in his C.B.S. broadcast from Berlin last night that the Germans now jubilantly believe they have the “cream of the Allies armies” trapped in Belgium and northern France. Nazi sources estimate these Allied forces at more than a million -- 400,000 Belgians, 500,000 French, 200,000 British. What’s more, the Germans are optimistic that these units include the best forces of the French Army and a large part of the mechanized British Expeditionary Force. If this is even half-true, the loss of these troops and material would be an unbelievable disaster for the Allies.
HOPE FOR A FRENCH BREAK-THROUGH. But then, there’s still at least a chance that the Nazis might get trapped themselves. G.H. Archambault writes in Saturday’s New York Times that Allied are counter-attacking along the narrow “neck” of the German salient connecting the main Nazi armies with the tank units racing up the coastline. French troops are driving northward along the Somme River from Amiens and Peronne, while Allied fighters on the north side of the “neck” have attacked southward from Bapaume and Cambrai. The United Press reports from Paris that these attacks have closed the gap separating the pocket from the body of France by one-third, from thirty miles to twenty miles.
Mr. Archambault adds that “if the gap is closed, French military spokesmen said, between 20,000 and 30,000 Nazi troops and 1,000 tanks and other armored units will be caught in a trap along the Channel, where Chancellor Hitler is gambling to obtain a foothold for his threatened blitzkrieg against the British Isles.” Thus, bridging that twenty miles in Flanders might change the whole complexion of the war. But can it be done?
HITLER’S REAL “SECRET WEAPON.” Dorothy Thompson writes in Friday’s New York Herald Tribune that the Nazis are indeed using a new kind of warfare against Britain and France --
“Hitler’s secret weapon is not a thermite bomb or a surface detonator. It is bacteria, all right, but new bacteria: The germs of defeatism. It is his knowledge of the deadly slowness, the childlike credulity, and easy-going complacency of democracies and their apparent incapacity, in the twentieth century, to take an audacious decision in time. Hitler won his first war against the German republic and observed then that the characteristic of democracies is that they wake up too late.”
AID THE ALLIES NOW. Miss Thompson also writes in Friday’s New York Herald Tribune that an Allied defeat would be “the worst catastrophe for the United States in our whole history.” I wish that were mere propaganda or hyperbole, but she sketches convincingly what would likely happen following a German victory. A Nazi-dominated Europe would detach South America from North America, since the South American countries market most of their goods to Europe, not to the United States. The loss of European markets would also greatly lower living standards in the U.S., causing a sharp rise in unemployment and thus, much social unrest. And Fifth Columnists would exploit those divisions here in dangerous ways. In the end, says Miss Thompson, America would become “another Spain.” All without a shot being fired. Piling up armaments to defend the forty-eight states won’t rescue us from this. We need to send war materials to the Allies -- as soon as possible, and in massive amounts.
AN END TO LIBERTY? The Chicago Tribune worries, not very convincingly, that if we stand up to dictatorship abroad we’ll end up losing our freedom. They point to the drastic new enabling law passed the other day in Britain --
“The British parliament, at the demand of Mr. Churchill’s combination government, adopted what is called a Hitler government to fight Hitler. The bill...was the law of Great Britain in about three hours....All persons and all property are given to the government for disposal as needed. The people of Britain, in this hour of extremity, will do -- and probably willingly -- what each is told to do. Labor, services, and possessions all may be conscripted. If a house is needed it is taken....The English have abandoned the charter of 1215 in order to avoid, if they can, the experience of 1066. They have gone back to the feudal forms set up by William after the conquest and, in effect, they again hold everything as of the King. Their property rights are in his name and their services might be required by him....War, it should be understood, even without the imminent dangers threatening Great Britain, might easily bring to the United States over night just the thing which is now supreme in the land where our liberties had their political origin.”
No doubt Chamberlain felt the same way two years ago -- that risking war was the very worst of alternatives and must be avoided at all cost. Yet it’s precisely because he stipulated his policies on this mistaken belief that Britain is now having to sacrifice her freedoms today, just for the hope of staying alive.
A SERMON ON DEMOCRACY. In case you missed it, then by all means seek out a copy of Saturday’s New York Herald Tribune or Washington Post and read Walter Lippmann’s column. It’s a beautifully written and inspiring essay, almost religious in tone, on what the democracies must do to survive. This excerpt doesn’t do it justice --
“There is the question of whether a self-governing people will impose upon itself a self-discipline strong enough to insure its own defense. The question is put to a final and desperate test in Western Europe today and in the Americas it is the question on which depends the future of this hemisphere as a hemisphere of freedom. Liberty without discipline cannot survive. Without order and authority in the spirit of man the free way of life leads through weakness, disorganization, self-indulgence, and moral indifference to the destruction of freedom itself. The tragic ordeal through which the western world is passing was prepared in the long period of easy liberty during which man forgot the elementary truths of human existence....They had become too comfortable and too safe and too sophisticated to believe the first things and the last things which men have been inspired to understand through generations of suffering, and they thought it clever to be cynical, and enlightened to be unbelieving, and sensible to be soft. And so, through suffering they must rediscover these first and last things again, and be purified once more by repentance....The elementary principles of work and sacrifice and duty and the transcendent criteria of truth, justice, and righteousness – and the grace of love and charity – are the things which have made men free. Men can keep their freedom and reconquer it only by these means.”
WHAT WILL HAPPEN NEXT? Ernest K. Lindley lists the possibilities in Friday’s Washington Post --
“The major possibilities for the next few weeks include these: (1) The miracle which saves the Allied armies on the Continent from destruction; (2) Surrender by France; (3) Surrender by Great Britain; (4) Surrender by both Great Britain and France; (5) The refusal of either France or Great Britain to surrender, even though both may be overrun or bombed into shambles. In other words, their insistence on carrying on the war as world empires even if their home bases become untenable.”
Mr. Lindley adds, “It is conceivable that within weeks the British Isles will become untenable as a base for British sea power. If the British or combined fleets, or what is left of them, in the Atlantic fall back on Canada, we will be all the way into the world struggle, whether or not we declare that we are at war.” But whatever happens, “the United States must become a great arsenal as rapidly as possible” -- and must help the Allies as much as we can.
Monday, May 23, 2016
Thursday, May 23, 1940
THE GERMANS RACE WESTWARD. They’ve driven through northern France all the way to Abbeville, at the mouth of the Somme River and only fifteen miles from Le Treport on the English Channel. Wednesday’s papers say German forces also took Arras and Amiens as well. Radio reports this morning indicate the Allies have retaken Abbeville and Arras, but the bulletins sound as if these are local attacks, not the start of the generalized counter-offensive which the Allies have been promising.
And of course the big question is how the Germans managed to blast another fifty miles westward in just a couple days’ time. The map on the front page of Monday’s New York Herald Tribune showed the Nazis still fighting along the Oise River line, far from the coast. But Wednesday’s map in the Washington Post shows a line of German advance reaching from St. Quentin to Amiens and on to Abbeville.
1,000,000 TRAPPED ALLIED SOLDIERS? George Axelsson writes in Wednesday’s New York Times that the arrival of the Germans at Abbeville “has practically isolated the combined Allied armies in Belgium and the northwest tip of France.” Mr. Axelsson casts the consequences of this in especially dire terms -- “Unless they can fight their way out, this should seal the fate of the Belgian army and numerous divisions of Frenchmen, altogether totalling perhaps between 500,000 and 1,000,000 men, including whatever British are left in the area.” But one radio report today says the Allies are “minimizing” German claims of entrapment.
One hopeful bulletin -- a French force driving northward in the St. Quentin area is only thirty-five miles from advance Allied positions in Belgium, raising the tantalizing possibility that the front-line units of the Germans themselves might be cut off.
But Louis P. Lochner of the Associated Press is traveling with the German Eighth Army in Belgium, and writes a report Wednesday on just how much pressure Allied forces are facing -- “Cannon boomed, shrapnel rent the air, and German scouters roared overhead directing the artillery. Ugly clouds of yellow-white or grey smoke indicated where the deadly loads were deposited on the roads upon which Allied troops were withdrawing. Invisible to us, because they were hidden by trees, were German infantrymen relentlessly pushing after the enemy. Where we stood English artillery observers had been only a day before. Thus quickly do the fortunes of war change in this area.”
ONE REASON FOR PESSIMISM. The C.B.S. Berlin correspondent, William Shirer, also just got back from traveling with German troops. In last night’s broadcast, he ascribed the Nazis’ success to the “unbelievable” speed with which the Germans are bringing reinforcements and arms and ammunition up to the front lines – and without any harassment from Allied warplanes. Mr. Shirer spoke of witnessing “miles and miles” of Nazi transport jamming the roads heading for the front. By contrast, he says, German aircraft are inflicting blistering damage on French and British support troops, giving the Nazis a major advantage before battles are fought.
NO PANIC IN BRITAIN, BUT IN FRANCE... Edward R. Murrow reported from London Tuesday for C.B.S. that the “terse and laconic” official communiques bringing the bad news from France have left Britons surprised and bewildered. But they are not panicking. There is, he said, a cold-blooded urgency about the need to hold on until they can fight for victory. The change in British opinion doesn’t reflect itself in “hysteria or patriotic outbursts," but instead in bitterness -- not only directed at the Nazis but also the “men in this country who failed to realize the nature of the German threat,” presumably Chamberlain and his cronies.
Contrast that somber spirit with the reaction in France, where the mood seems to border on hysteria. In a partially-censored dispatch from Paris, Associated Press correspondent Henry C. Cassidy writes Wednesday that after the Germans penetrated to Abbeville, “slowly moving lines of automobiles” snaked southward from Paris as civilians fled the city, and rail stations were packed with refugees heading south and west. The A.P. also reports on an “anguished appeal” for foreign help issued by Premier Reynaud. In addressing the French Senate, he condemned the “incredible faults” in the French high command which have led to “the disaster, the total disorganization,” of the French units which failed to stop the Germans at the Meuse River. David Darrah’s report in the Chicago Tribune leads off with Reynaud’s cry -- “France cannot die! If a miracle is needed to save France, I believe in miracles because I believe in France!” This is supposed to instill confidence?
BRITAIN BECOMES A “DICTATORSHIP.” C.B.S.’s Edward R. Murrow calls it a “revolution,” and the Chicago Tribune calls it “100 per cent totalitarianism.” The British government calls it necessary to meet the “grave” crisis. Parliament has passed, on Prime Minister Churchill’s demand and after only two-and-a-half hours of consideration, a drastic enabling act which grants the British government complete control over all persons and property. The law also will give the minister of labor the authority to draft any individual to perform “any service required”, and to inspect employers’ premises and books on demand. Joseph Cerutti writes from London in Wednesday’s Tribune that there is “growing concern in the country concerning the tightening of burocratic control over the freedom of speech and the functioning of the press.” But Mr. Murrow says the British press is applauding the action. For example, he says, the Daily Herald’s reaction to the law is that “Hitler started the war eight years ago, we start it today.” The consensus seems to be that to fight a dictator, you’ve got to become dictatorial yourself.
HITLER’S HOROSCOPE SAYS... An odd paragraph in an unbelievable week of news, from Sigrid Schultz’s story in the Chicago Tribune on Wednesday –
“German astrologists have predicted that the planet Mercury, which they take to represent England, will go thru terrific crises starting Thursday. They see as part of these crises Germany’s attack on the British Isles. Furthermore, the star gazers have forecast the end of the war on June 4. The speed of the German drive in the west has increased the faith of astrologists that Germany will be the winner.”
Whatever their reasoning, Nazi sources have told Miss Schultz they believe Hitler will order attacks on Britain “by the end of the week.”
WOULD BRITAIN SURRENDER HER FLEET? In his Washington Post column Wednesday, Ernest Lindley thinks the unthinkable -- if Britain is beaten to her knees by Germany, what happens to the massive British fleet could become a life-or-death matter to the United States. He also posits a chilling look at just how the Nazis might seize Britain’s navy with air power alone --
“Within a few weeks the Nazis may be able to line up in Norway, Holland and Belgium and on the French channel coast 6,000 or 7,000 bombing planes and fighter escort planes....If that happens we may expect the most gigantic blackmail in the history of the world: ‘Surrender the British fleet intact or Britain will be devastated.’ Whether the British would give up at the first threat is extremely doubtful – especially with a man of Churchill’s fighting spirit at the head of the government. But suppose the Nazis convert London, the nerve center of Britain, into a shambles and then say: ‘Are you ready now to give up and surrender the fleet?’”...[And] even if the British are able to withstand such punishment as no urban people have ever endured, the possibility cannot be eliminated that Great Britain will be successfully invaded and beaten to her knees.”
Mr. Lindley adds that Germany’s superiority in warplanes need not worry the United States, “unless, or until, it is accompanied by sea power.” And German control of even part of the Allied fleets would give the Reich the world’s greatest navy, as well as the greatest army and air force. Thus, he believes, we should give moral and material support to the Allies, but ask for something in return -- “the most solemn assurance that the Allied fleets will never be surrendered, and that if by air power they are forced off their present bases they will fall back on the Western Hemisphere and Singapore.”
THE CONVENTIONS SHOULD BE POSTPONED. Walter Lippmann has a number of thoughtful proposals in his New York Herald Tribune column on Tuesday, including bringing prominent Republicans into President Roosevelt’s cabinet and establishing a bipartisan Council of National Defense in the Executive Branch to oversee defense programs and policy. Another idea, and a good one, too, is that since the war’s decisive phase appears very close, Democrats and Republicans ought to postpone this summer’s party conventions for a few weeks --
“The Democratic Convention is called for July. The Republican Convention is called for the end of June....On the Democratic side postponement would seem to be absolutely necessary. For if the party renominates Mr. Roosevelt for a third term in the midst of the world crisis, it will inject into our domestic politics an issue which will dangerously disrupt the unity of the nation. If, on the other hand, the Democrats do not renominate Mr. Roosevelt...he will be a lame-duck President from July to January, unable to lead the nation or to speak for it with authority. That will be dangerous, too. Therefore, the Democratic convention should be put off until September...this is the only way to uphold the authority of the President and yet to put the third-term issue in cold storage during the critical period of the war. If it is not so imperative but it is desirable that the Republicans should also postpone their convention, if not until September then at least until August. For if the Republicans have to nominate in June and write their platform, how can they seriously expect to know what is to be the situation of this country in November?”
And of course the big question is how the Germans managed to blast another fifty miles westward in just a couple days’ time. The map on the front page of Monday’s New York Herald Tribune showed the Nazis still fighting along the Oise River line, far from the coast. But Wednesday’s map in the Washington Post shows a line of German advance reaching from St. Quentin to Amiens and on to Abbeville.
1,000,000 TRAPPED ALLIED SOLDIERS? George Axelsson writes in Wednesday’s New York Times that the arrival of the Germans at Abbeville “has practically isolated the combined Allied armies in Belgium and the northwest tip of France.” Mr. Axelsson casts the consequences of this in especially dire terms -- “Unless they can fight their way out, this should seal the fate of the Belgian army and numerous divisions of Frenchmen, altogether totalling perhaps between 500,000 and 1,000,000 men, including whatever British are left in the area.” But one radio report today says the Allies are “minimizing” German claims of entrapment.
One hopeful bulletin -- a French force driving northward in the St. Quentin area is only thirty-five miles from advance Allied positions in Belgium, raising the tantalizing possibility that the front-line units of the Germans themselves might be cut off.
But Louis P. Lochner of the Associated Press is traveling with the German Eighth Army in Belgium, and writes a report Wednesday on just how much pressure Allied forces are facing -- “Cannon boomed, shrapnel rent the air, and German scouters roared overhead directing the artillery. Ugly clouds of yellow-white or grey smoke indicated where the deadly loads were deposited on the roads upon which Allied troops were withdrawing. Invisible to us, because they were hidden by trees, were German infantrymen relentlessly pushing after the enemy. Where we stood English artillery observers had been only a day before. Thus quickly do the fortunes of war change in this area.”
ONE REASON FOR PESSIMISM. The C.B.S. Berlin correspondent, William Shirer, also just got back from traveling with German troops. In last night’s broadcast, he ascribed the Nazis’ success to the “unbelievable” speed with which the Germans are bringing reinforcements and arms and ammunition up to the front lines – and without any harassment from Allied warplanes. Mr. Shirer spoke of witnessing “miles and miles” of Nazi transport jamming the roads heading for the front. By contrast, he says, German aircraft are inflicting blistering damage on French and British support troops, giving the Nazis a major advantage before battles are fought.
NO PANIC IN BRITAIN, BUT IN FRANCE... Edward R. Murrow reported from London Tuesday for C.B.S. that the “terse and laconic” official communiques bringing the bad news from France have left Britons surprised and bewildered. But they are not panicking. There is, he said, a cold-blooded urgency about the need to hold on until they can fight for victory. The change in British opinion doesn’t reflect itself in “hysteria or patriotic outbursts," but instead in bitterness -- not only directed at the Nazis but also the “men in this country who failed to realize the nature of the German threat,” presumably Chamberlain and his cronies.
Contrast that somber spirit with the reaction in France, where the mood seems to border on hysteria. In a partially-censored dispatch from Paris, Associated Press correspondent Henry C. Cassidy writes Wednesday that after the Germans penetrated to Abbeville, “slowly moving lines of automobiles” snaked southward from Paris as civilians fled the city, and rail stations were packed with refugees heading south and west. The A.P. also reports on an “anguished appeal” for foreign help issued by Premier Reynaud. In addressing the French Senate, he condemned the “incredible faults” in the French high command which have led to “the disaster, the total disorganization,” of the French units which failed to stop the Germans at the Meuse River. David Darrah’s report in the Chicago Tribune leads off with Reynaud’s cry -- “France cannot die! If a miracle is needed to save France, I believe in miracles because I believe in France!” This is supposed to instill confidence?
BRITAIN BECOMES A “DICTATORSHIP.” C.B.S.’s Edward R. Murrow calls it a “revolution,” and the Chicago Tribune calls it “100 per cent totalitarianism.” The British government calls it necessary to meet the “grave” crisis. Parliament has passed, on Prime Minister Churchill’s demand and after only two-and-a-half hours of consideration, a drastic enabling act which grants the British government complete control over all persons and property. The law also will give the minister of labor the authority to draft any individual to perform “any service required”, and to inspect employers’ premises and books on demand. Joseph Cerutti writes from London in Wednesday’s Tribune that there is “growing concern in the country concerning the tightening of burocratic control over the freedom of speech and the functioning of the press.” But Mr. Murrow says the British press is applauding the action. For example, he says, the Daily Herald’s reaction to the law is that “Hitler started the war eight years ago, we start it today.” The consensus seems to be that to fight a dictator, you’ve got to become dictatorial yourself.
HITLER’S HOROSCOPE SAYS... An odd paragraph in an unbelievable week of news, from Sigrid Schultz’s story in the Chicago Tribune on Wednesday –
“German astrologists have predicted that the planet Mercury, which they take to represent England, will go thru terrific crises starting Thursday. They see as part of these crises Germany’s attack on the British Isles. Furthermore, the star gazers have forecast the end of the war on June 4. The speed of the German drive in the west has increased the faith of astrologists that Germany will be the winner.”
Whatever their reasoning, Nazi sources have told Miss Schultz they believe Hitler will order attacks on Britain “by the end of the week.”
WOULD BRITAIN SURRENDER HER FLEET? In his Washington Post column Wednesday, Ernest Lindley thinks the unthinkable -- if Britain is beaten to her knees by Germany, what happens to the massive British fleet could become a life-or-death matter to the United States. He also posits a chilling look at just how the Nazis might seize Britain’s navy with air power alone --
“Within a few weeks the Nazis may be able to line up in Norway, Holland and Belgium and on the French channel coast 6,000 or 7,000 bombing planes and fighter escort planes....If that happens we may expect the most gigantic blackmail in the history of the world: ‘Surrender the British fleet intact or Britain will be devastated.’ Whether the British would give up at the first threat is extremely doubtful – especially with a man of Churchill’s fighting spirit at the head of the government. But suppose the Nazis convert London, the nerve center of Britain, into a shambles and then say: ‘Are you ready now to give up and surrender the fleet?’”...[And] even if the British are able to withstand such punishment as no urban people have ever endured, the possibility cannot be eliminated that Great Britain will be successfully invaded and beaten to her knees.”
Mr. Lindley adds that Germany’s superiority in warplanes need not worry the United States, “unless, or until, it is accompanied by sea power.” And German control of even part of the Allied fleets would give the Reich the world’s greatest navy, as well as the greatest army and air force. Thus, he believes, we should give moral and material support to the Allies, but ask for something in return -- “the most solemn assurance that the Allied fleets will never be surrendered, and that if by air power they are forced off their present bases they will fall back on the Western Hemisphere and Singapore.”
THE CONVENTIONS SHOULD BE POSTPONED. Walter Lippmann has a number of thoughtful proposals in his New York Herald Tribune column on Tuesday, including bringing prominent Republicans into President Roosevelt’s cabinet and establishing a bipartisan Council of National Defense in the Executive Branch to oversee defense programs and policy. Another idea, and a good one, too, is that since the war’s decisive phase appears very close, Democrats and Republicans ought to postpone this summer’s party conventions for a few weeks --
“The Democratic Convention is called for July. The Republican Convention is called for the end of June....On the Democratic side postponement would seem to be absolutely necessary. For if the party renominates Mr. Roosevelt for a third term in the midst of the world crisis, it will inject into our domestic politics an issue which will dangerously disrupt the unity of the nation. If, on the other hand, the Democrats do not renominate Mr. Roosevelt...he will be a lame-duck President from July to January, unable to lead the nation or to speak for it with authority. That will be dangerous, too. Therefore, the Democratic convention should be put off until September...this is the only way to uphold the authority of the President and yet to put the third-term issue in cold storage during the critical period of the war. If it is not so imperative but it is desirable that the Republicans should also postpone their convention, if not until September then at least until August. For if the Republicans have to nominate in June and write their platform, how can they seriously expect to know what is to be the situation of this country in November?”
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