FRANCE – THE PRICE OF PEACE. The terms of Germany’s armistice with France have been made public -- not by the Nazis, but by the British. The terms are brutal. According to James MacDonald in Monday’s New York Times, the Germans will occupy the entire northern half of France, as well as a sizeable north-to-south strip of the Atlantic coastal region extending to the Spanish border. A jagged border separates the occupied zone from an “independent” France, which promises to turn over to the Reich all “artillery, planes, tanks, and munitions.” The Petain regime will be allowed to maintain a “small force,” but not a regular army. Most strikingly, writes Mr. MacDonald, the French have agreed to “the immediate recall of the French fleet to its home waters. The fleet would then come under German and Italian control at ports to be specified and its personnel interred.” But the Nazis do promise, cross their hearts and hope to die, that they won’t seize the sizeable assets of the French navy and use them against Britain. (To add insult to injury, Italy is said in the Times to have claimed France’s entire Mediterranean coast as Mussolini’s price for peace. Which is utterly ridiculous -- how many shots did the brave Fascist legions fire in their “offensive” directed at the French Alps? Twenty? Thirty?)
There’s still some confusion about exactly when the armistice goes into effect, if it hasn’t already. The radio this morning isn’t enlightening on this point. The fighting was supposed to stop as soon as the Italian armistice was concluded. The radio does say this morning that the France and Italy have agreed to terms, but nobody’s saying yet what those terms are.
William Shirer broadcast from Paris last night on the C.B.S. He related the confusion of Parisians about when the fighting will stop and their hopes that peace will somehow save the lives of ten million French refugees who are threatened with starvation. Mr. Shirer also relates an odd and disturbing detail – people in Paris are “pleasantly surprised” so far by the “polite behavior” of German officers and soldiers. There’s fraternization and downright friendliness between conqueror and conquered, examples of which the correspondent witnessed for himself.
CHURCHILL BREAKS WITH PETAIN. Larry Rue writes in Monday’s Chicago Tribune on Britain’s repudiation of the Petain government, whose surrender is viewed in London as a “breach of faith.” Churchill’s argument, and it’s a sound one, is that “the Anglo-French treaty of alliance...bound Britain and France not to conclude a separate peace. This clause was said to have been inserted at France’s request to remove misgivings as to England’s determination.” According to the New York Herald Tribune account, Britain also maintains that Petain’s agreement to the harsh Nazi peace terms “reduced the Bordeaux government to a state of complete subjection to the enemy and deprived it of all liberty and of all right to represent free French citizens.”
So just what kind of French regime does Britain now recognize? According to the Herald Tribune, it’s a “French National Committee” set up by rebel Frenchmen in London, led by Gen. Charles de Gaulle. General de Gaulle is a former Under Secretary of War in the Reynaud government who negotiated with Churchill two weeks ago during the abortive attempt to join the French and British Empires into a single sovereign state. He pledged in a B.B.C. radio broadcast to France Sunday to carry on the war to “final victory,” and that the Committee would account for its actions to “the legal and established French government as soon as one exists.” Significantly, the Committee may have a large base to fight from. According to Mr. Rue’s story in the Tribune, French commanders in Syria, French Indo-China, Madagascar, Tunis, and Morocco have promised to continue fighting the Axis. That certainly would take some of the sting out of Petain’s surrender.
A DISHONORABLE PEACE. The New York Herald Tribune editorializes that it’s no wonder the British, not the Germans, were the first ones to trumpet the specifics of the French armistice agreement --
“It is easy to understand why it is London and not Bordeaux, or Berlin, which is hastening to publish the terms through every corner of the world which is still free to read them. It is a safe guess that every French ship, every French colonial capital and every listener on French soil whom the British can reach has already heard this text. For, whatever else it may be, this is certainly not the ‘honorable peace’ without which the Bordeaux government declared that it would resist until the end....The government which could sign these terms not only puts France in the position of leaving Great Britain in the lurch in her desperate hour but undertakes to require all Frenchmen everywhere to make themselves into silent partners in Hitlerism and passive allies, in effect, in the reduction of what is now the last citadel of civilized Europe. This is not an honorable surrender. Perhaps it was unavoidable; and those who have retained at a temporarily safe distance have earned no right to criticize. But the facts speak for themselves, and it may be that on the power with which they speak to the French people and to those parts of the empire still capable of resistance, future history may yet turn.”
BRITAIN’S CHANCES OF SURVIVAL. In Sunday’s New York Times, James. B. Reston calculates both sides’ advantages and disadvantages in the coming Battle of Britain --
“The chief weaknesses of this country in the present and perhaps the decisive battle of the war are a bad start and the general inefficiency of everything. The nation has quality -- of men and machines -- but it has not quantity of anything. It is a nation of 48,000,000 fighting one of 80,000,000. Its aircraft in the past has been fighting at odds of 1 to 4 and there is no assurance that even this average will not get less favorable. Its bomb production too, an important item in these days and nights of reprisals, again is below the enemy’s. But it has, of course, its strength. Hitler may be a miracle man but he has not yet mastered the elements. He cannot turn water into land and so long as Britain has a big moat around her fortress she has a great advantage in the coming struggle. The German Fuehrer can bring this country to is knees in three main ways. He can bomb her out, starve her out, or drive her out by invasion, but so long as that moat remains the last is going to be difficult. As Mr. Churchill pointed out in the Commons this week, though it would not be difficult for the Germans to land 10,000 men somewhere on Britain’s long coastline it would take 250 ships for him to transport five divisions -- a figure the Prime Minister seemed to believe would be necessary to form a formidable force.”
Mr. Reston notes that even with all the alarming news of the past month, many of Britain’s citizens are facing their terrible situation with a curious complacency -- “Many of them...want, in fact they almost insist, on believing the best and no matter what Prime Minister Churchill or Alfred Duff Cooper or the editorial writers say they keep on feeling that everything is going to be all right. This is at once a strength and a weakness. It is a strength because they do not get hysterical and panicky and waste a lot of nervous energy worrying about invasion and bombing before they come...but at the same time it is a great weakness because hundreds of thousands of them simply have not got excited enough about the country’s danger to do anything to help her.”
BOTH PARTIES ARE “ANTI-WAR”. Despite the charges made by isolationists, Mark Sullivan argues in Sunday’s Washington Post that Democrats and Republicans alike are united in a determination to not send our troops across the ocean --
“There is one area of war policy about which there is general agreement. This could be stated simply enough: ‘America will never send a conscripted army to fight in Europe.’ Upon that there is general agreement by the Republicans in Philadelphia, and likewise general agreement by the Democrats in Washington. President Roosevelt has stated this principle so emphatically that he could not depart from it without such stultification as would be unthinkable. So many leaders have stated this, in both parties; so many have stated it in a form that amounts to promise, and the public has been so generally assured on this point, that to depart from it now would be an intolerable shock to public confidence in our parties and leaders. To send an army to Europe, after so many pledges that we would not do it, would result in a lack of faith by the people in their leaders, as deplorable as any possible consequence of not sending an army to Europe.”
But Mr. Sullivan also warns that “careless promisers, in complete good faith, have sometimes stated it differently -- that we would not send an American Army ‘abroad.’ And yet, in the very earliest stages of the condition brought upon us by German conquest, we found that to use the word ‘abroad’ would limit us in a way hardly possible to live up to. In several contingencies, easily foreseeable, it may be necessary to send American troops to some of the West Indies, or to some portions of South America. That would be ‘abroad.’” It’s an intelligent distinction, and one can hope the Republicans in Philadelphia won’t neglect it, isolationist patter to the contrary.
TWO-THIRDS OF AMERICANS BACK CONSCRIPTION. This week’s Gallup survey in Sunday’s Washington Post shows a startling and rapid, shift in public opinion in favor of compulsory military training. Only 39% favored compulsory training last October, and that shifted to a 50-50 split at the beginning of June. And only three weeks later, Dr. Gallup says that 64% of Americans now favor one year of compulsory military service, with 36% opposed. In addition, about three-fourths of those surveyed support drafting young men to fill up vacancies in the army if its projected enlisted strength of 400,000 men is not reached by volunteer enlistments.
Another set of Gallup surveys show a remarkable bipartisan spirit on foreign policy and defense issues. Asked if the U.S. should give “greater aid” to the Allies, 68% of Democrats and 64% of Republicans said yes. By contrast, only 8% of Democrats and 6% of Republicans favor an American declaration of war on Germany. Democrat and Republican views on compulsory military training are almost identical. And almost equal numbers from the two parties support fighting to defend the West Indies and Canada from foreign aggression -- 84% of Democrats and Republicans alike would go to war for the West Indies, and 87% of Democrats and 86% of Republicans would do so for Canada.
These numbers are extremely encouraging. They suggest that the attempts by some isolationist Republicans this week in Philadelphia to shape the G.O.P. into a head-in-the-sand “peace party” will not register with voters. One can hope that the party’s nominee will reject the cynical, anti-British line of the “peace” crowd.
Saturday, June 25, 2016
Thursday, June 23, 2016
Sunday, June 23, 1940
FRANCE SURRENDERS TO GERMANY. The Nazis have officially succeeded in knocking one of their two remaining enemies out of the war. N.B.C. and C.B.S. reported in a joint broadcast yesterday afternoon that three French plenipotentiaries have signed an armistice, under terms that were handed to them by Fuehrer Hitler himself at the start of “negotiations” on Friday. C.B.S. newsman William Shirer, speaking from a clearing in Compiegne Forest where the talks were held, says the specific armistice terms have not yet been revealed. But the Associated Press reports Saturday on the general summary -- Hitler “demanded all resistance end; that the French give him ‘all guaranties necessary’ to continue his war against Great Britain, and that they accept ‘pre-conditions’ for a new European order designed above all to make ‘reparation of the wrong done to the German Reich by force.’” After Hitler finished the summary, his subordinates related the details. And apparently from what the A.P. says, the “negotiations” consisted of the German side asking the French, “Ja or nein?” On Saturday night, the French said “ja.”
The Germans displayed a petulant thirst to avenge the Allied victory of 1918 -- they insisted that the armistice meetings be held in the same railroad car in which the World War armistice was negotiated and signed in Compiegne Forest, which is some fifty miles north of Paris. And not only that, but the Nazis wanted the car taken from its nearby location as a museum exhibit and moved to the exact spot where France’s Marshall Foch accepted the German surrender nearly twenty-two years ago. The Germans believe this somehow proves their chivalry. According to the United Press, Germany’s official news agency is boasting that “the solemnity of the action toward the enemy who was honorably beaten stands in contrast to the eternal hate-sowing monuments on this scene where once Gallic vileness abused the unconquered German army.” Of course, the Nazis don’t mention that the reason French officers used this humble, remote location in 1918 was “to not make a spectacle” of German distress -- that from Saturday’s New York Herald Tribune.
WHEN DOES FRANCE’S WAR END? William Shirer also said in his C.B.S. report last night that after signing the armistice with Germany, the three French plenipotentiaries boarded a plane bound for Italy, where they will “negotiate” an end to the two-week-old Italo-French war. Once that agreement is signed, the details of the German pact will be formally made public, and it will go into effect. Judging from how quickly the French signed on to Hitler’s demands (which were surely quite tough), one can’t imagine them putting up much of a fuss against Italy. Marshal Petain’s speech Thursday has already admitted defeat -- according to the Associated Press, the once-proud officer told Frenchmen they must “take their beating and learn to live with it.”
In the meantime, Saturday’s battle map in the New York Herald Tribune shows that in a military sense it’s increasingly academic anyway – the Germans have plunged well into the southern half of France, holding a line from Brest to Tours to Vichy to Lyons and farther south. Nazi armored forces near the Rhone River are now only about two hundred miles from France’s Mediterranean coast. (But C. Brooks Peters writes in Saturday’s New York Times that French forces, though isolated in “a number of small sacks,” are still bitterly contesting Nazi gains here and there).
MYSTERY OF THE FRENCH FLEET. Sigrid Schultz writes from Berlin in Saturday’s Chicago Tribune that she can’t confirm British reports that the French navy has gotten orders to leave French ports. To the contrary, Miss Schultz writes, her understanding is that Marshal Petain has “ordered the warships to remain in French ports or to return to them if they were at sea.” Also, an Italian war communique says the Italian air force is closely monitoring all French ship movements.
On the other hand, an Associated Press dispatch from Friday quoted “reliable sources” in Cairo as saying that whatever happened in France, the French forces and French navy vessels in the eastern Mediterranean would continue to fight. And the Washington Post reports Saturday that the French navy “has been taken over virtually intact by the British fleet, under whose high command it has been operating during the war, and is beyond the jurisdiction of French government officials who might be compelled to turn it over to their Nazi conquerors.” So who’s right?
A MOVE AGAINST A FRENCH COLONY? Saturday’s Chicago Tribune also reports, as an insert to Miss Schultz’s story, that Britain may be about to take abrupt action to seize a strategic asset from its now-former ally --
“Military occupation of Syria by British troops and consolidation of Syria, Palestine, and Transjordan into one state may be expected to follow France’s capitulation to Germany, according to a radio broadcast from Athens last night. The Athens radio, quoting reports from Palestine, said preparations for the occupation already are in progress and that the new combined state will be known as Greater Arabia.”
I hope it’s true. One of the biggest problems with Britain’s prosecution of the war has been her unwillingness to act decisively and pre-empt Nazi advances. No doubt Mr. Churchill realizes that if the British Army doesn’t take control of Syria very soon, the German Army will. Hitler will squeeze France like a lemon to gain Nazi access to important parts of the French Empire. That’s why it’s so disappointing that the Petain government didn’t opt to carry on the war from overseas, as Churchill has pledged to do in the event Germany occupies the British Isles.
WHAT WENT WRONG? James M. Minifie, reporting from London, offers some informed speculations in Saturday’s New York Herald Tribune --
“Well informed sources who have recently returned to London from France agree that the morale of the French people began to crack when the government decided to abandon Paris without attempting to defend it. According to those observers, the decision caused a sense of defeat and hopelessness which was never overcome. In British military circles it is considered that the French general staff failed to turn to account lessons learned from the Polish campaign last September when the new German tactics of pushing forward with heavily armed units regardless of the possibility of flank attacks were clearly demonstrated. Despite this warning, according to military observers, the French continued to put their trust in ‘static’ war based on heavily fortified positions. When Gen. Maxime Weygand was appointed to the supreme command, the strategic positions was already compromised by the German break-through at the River Meuse and there was neither time, troops, nor tanks to hold the tremendous attack pouring down through Flanders.”
ROOSEVELT’S “WAR CABINET.” Yawn. Here comes yet another round of hyperbolic isolationist frenzy, in the wake of President Roosevelt’s surprise announcement naming two prominent Republicans to his cabinet. John B. Oakes writes in Friday’s Washington Post that the President’s appointment of Col. Henry L. Stimson as Secretary of War and Col. Frank Knox as Secretary of the Navy has ignited “furious debate” in the Senate. Chesly Manly collects some of the most overheated comments in the Chicago Tribune, which add up to the accusation that the President is trying to form a “war cabinet” as he plots to enter Europe’s conflict. In response, Roosevelt said the appointments were made in response to the national demand for bipartisanship and to further national defense, “and nothing else.” For his part, one of the leading isolationists, Senator Nye of North Dakota, called upon the President to resign “as a patriotic duty” and turn the government over to Vice President Garner.
What has especially stoked the isolationists’ burners is Col. Stimson’s and Col. Knox’s reputation as interventionists. Plus, Col. Stimson would replace as War Secretary Harry Woodring, who is quoted in the Topeka Capital as having claimed three weeks ago that “a small clique of international financiers” was trying to make him quit his job because he opposed “stripping our defenses to aid the Allies.” According to the Washington Post, the non-interventionist Mr. Woodring resigned only an hour before his successor was announced. The Tribune says that both Senator Nye, who is a Republican, and the isolationist Senator Clark, Democrat of Missouri, are threatening an investigation by the Senate Military Affairs Committee into the circumstances of Woodring’s resignation.
But the New York Times claims this isn’t having any long-lasting effect on the Republican Convention, which will convene in Philadelphia tomorrow. Says a front-page story in Saturday’s editions, “Republican sentiment for aid to the Allies rebounded after a brief resurgence of isolationism following the naming of Messrs. Knox and Stimson to the Cabinet.”
A BOOM FOR WILLKIE. Speaking of the Republican Convention, quite a few columnists say this week-end that this looks to be the most wide-open G.O.P. convention in twenty years. Thomas E. Dewey and Senator Robert Taft are still the leading contenders, each having about two-thirds of the 501 convention votes needed for nomination. But neither apparently have the means of getting to that 501 total on their own, and the burgeoning popularity of Wendell L. Willkie could thwart efforts by either of the two leaders to secure that nomination after the first ballot. A story in Saturday’s New York Herald Tribune by Francis M. Stephenson says that a prominent Dewey supporter has formally proposed the two leaders’ camps join forces in a Dewey-Taft or a Taft-Dewey ticket, bringing together 650 to 675 delegate votes and securing the nomination. But Willkie supporters retort that neither Taft and Dewey can in reality deliver enough delegates to the other to pull this off. Quite a few of these delegates, Willkie men say, are poised to bolt toward Willkie on the second and third ballots.
Meanwhile, Friday’s Washington Post offers Dr. Gallup’s final pre-convention poll, which shows a sharp rise in Republican support for Willkie. He stands at 29% and continues to hold second place to Dewey, who has fallen to 47%. Just one week ago, the numbers stood at 53% for Dewey and 17% for Willkie. Senator Taft, despite his impressive number of delegates, was only at 13% one week ago, and has dropped to 8% this week. Gallup says war news has contributed to the volatility in Republican ranks -- “As the war in Europe developed, the number of Republicans who are undecided has grown.” In fact, when the undecided vote is included in the survey, it leads all three of the principal candidates. Those numbers are Undecided, 34%; Dewey, 31%; Willkie, 19%; and Taft, a paltry 5%.
The Germans displayed a petulant thirst to avenge the Allied victory of 1918 -- they insisted that the armistice meetings be held in the same railroad car in which the World War armistice was negotiated and signed in Compiegne Forest, which is some fifty miles north of Paris. And not only that, but the Nazis wanted the car taken from its nearby location as a museum exhibit and moved to the exact spot where France’s Marshall Foch accepted the German surrender nearly twenty-two years ago. The Germans believe this somehow proves their chivalry. According to the United Press, Germany’s official news agency is boasting that “the solemnity of the action toward the enemy who was honorably beaten stands in contrast to the eternal hate-sowing monuments on this scene where once Gallic vileness abused the unconquered German army.” Of course, the Nazis don’t mention that the reason French officers used this humble, remote location in 1918 was “to not make a spectacle” of German distress -- that from Saturday’s New York Herald Tribune.
WHEN DOES FRANCE’S WAR END? William Shirer also said in his C.B.S. report last night that after signing the armistice with Germany, the three French plenipotentiaries boarded a plane bound for Italy, where they will “negotiate” an end to the two-week-old Italo-French war. Once that agreement is signed, the details of the German pact will be formally made public, and it will go into effect. Judging from how quickly the French signed on to Hitler’s demands (which were surely quite tough), one can’t imagine them putting up much of a fuss against Italy. Marshal Petain’s speech Thursday has already admitted defeat -- according to the Associated Press, the once-proud officer told Frenchmen they must “take their beating and learn to live with it.”
In the meantime, Saturday’s battle map in the New York Herald Tribune shows that in a military sense it’s increasingly academic anyway – the Germans have plunged well into the southern half of France, holding a line from Brest to Tours to Vichy to Lyons and farther south. Nazi armored forces near the Rhone River are now only about two hundred miles from France’s Mediterranean coast. (But C. Brooks Peters writes in Saturday’s New York Times that French forces, though isolated in “a number of small sacks,” are still bitterly contesting Nazi gains here and there).
MYSTERY OF THE FRENCH FLEET. Sigrid Schultz writes from Berlin in Saturday’s Chicago Tribune that she can’t confirm British reports that the French navy has gotten orders to leave French ports. To the contrary, Miss Schultz writes, her understanding is that Marshal Petain has “ordered the warships to remain in French ports or to return to them if they were at sea.” Also, an Italian war communique says the Italian air force is closely monitoring all French ship movements.
On the other hand, an Associated Press dispatch from Friday quoted “reliable sources” in Cairo as saying that whatever happened in France, the French forces and French navy vessels in the eastern Mediterranean would continue to fight. And the Washington Post reports Saturday that the French navy “has been taken over virtually intact by the British fleet, under whose high command it has been operating during the war, and is beyond the jurisdiction of French government officials who might be compelled to turn it over to their Nazi conquerors.” So who’s right?
A MOVE AGAINST A FRENCH COLONY? Saturday’s Chicago Tribune also reports, as an insert to Miss Schultz’s story, that Britain may be about to take abrupt action to seize a strategic asset from its now-former ally --
“Military occupation of Syria by British troops and consolidation of Syria, Palestine, and Transjordan into one state may be expected to follow France’s capitulation to Germany, according to a radio broadcast from Athens last night. The Athens radio, quoting reports from Palestine, said preparations for the occupation already are in progress and that the new combined state will be known as Greater Arabia.”
I hope it’s true. One of the biggest problems with Britain’s prosecution of the war has been her unwillingness to act decisively and pre-empt Nazi advances. No doubt Mr. Churchill realizes that if the British Army doesn’t take control of Syria very soon, the German Army will. Hitler will squeeze France like a lemon to gain Nazi access to important parts of the French Empire. That’s why it’s so disappointing that the Petain government didn’t opt to carry on the war from overseas, as Churchill has pledged to do in the event Germany occupies the British Isles.
WHAT WENT WRONG? James M. Minifie, reporting from London, offers some informed speculations in Saturday’s New York Herald Tribune --
“Well informed sources who have recently returned to London from France agree that the morale of the French people began to crack when the government decided to abandon Paris without attempting to defend it. According to those observers, the decision caused a sense of defeat and hopelessness which was never overcome. In British military circles it is considered that the French general staff failed to turn to account lessons learned from the Polish campaign last September when the new German tactics of pushing forward with heavily armed units regardless of the possibility of flank attacks were clearly demonstrated. Despite this warning, according to military observers, the French continued to put their trust in ‘static’ war based on heavily fortified positions. When Gen. Maxime Weygand was appointed to the supreme command, the strategic positions was already compromised by the German break-through at the River Meuse and there was neither time, troops, nor tanks to hold the tremendous attack pouring down through Flanders.”
ROOSEVELT’S “WAR CABINET.” Yawn. Here comes yet another round of hyperbolic isolationist frenzy, in the wake of President Roosevelt’s surprise announcement naming two prominent Republicans to his cabinet. John B. Oakes writes in Friday’s Washington Post that the President’s appointment of Col. Henry L. Stimson as Secretary of War and Col. Frank Knox as Secretary of the Navy has ignited “furious debate” in the Senate. Chesly Manly collects some of the most overheated comments in the Chicago Tribune, which add up to the accusation that the President is trying to form a “war cabinet” as he plots to enter Europe’s conflict. In response, Roosevelt said the appointments were made in response to the national demand for bipartisanship and to further national defense, “and nothing else.” For his part, one of the leading isolationists, Senator Nye of North Dakota, called upon the President to resign “as a patriotic duty” and turn the government over to Vice President Garner.
What has especially stoked the isolationists’ burners is Col. Stimson’s and Col. Knox’s reputation as interventionists. Plus, Col. Stimson would replace as War Secretary Harry Woodring, who is quoted in the Topeka Capital as having claimed three weeks ago that “a small clique of international financiers” was trying to make him quit his job because he opposed “stripping our defenses to aid the Allies.” According to the Washington Post, the non-interventionist Mr. Woodring resigned only an hour before his successor was announced. The Tribune says that both Senator Nye, who is a Republican, and the isolationist Senator Clark, Democrat of Missouri, are threatening an investigation by the Senate Military Affairs Committee into the circumstances of Woodring’s resignation.
But the New York Times claims this isn’t having any long-lasting effect on the Republican Convention, which will convene in Philadelphia tomorrow. Says a front-page story in Saturday’s editions, “Republican sentiment for aid to the Allies rebounded after a brief resurgence of isolationism following the naming of Messrs. Knox and Stimson to the Cabinet.”
A BOOM FOR WILLKIE. Speaking of the Republican Convention, quite a few columnists say this week-end that this looks to be the most wide-open G.O.P. convention in twenty years. Thomas E. Dewey and Senator Robert Taft are still the leading contenders, each having about two-thirds of the 501 convention votes needed for nomination. But neither apparently have the means of getting to that 501 total on their own, and the burgeoning popularity of Wendell L. Willkie could thwart efforts by either of the two leaders to secure that nomination after the first ballot. A story in Saturday’s New York Herald Tribune by Francis M. Stephenson says that a prominent Dewey supporter has formally proposed the two leaders’ camps join forces in a Dewey-Taft or a Taft-Dewey ticket, bringing together 650 to 675 delegate votes and securing the nomination. But Willkie supporters retort that neither Taft and Dewey can in reality deliver enough delegates to the other to pull this off. Quite a few of these delegates, Willkie men say, are poised to bolt toward Willkie on the second and third ballots.
Meanwhile, Friday’s Washington Post offers Dr. Gallup’s final pre-convention poll, which shows a sharp rise in Republican support for Willkie. He stands at 29% and continues to hold second place to Dewey, who has fallen to 47%. Just one week ago, the numbers stood at 53% for Dewey and 17% for Willkie. Senator Taft, despite his impressive number of delegates, was only at 13% one week ago, and has dropped to 8% this week. Gallup says war news has contributed to the volatility in Republican ranks -- “As the war in Europe developed, the number of Republicans who are undecided has grown.” In fact, when the undecided vote is included in the survey, it leads all three of the principal candidates. Those numbers are Undecided, 34%; Dewey, 31%; Willkie, 19%; and Taft, a paltry 5%.
Monday, June 20, 2016
Thursday, June 20, 1940
THE STAKES. Nobody’s stated them more plainly or more eloquently than Prime Minister Churchill did when he spoke to the House of Commons on Tuesday --
“What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. The Battle of Britain is about to begin. On this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life and the long continuity of our institutions and our empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned loose upon us. Hitler knows he will have to break us in this island or he will lose this war. If we can stand up to him all Europe may be freed and the life of the world may move forward into broad sunny uplands; but if we fail, the whole world, including the United States and all that we have known or cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new dark age made more sinister and perhaps more prolonged by the lights of a perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty and so bear ourselves that if the British Commonwealth and Empire last for a thousand years, men will still say ‘This was their finest hour.’”
The New York Times notes that Prime Minister Churchill is “famous” for his perorations. Has any leader in such a critical period, except perhaps for Lincoln, ever spoken with more poetry in his voice?
THE FRENCH ARE STILL FIGHTING -- FOR NOW. An unbylined story in Wednesday’s New York Herald Tribune reports that the new French premier, Marshall Petain, has “ordered his army, navy, and air force to continue fighting” while he studies the reply from Berlin and Rome to his request for terms. The French Cabinet decided in Bordeaux Tuesday to insist on a negotiated peace with the Nazis, and not a total surrender, says the Herald Tribune. But the radio news this morning cites unconfirmed reports that the German terms are “harsh” and considered unacceptable. It’s rumored that President Lebrun and other officials have gone, or shortly will go, to Algiers and continue the war from there. T.J. Hamilton reports from Madrid in Wednesday’s New York Times reports from Madrid that the Axis peace terms include surrender of the French fleet, but that this will have to be changed, since “virtually all” French ships (and numerous planes) have left French ports for North Africa. Good.
As to the fighting, there appears to be very little semblance of a front left. The Nazi thrust behind the Maginot Line has reached Switzerland, and the gallant handfuls of Frenchmen who were manning the Line’s artillery to cover their retreat of some 450,000 of their comrades have been crushed by Nazi forces attacking from the Rhine. Meanwhile, France’s latest capital, Bordeaux, was bombed four times Tuesday. The papers aren’t bothering to print maps showing the battle line any more, but presumably the Germans are by now continuing their push southward practically at will.
One troubling report Wednesday from the Reuters’ correspondent with the British Expeditionary Force -- there’s widespread feeling among French officers and civilians that Marshal Petain is “pro-Fascist” and “might not long continue to receive the support of the French people.” And, if this is true, he might not wish to continue the fight, either, no matter how cruel the Nazi peace terms are.
A NAZI-SOVIET CRISIS IN THE BALTIC? Russia has gotten a taste for aggression again, having opted for an abrupt military invasion this past week of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. Stalin’s regime already had mutual-assistance pacts with all three countries, and military bases within them, and treated them all like colonies. But the Associated Press says the Reds suddenly alleged, presumably with a straight face, that these three small nations were banding together in a military alliance which was “profoundly dangerous and menacing to the security” of the Soviet Union. So in went Russian troops, and out went the nominally independent governments of these countries.
But some startling news since then is laid out in a couple of New York Times articles, which indicate that tensions are building between Germany and Russia. Even though Hitler and Stalin practically seemed like wartime allies back in the winter, the Times reports Wednesday that the Nazis are carrying out “troop movements of an unspecified nature” in East Prussia, opposite some 500,000 Russian soldiers, whose numbers include motorized and armored units.
Why is this happening now? A separate story in the Times by Otto D. Tolischus says that “according to travelers returning from Moscow, something like panic prevails in Moscow over the quick German victories, which have been wholly contrary to Russian calculations, and this is also advanced as an explanation of the precipitate Russian action in the Baltic.” Mr. Tolischus adds, “It is also recalled that in ‘Mein Kampf’ Hitler demands the annihilation of France as merely ‘a means to give our people the possibility of expansion in another place,’ and the only place he sees for such an explanation is Russia.” The Times also quotes a Swedish newspaper as postulating that Stalin invaded the Baltic states now because he knows “that his turn is coming.”
THE TRIBUNE GOES ON A BENDER. The blame-America-first crowd at the Chicago Tribune surpass themselves Wednesday in editorial-page lunacy. Having sold their readers some weeks ago the Nazi-inspired lie that the United States actually started the European war, they’re now blustering that the defeat of France is an evil deed of the Roosevelt Administration --
“American reporters in Paris write that the common people of France are blaming America for their defeat. It is to be expected, of course, that a nation worsted in war will seek a scapegoat to account for the disaster, but there is also much rational justification for the feeling of the French that this country betrayed them. Mr. Roosevelt had given France every reason to think that America was guaranteeing their victory, and he didn’t make good. Mr. Roosevelt wanted to go to war in Europe; the logic of his diplomacy led to war as its inescapable conclusion. He hastily abandoned even the pretense of neutrality. Evidently he calculated that if the French and their allies could not win the war alone they could at least hold the Germans in check for a time, which he would use to whip up the war fever in this country, just as his mentor, President Wilson, had done a generation ago....There can be no doubt at all that his inflammatory speeches and his denunciations of the dictators in his public papers encouraged the allies to believe that they could count on American support if they needed it and accordingly to discount their own unpreparedness.”
One sympathizes with the bitterness that the ordinary people of France are feeling in these desperate days. But the Tribune’s bitterness is screwy. Imagine the perfidy of our President -- he’s been denouncing dictators! That man! Well, I never! After all, it’s not as if Hitler or Mussolini have actually done anything deserving of criticism the last few months, have they? Then too, the Tribune editors well know that aid to the Allies has been limited since the war’s outbreak not by the wish of President Roosevelt or Secretary Hull, but by the very isolationists in Congress whose cause the Tribune champions so hysterically. In other words, (1) the President’s opponents hamper the President’s efforts to aid France, and then (2) France is defeated, so therefore (3) it’s the President’s fault for wanting to aid France. Is there a school in the Chicago area that teaches a good remedial course in Logic?
FRANCE FINDS FAULT IN MANY PLACES. Dorothy Thompson writes in her New York Herald Tribune column Wednesday that the people of France are finding plenty of scapegoats to blame for the catastrophe --
“People are responsible for this. So thinks the common man in France. The last spurt of energy, the last gasp of fury is directed inward, not outward. Hatred burns in the wounded and defeated heart. Someone is to blame for this! Find the culprits!...The industrialist grinds his teeth and remembers the French New Deal. While Germany was working her factories morning, noon, and night...the French trade unions were demanding shorter days, slower work, higher pay, a ‘more abundant life.’...The workers’ eyes blaze with fury. Didn’t they promise us appeasement?...They made the diplomacy that got us into this...Our Allies let us down, they all scream together. Why didn’t Britain have more divisions? Why wouldn’t she introduce conscription?...How about our politicians? Maneuvering among themselves as to which party and which individual would come out on top, right down to the last tragic minute....Yes, this is happening in France, where hatred, exhausted outward, turns inward.”
HAVE WE HEARD THE WARNING? Barnet Nover writes in Wednesday’s Washington Post that one of the strengths of democracy was also, in a case of France, a fatal weakness --
“France’s failing was the failing of all democracies. She was civilized. She had put war and destruction behind her. She had made the comfort of the individual the goal of organized society....Democratic peoples are not geared for the kind of war which Hitler wages because, being democratic, they operate under the restraints of morality and decency and law. And every one of these instincts was turned against them to encompass their destruction. The new system that now dominates the continent of Europe had no use for these restraints. It worships force and force alone and it regards everything that is the antithesis of force as its mortal enemy. This state of mind is so monstrous that it is difficult for democratic peoples to grasp it. That, more than any other reason, is why France went under and why Belgium and the Netherlands and Norway and Denmark and the other victims of Hitler went under. For the American people the writing on the wall is too clear to be mistaken. But whether, after seven years of repeated warnings, we shall learn how to avoid the mistakes of our fellow democracies is by no means certain.”
“What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. The Battle of Britain is about to begin. On this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life and the long continuity of our institutions and our empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned loose upon us. Hitler knows he will have to break us in this island or he will lose this war. If we can stand up to him all Europe may be freed and the life of the world may move forward into broad sunny uplands; but if we fail, the whole world, including the United States and all that we have known or cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new dark age made more sinister and perhaps more prolonged by the lights of a perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty and so bear ourselves that if the British Commonwealth and Empire last for a thousand years, men will still say ‘This was their finest hour.’”
The New York Times notes that Prime Minister Churchill is “famous” for his perorations. Has any leader in such a critical period, except perhaps for Lincoln, ever spoken with more poetry in his voice?
THE FRENCH ARE STILL FIGHTING -- FOR NOW. An unbylined story in Wednesday’s New York Herald Tribune reports that the new French premier, Marshall Petain, has “ordered his army, navy, and air force to continue fighting” while he studies the reply from Berlin and Rome to his request for terms. The French Cabinet decided in Bordeaux Tuesday to insist on a negotiated peace with the Nazis, and not a total surrender, says the Herald Tribune. But the radio news this morning cites unconfirmed reports that the German terms are “harsh” and considered unacceptable. It’s rumored that President Lebrun and other officials have gone, or shortly will go, to Algiers and continue the war from there. T.J. Hamilton reports from Madrid in Wednesday’s New York Times reports from Madrid that the Axis peace terms include surrender of the French fleet, but that this will have to be changed, since “virtually all” French ships (and numerous planes) have left French ports for North Africa. Good.
As to the fighting, there appears to be very little semblance of a front left. The Nazi thrust behind the Maginot Line has reached Switzerland, and the gallant handfuls of Frenchmen who were manning the Line’s artillery to cover their retreat of some 450,000 of their comrades have been crushed by Nazi forces attacking from the Rhine. Meanwhile, France’s latest capital, Bordeaux, was bombed four times Tuesday. The papers aren’t bothering to print maps showing the battle line any more, but presumably the Germans are by now continuing their push southward practically at will.
One troubling report Wednesday from the Reuters’ correspondent with the British Expeditionary Force -- there’s widespread feeling among French officers and civilians that Marshal Petain is “pro-Fascist” and “might not long continue to receive the support of the French people.” And, if this is true, he might not wish to continue the fight, either, no matter how cruel the Nazi peace terms are.
A NAZI-SOVIET CRISIS IN THE BALTIC? Russia has gotten a taste for aggression again, having opted for an abrupt military invasion this past week of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. Stalin’s regime already had mutual-assistance pacts with all three countries, and military bases within them, and treated them all like colonies. But the Associated Press says the Reds suddenly alleged, presumably with a straight face, that these three small nations were banding together in a military alliance which was “profoundly dangerous and menacing to the security” of the Soviet Union. So in went Russian troops, and out went the nominally independent governments of these countries.
But some startling news since then is laid out in a couple of New York Times articles, which indicate that tensions are building between Germany and Russia. Even though Hitler and Stalin practically seemed like wartime allies back in the winter, the Times reports Wednesday that the Nazis are carrying out “troop movements of an unspecified nature” in East Prussia, opposite some 500,000 Russian soldiers, whose numbers include motorized and armored units.
Why is this happening now? A separate story in the Times by Otto D. Tolischus says that “according to travelers returning from Moscow, something like panic prevails in Moscow over the quick German victories, which have been wholly contrary to Russian calculations, and this is also advanced as an explanation of the precipitate Russian action in the Baltic.” Mr. Tolischus adds, “It is also recalled that in ‘Mein Kampf’ Hitler demands the annihilation of France as merely ‘a means to give our people the possibility of expansion in another place,’ and the only place he sees for such an explanation is Russia.” The Times also quotes a Swedish newspaper as postulating that Stalin invaded the Baltic states now because he knows “that his turn is coming.”
THE TRIBUNE GOES ON A BENDER. The blame-America-first crowd at the Chicago Tribune surpass themselves Wednesday in editorial-page lunacy. Having sold their readers some weeks ago the Nazi-inspired lie that the United States actually started the European war, they’re now blustering that the defeat of France is an evil deed of the Roosevelt Administration --
“American reporters in Paris write that the common people of France are blaming America for their defeat. It is to be expected, of course, that a nation worsted in war will seek a scapegoat to account for the disaster, but there is also much rational justification for the feeling of the French that this country betrayed them. Mr. Roosevelt had given France every reason to think that America was guaranteeing their victory, and he didn’t make good. Mr. Roosevelt wanted to go to war in Europe; the logic of his diplomacy led to war as its inescapable conclusion. He hastily abandoned even the pretense of neutrality. Evidently he calculated that if the French and their allies could not win the war alone they could at least hold the Germans in check for a time, which he would use to whip up the war fever in this country, just as his mentor, President Wilson, had done a generation ago....There can be no doubt at all that his inflammatory speeches and his denunciations of the dictators in his public papers encouraged the allies to believe that they could count on American support if they needed it and accordingly to discount their own unpreparedness.”
One sympathizes with the bitterness that the ordinary people of France are feeling in these desperate days. But the Tribune’s bitterness is screwy. Imagine the perfidy of our President -- he’s been denouncing dictators! That man! Well, I never! After all, it’s not as if Hitler or Mussolini have actually done anything deserving of criticism the last few months, have they? Then too, the Tribune editors well know that aid to the Allies has been limited since the war’s outbreak not by the wish of President Roosevelt or Secretary Hull, but by the very isolationists in Congress whose cause the Tribune champions so hysterically. In other words, (1) the President’s opponents hamper the President’s efforts to aid France, and then (2) France is defeated, so therefore (3) it’s the President’s fault for wanting to aid France. Is there a school in the Chicago area that teaches a good remedial course in Logic?
FRANCE FINDS FAULT IN MANY PLACES. Dorothy Thompson writes in her New York Herald Tribune column Wednesday that the people of France are finding plenty of scapegoats to blame for the catastrophe --
“People are responsible for this. So thinks the common man in France. The last spurt of energy, the last gasp of fury is directed inward, not outward. Hatred burns in the wounded and defeated heart. Someone is to blame for this! Find the culprits!...The industrialist grinds his teeth and remembers the French New Deal. While Germany was working her factories morning, noon, and night...the French trade unions were demanding shorter days, slower work, higher pay, a ‘more abundant life.’...The workers’ eyes blaze with fury. Didn’t they promise us appeasement?...They made the diplomacy that got us into this...Our Allies let us down, they all scream together. Why didn’t Britain have more divisions? Why wouldn’t she introduce conscription?...How about our politicians? Maneuvering among themselves as to which party and which individual would come out on top, right down to the last tragic minute....Yes, this is happening in France, where hatred, exhausted outward, turns inward.”
HAVE WE HEARD THE WARNING? Barnet Nover writes in Wednesday’s Washington Post that one of the strengths of democracy was also, in a case of France, a fatal weakness --
“France’s failing was the failing of all democracies. She was civilized. She had put war and destruction behind her. She had made the comfort of the individual the goal of organized society....Democratic peoples are not geared for the kind of war which Hitler wages because, being democratic, they operate under the restraints of morality and decency and law. And every one of these instincts was turned against them to encompass their destruction. The new system that now dominates the continent of Europe had no use for these restraints. It worships force and force alone and it regards everything that is the antithesis of force as its mortal enemy. This state of mind is so monstrous that it is difficult for democratic peoples to grasp it. That, more than any other reason, is why France went under and why Belgium and the Netherlands and Norway and Denmark and the other victims of Hitler went under. For the American people the writing on the wall is too clear to be mistaken. But whether, after seven years of repeated warnings, we shall learn how to avoid the mistakes of our fellow democracies is by no means certain.”
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