Tuesday, October 1, 1940

A NEW ROUND OF INVASION JITTERS. It’s turned blustery and cold over the English Channel, but James B. Reston reports in Monday’s New York Times there might still be an opportunity for an invasion -- "the next few weeks should bring a second summer of temporary calm when conditions would be favorable should Fuehrer Hitler decide to risk an attack." This follows a report last week-end by Sigrid Schultz in the Chicago Tribune that the "growing fierceness" of the Nazi air raids on Britain is being interpreted by German officials as indication that an invasion is near. One Berlin insider tells her, "Germany can wait for the right moment to strike just as William the Conqueror’s fleet waited for favorable winds 874 years ago." By coincidence, or maybe not, William Shirer noted the other day in one of his C.B.S. broadcasts from Berlin that William launched his invasion during the middle of October. You get the feeling that some high-placed Nazis have been talking up William's exploits to the American press lately.

The main point of Mr. Reston’s story in the Times is that the R.A.F. isn’t waiting around to see what happens. Observers in southeastern Britain reported on Sunday "bomb flashes all along the French coast, especially around Boulogne, as British bombers flew through a heavy rainstorm to resume a counteroffensive which last night struck at Berlin, at Nazi-held ports from Wilhelmshaven to Le Havre, and at German railroads, munitions factories and airports." Meanwhile, the German and British airfleets continue "to swap blows in a kind of warfare that can go on indefinitely," says the Times. London was hit with a heavy raid Monday morning, after several days of small-scale attacks by lone bombers. And according to this morning’s radio reports, the British pounded Berlin for five hours last night, crossing and re-crossing the city.

AFTERMATH OF THE DEBACLE AT DAKAR. Last week, when the British and Free French gave up their attempted siege of Dakar in French West Africa, Britain’s government explained it did not want to launch "serious warlike operations against Frenchmen who felt it their duty to obey the commands of the Vichy government." That statement, coming after three days of fighting in which the Vichy French repulsed eight attempts to General de Gaulle’s men to secure a beachhead, didn’t note that the British Navy had indeed been conducting "serious warlike operations" in the form of a fierce offshore bombardment of the city. And it looked like a humiliating end, at least for now, to the combined British-Free French efforts to grab strategic French colonial territory before Axis armies could secure it.

But now the Associated Press reports that Britain has now threatened to blockade the French island colony of Madagascar, unless the local governor general turns his administrative duties over to the de Gaulle movement. He’s refused, and so far nothing else has happened. The A.P. notes that this is the second time Britain has attempted to secure Madagascar, and the first time, back in late July, was worthy of Chamberlain -- British troops attempted to land on the island, but withdrew when they were refused permission.

So has the Churchill government changed its mind toward Vichy in the last week, or are they saying to us with a straight face that a naval blockade is not a "serious warlike operation"? Or are they just impotently bluffing? I hope the British and Free French eventually succeed in taking over every single French colony out and keeping them out of Axis hands. But what can they expect to accomplish if they act like they're so afraid of a declaration of war from Petain, of all people, that they won’t do more than resort to threats and half-measures? What Britain will get from such a policy is more episodes like Dakar, which the Nazis will of course be delighted to exploit for propaganda.

HITLER’S PLAN FOR AMERICA. Dorothy Thompson writes in her New York Herald Tribune column Monday that the real significance of the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo pact is that it confirms the present war is really "a world revolution for the redistribution of the entire planet." And the signatories are pledged to a plan that will vastly reduce America’s role in world affairs, as revealed in a forthcoming book by Hitler’s former finance minister, Dr. Schacht, which the columnist obtained in outline form via Swedish sources --

"Dr. Schacht announces quite simply that the real objects of this war are the breaking of the ‘plutocracies’ -- namely, Great Britain and the United States. The Japanese angle reveals itself in the plan that after this war the United States is to have no interests whatsoever, commercial or otherwise, in the Pacific. We are to be allowed to trade exclusively with Europe -- which needs some of our products -- and with South America, where, far from having a ‘Sphere of Influence,’ we are to be apportioned ‘quotas.’ We are to be allowed to trade only through a monopolistic import-export syndicate, to be set up for the whole continent of Europe, necessitating the end of individual trading in this country and the establishment of a similar monopoly here. We shall be invited to stabilize our currencies together with Japan, Russia, and pan-Fascist Europe, and merge the banking system...For Latin America, which lives by exports, this system will mean economic strangulation or collaboration, and we shall eventually have the Axis at our gates."

Miss Thompson persuasively recommends that the U.S. take much more forceful action to counter this threat -- "This country needs allies. It needs them quickly and desperately....It is not and never has been a question of whether the British Empire needs us; it is a question whether we need the British Empire. We do....If Britain is defeated, we shall be alone against the world. Invaded or not invaded, we shall live on the terms of the conquerors and be back where we were in 1776....[our defense program] will not be adequate until we recognize a state of emergency and mobilize the entire man power, machine power, and money power of this country for defense, letting everything else take second place."

WHY WE MUST AID BRITAIN. Last week-end’s signing of the Axis tripartite agreement ought to be enough to convince any reasonable man that Britain is America’s first and most vital line of defense. But a lot of people, and not just head-in-the-sand isolationists, still talk as if the Battle of Britain is an abstract event, disconnected from our lives and our collective future. Nothing could be further from the truth. An editorial in the current New Republic summarizes this "sleep-walking effect" --

"Decades hence, men and women in the United States will look back with a curious poignant remembrance on the days through which they are now passing. Probably everyone has wondered what it would be like to live through the end of the world; yet now that we are coming so close to doing exactly that, most people seem hardly conscious of the indescribable significance and seriousness of these days. We read in the newspapers of seventy-one successive air raids on London within the space of a few weeks, and three minutes later we casually go on about our business....’If England falls,’ we say glibly at cocktail parties, discarding the proffered gin and looking around hastily for the Scotch. If England falls! That would be the most significant world happening since the battle of Hastings almost nine and a half centuries ago....If England falls, life in the United States will be utterly translated, as much so as if the land and all the people in it had been moved to the ends of the earth. We must sacrifice as we have never done in our history, not even in the Great War, sacrifice merely in the hope of being able to protect what we have, of keeping such a degree of freedom as we have painfully achieved."

The New Republic is far too pessimistic about what America can do to help Britain ("We who watch from this distance, able to do little to affect the outcome and doing less than little, are benumbed by the uproar of a battle that is so far away and yet so terribly close."). If we were truly so impotent to affect the outcome of the war, Lord Lothian wouldn’t have wasted his breath pleading this week with President Roosevelt for "more of everything -- and quickly." Right now, our best chance of staying out of war is to give Britain all the ships, planes, and guns she asks for, so that America doesn’t face the undivided and hungry attention of powerful dictatorships to our east and west.

Sunday, September 29, 1940

IT’S NOW THE ROME-BERLIN-TOKYO AXIS. Like it or not, the U.S. is a giant step closer this week-end to fighting a major war. The Rome-Berlin axis has joined with the Japanese Empire in what the New York Times calls "a tripartite military alliance...designed to have a profound effect not only on future course of Europe’s war but more directly at the world situation in general." Signed in Berlin Friday, the ten-year military and economic pact bands together a quarter of a billion people living in three of the world’s most ruthless dictatorships in support of their individual efforts to create a "new order" in Europe and East Asia. And they declare themselves against -- well, against the United States, in so many words. Guido Enderis writes from Berlin in the Times’ story that "opinions in informed quarters frankly suggest that the pact may be interpreted as being directed against ‘certain groups in the United States who are trying to disrupt relations between peoples and nations.’"

In other words, Germany doesn’t like the U.S. aiding Britain, and Japan doesn’t like the U.S. opposing her plans for more Asian aggression. Under the terms of the new axis treaty, if we go to war to help Britain fight Germany, we’ll have a war with Japan on our hands as well. The Axis has concluded that America’s one-ocean navy would be too intimidated to try and fight a two-ocean war.

There’s only one proper answer for the Administration to give in the face of this, and according to William V. Nessly in Saturday’s Washington Post, President Roosevelt is going to give it -- "Greater determination to aid Britain and China in their resistance to aggression, along with acceleration of the defense program."

IS IT ALL AMERICA’S FAULT? Naturally, the Chicago Tribune responds to the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo agreement by rounding up its isolationist friends in Congress to announce an amazing discovery -- President Roosevelt is completely to blame! Yes, it’s hard to imagine how somehow the President hypnotized the Japanese into becoming warlike. Goodness knows they’ve practically been Quakers throughout the last decade. But here’s Senator Nye to explain it to us -- "Our policy has succeeded in driving Japan into the arms of those who were the last ones we wanted her associated with." And Senator Wheeler suggests the Roosevelt policy should be "a cessation of attacks on every other nation." Has the Senator not noticed that Japan, not the U.S., is the one who’s been "attacking" in French Indo-China? Has he forgotten that we maintained a hearty commercial trade with the Japanese for eight years while they brutally warred against China? Did this make Japan inclined to be less aggressive? No.

Will the Administration’s announcement of a scrap iron embargo make Japan inclined to be less aggressive? No, but it will make her less able to carry out future aggressions, and that is just as good.

AN AMERICAN WAR IN INDO-CHINA? The Chicago Tribune goes a step farther than its isolationist colleagues, painting a picture of a future America fighting wars in far-off lands because of President Roosevelt’s alleged willingness to take sides in "old-world quarrels" --

"If war is the consequence, it is not likely to be one war. Twenty years after Germany was prostrate she had developed the most powerful military machine the world ever saw, and was again on the march. If we prevent Japan from taking Indo-China from the French, the East Indies from the Dutch, etc., we have solved no problems. We have only assumed a responsibility for the future of those territories. We don’t want them, and whoever has them, whether native governments or some one else, will hold them, thanks to our power to maintain the status quo which we shall have created. That means a continuing liability. It means that we must, at any moment, be ready to defend these places, 6,000 miles and more from our shores, against any nation or combination of nations which may covet them. The acceptance of such a responsibility means that the America which we have known is dead....The cost of maintaining such a policy will be stupendous and not the least of them will be the loss of our democratic faith."

That might be a point worth considering -- in the future, and not in a present when the continued existence of democracy is being threatened world-wide as never before in human history. The question right now is not whether the U.S. will be forced to fight wars 6,000 miles from home, but whether we could fight well enough on our own shores to survive as a free country, if we end up sandwiched between a pair of all-encompassing totalitarian empires, having no allies of our own, our economy stagnant, unable to procure goods or materials from abroad. By far the best way to deal with such a situation is to prevent it from happening.

OUR TIME MIGHT BE NEAR. Joseph Driscoll’s account of the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo pact in Saturday’s New York Herald Tribune contains a chilling forecast --

"The day’s developments strengthened well informed observers in Washington in their belief that the United States may be at war by next spring, if not sooner. Army officials who returned here recently from England, where they inspected the defenses as guests of the British government, are understood to have reported that the British were holding out well and would continue to do so until next March, but that they stood no real chance of defeating the Berlin-Rome axis without American intervention."

Thursday, September 26, 1940

BRITISH AND FREE FRENCH ATTACK DAKAR. While the bombing of London goes on (now in its eighteenth straight day), Wednesday’s headlines point southward -- not to an Axis offensive in the Mediterranean, but instead a combined British-"Free French" assault on the port of Dakar, the capital of French West Africa. According to the Associated Press, French troops loyal to the Petain government have repulsed six attempts by Allied soldiers to land at Dakar, as British vessels "opened a new and prolonged bombardment" of the city. The "Free French" commander, General de Gaulle, says the attack is being made "because German and Italian officers had seized control of the Dakar air base, which is only 1,000 miles from South America."

David Darrah’s account in the Chicago Tribune goes into more detail of the battle -- the Allies gave an ultimatum to the French high commissioner at Dakar, who responded with a bitter declaration he would defend Dakar "to the last ditch." Evidently British shelling caused "heavy losses" in the port, while a French submarine damaged a British cruiser and was later sunk. As a reprisal for the attack on Dakar, the Petain regime has subjected British forces in Gibraltar to their "worst bombardment of the war" by French warplanes.

It’s not all-out war between Britain and the French regime at Vichy, and it probably won’t be – Petain’s government is too weak to withstand a resumption of hostilities. But sometimes it looks awfully close.

ONLY THE U.S. CAN STOP JAPAN. Barnet Nover writes in Wednesday’s Washington Post something every American should hear as fighting continues in French Indo-China. The expansion of Japanese power, he says, is as great a threat to American security as Hitler’s victories, and that Japan’s empire has been headed down this road even longer than Germany has --

"Indo-China is a far-away country, well off the beaten track. Yet what is happening there today may affect the lives and fortunes of every American. For the course of aggression in Asia, as the course of aggression in Europe and Africa, has no visible limit...Japan’s invasion of Indo-China has many facets. In part, it is a manifestation of an insatiable urge for conquest. In part it is the expression of an old and never abandoned policy of southward expansion which began with the annexation of Formosa in 1895 and has gone on side by side with Japan’s effort to establish her hegemony over China. What is of immediate significance is that the occupation of Indo-China would enable Japan to attack the armies of Chiang Kai-shek from far closer range than has been possible during the last two years. It would also make possible the permanent closure of the Burma Road, the last remaining artery connecting China with the overseas world....Furthermore, Indo-China could serve as a useful base of operations against the Dutch East Indies."

Mr. Nover recommends the U.S. take economic measures to stop the Japanese Empire before her plans proceed any further -- "At the moment Japan has nothing to fear from France. She has little to fear from Great Britain. The only nation she is afraid of is the United States. For through the exercise of economic power which until now we have carefully avoided using against Japan, we could enormously increase the difficulties in the way of the island empire’s aggressive course. In so doing we would be defending vital interests which we can neglect only at very great peril."

DON’T SEND FOOD TO EUROPE. Major George Fielding Eliot warns in Wednesday’s New York Herald Tribune that as winter approaches, America will be urged to send food to rescue millions of civilians who will be facing famine in Nazi-occupied areas of Europe. It’s a call we need to resist, as hard as it will be to do so --

"We shall be told, and rightly, that these are the innocent, that they have done nothing to bring upon themselves the fate that has befallen them; and we shall be besought with the invocation of of all those urgings of generosity which have always made so great an appeal to American hearts, to succor those starving peoples of Norway, of the Netherlands, of Belgium, of France, and, perhaps, of other lands. This appeal, however persuasively presented, however highly sponsored, we must in our own higher interests, in the interests of our own country and our American way of life, steel our hears to resist....We shall, of course, be told that if we do not feed these peoples, Germany will not do so either, and so they will simply starve. This contention will not bear examination – one reason for the starvation, present and to come, is German looting of all available supplies, and if we send more into territory where the Germans rule and where their word alone is law, they will loot that too. We shall be assured that the Germans will solemnly undertake to do nothing of the kind; to which the only possible reply is that any one who at this late date puts faith in Nazi promises is certainly allowing his heart to run away with his head."

AN UNHERALDED BATTLE. It was expunged from the Congressional Record, but last week’s issue of Time magazine recorded for the ages one of the small skirmishes in Congress’s fight over conscription the other week. It involved Representative Beverly M. Vincent of Brownsville, Ky., a pro-conscription congressman who decided he’d had enough after listening to one fiery isolationist rant too many --

"Vincent was besieged in his office by a harpy-like group of women who said they were from Kentucky...and grew so bitter in their denunciation of conscription that he had to throw them out. Then, with the rest of the House, Representative Vincent had to sit through an equally violent denunciation of conscription by small, red-faced Martin L. Sweeney of Ohio...[who] declaimed that conscription was a scheme to deliver the U.S. to the British devils. When Representative Sweeney finally ran out of gas, he sat down next to Representative Vincent. It was too much. ‘I’d rather you would sit somewhere else,’ quietly said Beverly Vincent. When Sweeney bristled, Vincent added, ‘You are a traitor.’ Words passed. Vincent called Sweeney a --- -- - -----. Sweeney swung at him. Taking careful aim and with obvious satisfaction, Beverly Vincent planted a good hard right, smack! It staggered, and silenced, Martin Sweeney. Though Congressmen not infrequently threaten one another and have been known to throw bound copies of the Record when vexed, ancient Doorkeeper Joseph Sinnot said it was the best blow he had heard in his 50 years in the House."