U.S. TO LOAN BRITAIN $2,000,000,000? Arthur Sears Henning claims in a Monday Chicago Tribune story that the Roosevelt Administration and British officials are "setting the stage" for the biggest gesture yet of American support for the British war effort -- a loan of "2 billion dollars and more, if necessary" to keep the fight going. Supposedly Treasury Secretary Morgenthau met Monday with Sir Phillips, the British treasury undersecretary, setting forth the details. These talks come only days after a three-hour meeting of Britain’s ambassador to the U.S., Lord Lothian, with President Roosevelt and Secretary Morgenthau to discuss American financial help.
It’s unclear from reading the press whether one of the stumbling blocks to this mammoth credit will be the Johnson Act, which forbids at least some loans to World War debt defaulters (of which Britain is one). Time magazine seemed to say last week that the President would have to ask Congress to repeal the Act (which they handily would) before any kind of loan could be arranged. The President has decided not to ask for repeal until January, adds Time. But the Tribune story claims the Act only applies to private lenders, and that Congress could appropriate the funds under existing law.
The Tribune story doesn’t portray isolationists as reacting with alarm to this, presumably because it provides an opening for something isolationists have long been enamored of -- grabbing up British territories in the Americas, such as the Bahamas, Bermuda, Barbados, and Jamaica. Their idea is something along the lines of, we’ll loan Britain the money if she’ll turn over the islands. But the Tribune hurts its case with a supreme act of poor salesmanship, taking the opportunity to run its ninety-ninth editorial telling Britons how much better off they’d be if they simply negotiate peace with that nice old gent Hitler -- "America would like to help Britain to a peace which would leave it, its dominions, and its empire intact and safe. That this peace should impose other conditions upon Europe is not within our sphere. Europe has been in many forms and in many convulsions. This is only another. We cannot assume that the United States is its guardian."
THE EMPIRE’S CASH TROUBLES. The New York Times’ James B. Reston offers some background in Sunday’s paper on why Lord Lothian’s talk with the President means so much to the British Empire right now --
"The British say they will spend their last penny to win this war, and it looks as if they may have a chance to prove it. In the first year of the war they spent £5,300,000 a day, but that was just a beginning. Right now it is nearer £10,000,000. People who know something about this high finance are beginning to think the total expenditure for the next twelve months may work out at even £12,500,000 a day....[Britain’s] national debt is above £10,000,000,000. In the World War, when United States finance saved the day, her national debt was only £1,000,000,000. That is an important difference.....Even at the most conservative estimates, Britain is now spending about £3,500,000,000 a year. This figure can be understood only in relation to the United States budget. When President Roosevelt estimated the United States’ expenditure for 1940 he put it at $9,492,359,000, more than $4,500,000,000 less than Britain’s valuing the pound at $4. The United States is a country of 131,000,000 population, while this is a country of only 48,000,000. To get so much money out of so few people must be the hardest job in tax history."
But Mr. Reston goes on to say that Britain’s tax-men are not getting nearly enough revenue out of the population -- the government only reaps about £1,500,000,000 annually of the needed £3,500,000,000, even at skyrocketing tax rates. They’ve raised additional funds money through means such as sales of gold securities. For all that, Britain is still short of cash, and that magnifies the need for American help -- "Every bomb that falls on this country and every torpedo that whirls out of a German U-boat increase the importance of American aid....[Britons] know that £500,000,000 of the £800,000,000 they are estimated to have in United States securities has already been spent for American war materiel, and they know that the war for them is just beginning."
TODAY’S ITALIAN DEFEATS (FIRST IN A SERIES). The Associated Press reports that Greek troops have marched into the mountain-ringed city of Argirocastro, the Albanian frontier city that Italy attempted to use as a springboard for her aborted invasion of Greece. The victory removes the last Italian airdrome from southern Albania, and Greeks are celebrating the achievment like no other -- Athens has ordered a three-day holiday, the A.P. says. And Barnet Nover writes in his Washington Post column Monday that Mussolini’s wave of setbacks in Greece is more than a mere sideshow --
"The situation for Italy is not irredeemable, although there is nothing that Mussolini is likely to gain by an ultimate victory as important as what he has already lost. The Greeks have smashed the legend of totalitarian invincibility. It may be that they have done even more. These six weeks since October 28 may prove to be a great and decisive turning point in the war. That will certainly be the case if, as a long range consequence of the struggle in Greece and Albania, Italy is knocked out of the war. Italy is Germany’s Achilles heel. The point cannot be emphasized too strongly. If Italy is knocked out Germany’s chances of victory will go plummeting regardless of all the damage that Goering’s Luftwaffe can continue to inflict on British cities and all the destruction which German U-boats can inflict on British shipping in the intervening period. The moral effect throughout Europe of a decisive Italian defeat can easily be imagined....The material consequences of an Italian debacle would also be considerable."
Saturday, December 10, 2016
Thursday, December 8, 2016
Sunday, December 8, 1940
MORE HUMILIATION FOR ITALY. Can Mussolini possibly be doing a worse job of bungling his own war effort? As recounted in Saturday’s New York Herald Tribune, the Duce now pushes out his military chief of staff, Marshal Badoglio. The Herald Tribune's Rome correspondent Allen Raymond sums up the regard Italians have for the man known as "Italy’s Hindenburg" -- "For a generation past [he] has been a symbol, in military circles here for meticulous preparations, worked out in painstaking detail, as well as for almost legendary gallantry in action." So why cashier a highly regarded officer, during a time of military crisis? Because he was inconveniently right -- "The invasion of Greece was begun against his advice...Mussolini had decided to go ahead in spite of expert opinion that the invasion was ill-timed and badly prepared." Badoglio's successor, General Cavallero, appears to be much more of a yes-man to the Duce, as well as a copycat of German blitzkrieg tactics.
All this can only be good news to the Greeks, who according to the Associated Press have just finished "overwhelming" units of retreating Italians in a battle for the southern Albanian seaport of Porto Edda. But that’s not even the worst of it for the poor Italians. An International News Service dispatch by George Balint says that the Nazis have intervened in the Greek war -- by secretly communicating peace proposals to Athens that would entail "German mediation and certain concessions to Greece." The Washington Post says the overture is "as humbling to Italy as it is flattering to little Hellas." No doubt. How much more embarrassment can a would-be Fascist empire take?
BUT BRITAIN’S TROUBLES GO ON, TOO. The recent novelty of there being some good news for the anti-Hitler cause shouldn’t hide the fact that Britain is still taking a beating and continues to be in urgent need of U.S. help. Ernest K. Lindley sums things up in his Washington Post column Friday --
"The war remains in a critical stage, its eventual outcome extremely doubtful. The British are taking terrible punishment from the air. An adequate defense of night bombing has not been developed; and at this time of year the nights are 16 or 17 hours long in England. The new German system of concentrating on one city one night and another the next is causing more destruction than the earlier methods of bombing attack. British industrial production has been falling off, and the damage to port facilities is becoming serious. At sea the long hours of darkness favor submarine operations. While merchant ship losses on the North Atlantic sea lanes have not yet reached the heights of the spring of 1917, when Great Britain almost lost World War I to the U-boats, they are heavy."
Mr. Lindley says that, not surprisingly, "the British are eager to get, as soon as possible, every plane we will let them have." Not surprisingly, too, the Roosevelt Administration is emphasizing in its current round of conferences with industrial leaders that "the time factor" is more important than future projections of military aid -- in Lindley's words, "Five hundred bombing planes delivered before February 1 may be more valuable than 2,000 delivered in the last two months of 1941."
WHAT WILL HAPPEN IN 1941? Lindley’s Washington Post column also sets forth what could happen in the months ahead, and what most likely will --
"Allowing always for surprises, the prevailing view in informed quarters here is that the next big German action will not be launched until spring. The three more obvious alternatives are:
(a) A drive through the Balkans into Asia-Minor and Iraq – the drive which seemed to begin a few weeks ago but now almost certainly has been laid up for the winter.
(b) A drive through the southern part of the Soviet Union.
(c) An invasion of Great Britain.
Both (a) and (b) would have as their main purpose access to petroleum, although (a) might also head to Suez. Certainly the second, and conceivably the first, would mean war with the Soviet Union. The third alternative, invasion, remains the one which, if successful, would yield the greatest result. Many observers here [in Washington] believe that when everything is taken into account, Hitler still looks upon invasion of Britain as the best bet – after the British have been worn down by two or three months more of aerial bombardment and counter-blockade."
If this turns out to be true, then America doesn’t have much time left to get help to Britain before the final showdown erupts.
BRITAIN VOTES DOWN NEGOTIATIONS. It’s not just home-grown isolationists who are still pushing for a negotiated peace between Britain and Germany. According to Raymond Daniell in the New York Times, the House of Commons actually took up the idea last Thursday, at the instigation of a "little handful of pacifists." Very little, indeed -- this band of four, led by an Independent Labourite named McGovern, argued before the House that continued war was driving Britain closer and closer to Fascism, and thus making the Empire almost as morally objectionable as the Third Reich itself. Plus, carrying on the war would increase the danger of both sides eventually becoming exhausted by "grief and poverty." It would be "a great moral gesture," the argument went, for Britain to offer the Fuehrer talks for a fair and just peace.
The final vote to reject a peace conference (341-4) reiterates British determination to struggle on to final victory, whatever the cost. I think it also endorses something unspoken as well -- that even a stalemate in this terrible war is actually worth fighting for. A "negotiated" peace would leave Hitler in control of the European continent and allow the Germans time and rest to do their dirty work elsewhere. There’s no doubt given Hitler’s past practices that eventually it would once again be Britain’s turn to be attacked, at much worse odds than the present conflict gives her. A stalemate, on the other hand, at least allows Britain to remain free, and increased U.S. aid will help prevent economic collapse.
All this can only be good news to the Greeks, who according to the Associated Press have just finished "overwhelming" units of retreating Italians in a battle for the southern Albanian seaport of Porto Edda. But that’s not even the worst of it for the poor Italians. An International News Service dispatch by George Balint says that the Nazis have intervened in the Greek war -- by secretly communicating peace proposals to Athens that would entail "German mediation and certain concessions to Greece." The Washington Post says the overture is "as humbling to Italy as it is flattering to little Hellas." No doubt. How much more embarrassment can a would-be Fascist empire take?
BUT BRITAIN’S TROUBLES GO ON, TOO. The recent novelty of there being some good news for the anti-Hitler cause shouldn’t hide the fact that Britain is still taking a beating and continues to be in urgent need of U.S. help. Ernest K. Lindley sums things up in his Washington Post column Friday --
"The war remains in a critical stage, its eventual outcome extremely doubtful. The British are taking terrible punishment from the air. An adequate defense of night bombing has not been developed; and at this time of year the nights are 16 or 17 hours long in England. The new German system of concentrating on one city one night and another the next is causing more destruction than the earlier methods of bombing attack. British industrial production has been falling off, and the damage to port facilities is becoming serious. At sea the long hours of darkness favor submarine operations. While merchant ship losses on the North Atlantic sea lanes have not yet reached the heights of the spring of 1917, when Great Britain almost lost World War I to the U-boats, they are heavy."
Mr. Lindley says that, not surprisingly, "the British are eager to get, as soon as possible, every plane we will let them have." Not surprisingly, too, the Roosevelt Administration is emphasizing in its current round of conferences with industrial leaders that "the time factor" is more important than future projections of military aid -- in Lindley's words, "Five hundred bombing planes delivered before February 1 may be more valuable than 2,000 delivered in the last two months of 1941."
WHAT WILL HAPPEN IN 1941? Lindley’s Washington Post column also sets forth what could happen in the months ahead, and what most likely will --
"Allowing always for surprises, the prevailing view in informed quarters here is that the next big German action will not be launched until spring. The three more obvious alternatives are:
(a) A drive through the Balkans into Asia-Minor and Iraq – the drive which seemed to begin a few weeks ago but now almost certainly has been laid up for the winter.
(b) A drive through the southern part of the Soviet Union.
(c) An invasion of Great Britain.
Both (a) and (b) would have as their main purpose access to petroleum, although (a) might also head to Suez. Certainly the second, and conceivably the first, would mean war with the Soviet Union. The third alternative, invasion, remains the one which, if successful, would yield the greatest result. Many observers here [in Washington] believe that when everything is taken into account, Hitler still looks upon invasion of Britain as the best bet – after the British have been worn down by two or three months more of aerial bombardment and counter-blockade."
If this turns out to be true, then America doesn’t have much time left to get help to Britain before the final showdown erupts.
BRITAIN VOTES DOWN NEGOTIATIONS. It’s not just home-grown isolationists who are still pushing for a negotiated peace between Britain and Germany. According to Raymond Daniell in the New York Times, the House of Commons actually took up the idea last Thursday, at the instigation of a "little handful of pacifists." Very little, indeed -- this band of four, led by an Independent Labourite named McGovern, argued before the House that continued war was driving Britain closer and closer to Fascism, and thus making the Empire almost as morally objectionable as the Third Reich itself. Plus, carrying on the war would increase the danger of both sides eventually becoming exhausted by "grief and poverty." It would be "a great moral gesture," the argument went, for Britain to offer the Fuehrer talks for a fair and just peace.
The final vote to reject a peace conference (341-4) reiterates British determination to struggle on to final victory, whatever the cost. I think it also endorses something unspoken as well -- that even a stalemate in this terrible war is actually worth fighting for. A "negotiated" peace would leave Hitler in control of the European continent and allow the Germans time and rest to do their dirty work elsewhere. There’s no doubt given Hitler’s past practices that eventually it would once again be Britain’s turn to be attacked, at much worse odds than the present conflict gives her. A stalemate, on the other hand, at least allows Britain to remain free, and increased U.S. aid will help prevent economic collapse.
Monday, December 5, 2016
Thursday, December 5, 1940
U.S. READY TO SEND SHIPS TO THE BRITISH. Although shoved into the background by the "hot" warfare raging in southern Albania, Hitler’s campaign against Britain continues, on sea and well as in the air. Germany’s claim that her U-boats torpedoed and sank eighteen British merchant vessels in a single day spotlights the importance of a Roosevelt Administration plan to release thousands of tons of merchant shipping to the British. This new round of sales might total more than 100 ships, according to George Bookman in Wednesday’s Washington Post. He reports the idea was discussed at a closed meeting of Cabinet officials Tuesday night. Among the vessels would be sixty-three ships of the so-called "laid-up fleet" from the World War days, owned by the U.S. Maritime Commission. Officials believe, according to the Post, that this fleet "would tide Britain over the next few months," i.e, keep the beleaguered Empire capital supplied with food, munitions, and raw materials.
The New York Times account of the meeting, by Turner Catledge, mentions an additional startling detail -- not only is the Administration talking about releasing merchant tonnage to Britain, but they’re also seriously looking at "the more contentious proposal that United States naval vessels might convoy merchant shipping half way across the Atlantic." That may be entirely justifiable, especially if the alternative is the specter of British starvation or surrender. But it goes a long way, much more than anything taken up so far, toward getting America’s military directly into battle with the Nazis. Would that be too much of a strain upon the fragile, emerging consensus favoring aid to Britain? The isolationists may be in the minority, but they’re powerful enough to create a paralyzing political ruckus out of a few shooting incidents.
Maybe we don’t need to face that question just yet. An Associated Press story says that the British acknowledge the loss of 327,157 tons of merchant shipping to Nazi submarines in a four-week period ending Nov. 24. That might sound huge, but it pales alongside the 881,000 tons of shipping lost to the Kaiser’s U-boats in April, 1917, when Britain was left with no more than a six-week supply of food. The German attacks on Britain’s naval lifeline are serious -- but not critical.
THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE LAUDS VICHY FRANCE. I’m always a little startled when isolationists echo Fascist propaganda, whether they mean to or not. The latest eyebrow-raising moment came when reading a Chicago Tribune story Wednesday, filed by correspondent David Darrah from Marseilles, about a visit to the city from Unoccupied France’s "leader" --
"Marshal Henri Philippe Petain, chief of state, took this part of France literally by storm....The popular reception, in an area that had been noted for communism and Socialism before the Petain government recently began a cleanup, reached its climax here. Until late tonight Marseilles’ streets were impassable because of the crowds that turned out. Everywhere there was evidence that the French are regaining confidence and that victory has been written in the hardest chapter of the bloodless revolution. Members of [Petain’s] entourage declared the acclaim the marshal received would set at rest the propaganda campaign conducted by French emigres in America against his government."
"Bloodless revolution"? Is this Mr. Darrah’s, or the Tribune’s, preferred term now for "Fascist takeover"? Maybe I missed it, but I don’t recall the Tribune recording other recent manifestations of this French "victory" -- such as Marshal Petain’s decrees last month banning Jews from public service, the press, radio, and cinema. The Petain regime now brands itself "a harmonious combination of authority and liberty" (with an emphasis on the former) and says coyly that certain foreign political experiments "possess common sense and beauty" (no prize for guessing which ones). Are ordinary Frenchmen indeed cheering this platform? Perhaps, to the contrary, a desperate, defeated people will applaud what few national symbols they have left, and Petain’s heroic service in the last war remains a potent symbol. All the more a shame, then, that he disgraces his past by the manner in which he now bends a knee to his Nazi conquerors and pretends to find something "French" in the groveling, quasi-Nazi dictatorship he imposes upon his people.
"MEN CAN BE FREE." Walter Lippmann’s column in Tuesday’s New York Herald Tribune finds that the Battle of Britain offers a profound lesson to "this smart and unbelieving, this clever and neurotic generation" --
"In the past six months modern men have passed, some directly and others vicariously, through the most terrible and the most ennobling experience in the history of the modern world. For in this period which began with the miracle of Dunkirk, there has been revealed what modern societies had forgotten and ceased to believe in: that men can be free, not merely in the political sense but in the religious meaning of the word, free to collect themselves in all adversity and by the sheer force of the human will to become the masters rather than the victims of fate. This revelation that the ancient convictions about men are true is one of the very greatest events of a long epoch, transcending in importance and its consequences all the fluctuating incidents of battle, providing the people of the world with an armour of the soul and a sword of the spirit which has already altered and will surely alter more decisively the course of history. For the first time since popular government came into being a whole people has faced the full fury of a total war, and by sheer tenacity and conviction withstood it. Their reward is that they proved that modern society can be redeemed from the apathy, the cynicism, and the materialism which were destroying it more surely than all the bombs that have fallen on the English cities."
The New York Times account of the meeting, by Turner Catledge, mentions an additional startling detail -- not only is the Administration talking about releasing merchant tonnage to Britain, but they’re also seriously looking at "the more contentious proposal that United States naval vessels might convoy merchant shipping half way across the Atlantic." That may be entirely justifiable, especially if the alternative is the specter of British starvation or surrender. But it goes a long way, much more than anything taken up so far, toward getting America’s military directly into battle with the Nazis. Would that be too much of a strain upon the fragile, emerging consensus favoring aid to Britain? The isolationists may be in the minority, but they’re powerful enough to create a paralyzing political ruckus out of a few shooting incidents.
Maybe we don’t need to face that question just yet. An Associated Press story says that the British acknowledge the loss of 327,157 tons of merchant shipping to Nazi submarines in a four-week period ending Nov. 24. That might sound huge, but it pales alongside the 881,000 tons of shipping lost to the Kaiser’s U-boats in April, 1917, when Britain was left with no more than a six-week supply of food. The German attacks on Britain’s naval lifeline are serious -- but not critical.
THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE LAUDS VICHY FRANCE. I’m always a little startled when isolationists echo Fascist propaganda, whether they mean to or not. The latest eyebrow-raising moment came when reading a Chicago Tribune story Wednesday, filed by correspondent David Darrah from Marseilles, about a visit to the city from Unoccupied France’s "leader" --
"Marshal Henri Philippe Petain, chief of state, took this part of France literally by storm....The popular reception, in an area that had been noted for communism and Socialism before the Petain government recently began a cleanup, reached its climax here. Until late tonight Marseilles’ streets were impassable because of the crowds that turned out. Everywhere there was evidence that the French are regaining confidence and that victory has been written in the hardest chapter of the bloodless revolution. Members of [Petain’s] entourage declared the acclaim the marshal received would set at rest the propaganda campaign conducted by French emigres in America against his government."
"Bloodless revolution"? Is this Mr. Darrah’s, or the Tribune’s, preferred term now for "Fascist takeover"? Maybe I missed it, but I don’t recall the Tribune recording other recent manifestations of this French "victory" -- such as Marshal Petain’s decrees last month banning Jews from public service, the press, radio, and cinema. The Petain regime now brands itself "a harmonious combination of authority and liberty" (with an emphasis on the former) and says coyly that certain foreign political experiments "possess common sense and beauty" (no prize for guessing which ones). Are ordinary Frenchmen indeed cheering this platform? Perhaps, to the contrary, a desperate, defeated people will applaud what few national symbols they have left, and Petain’s heroic service in the last war remains a potent symbol. All the more a shame, then, that he disgraces his past by the manner in which he now bends a knee to his Nazi conquerors and pretends to find something "French" in the groveling, quasi-Nazi dictatorship he imposes upon his people.
"MEN CAN BE FREE." Walter Lippmann’s column in Tuesday’s New York Herald Tribune finds that the Battle of Britain offers a profound lesson to "this smart and unbelieving, this clever and neurotic generation" --
"In the past six months modern men have passed, some directly and others vicariously, through the most terrible and the most ennobling experience in the history of the modern world. For in this period which began with the miracle of Dunkirk, there has been revealed what modern societies had forgotten and ceased to believe in: that men can be free, not merely in the political sense but in the religious meaning of the word, free to collect themselves in all adversity and by the sheer force of the human will to become the masters rather than the victims of fate. This revelation that the ancient convictions about men are true is one of the very greatest events of a long epoch, transcending in importance and its consequences all the fluctuating incidents of battle, providing the people of the world with an armour of the soul and a sword of the spirit which has already altered and will surely alter more decisively the course of history. For the first time since popular government came into being a whole people has faced the full fury of a total war, and by sheer tenacity and conviction withstood it. Their reward is that they proved that modern society can be redeemed from the apathy, the cynicism, and the materialism which were destroying it more surely than all the bombs that have fallen on the English cities."
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