STRIKE OR WAIT?

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 167, 17 July 1941, Page 17

STRIKE OR WAIT?

WEIGHTY PROBLEM

AMERICA'S STRATEGY

WHEN THE SHOOTING STARTS

(By COL. FREDERICK PALMER) WASHINGTON, June 20.

Those interventionists, who want us to rush into a shooting war and complain that President Roosevelt still hesitates to take the plunge, even in his Robin Moor message to Congress, and those isolationists, who see him covertly inducting us toward another A.E.F., are subject to a common error. So measurably, at least, may be some of the critics who think he keeps too many details in his own hands.

This common error, which has been impressed upon the writer by prolonged observation in Washington, is the assumption by individuals and groups that they have as many sources of information about the progress of the war as the President. He, too, has to probe for the truth in the plethora of conflicting advice and reports at his service lest he be fooled by some informant who has fooled himself. But he has the blunt truth, as far as they know it, from the experts of our armed services. Their partisan emotion is strictly limited to the United States Army and Navy, first, last and all the time.

It is strictly 'their business to prepare for war, and then to make war under their Commander-in-Chief, the President of the United States. They are witnesses, not advocates of a national policy, in answering his questions. The President Decides What portion of our fleet can we securely withdraw from the Pacific to the Atlantic? Just what are the facilities for direct convoying across the Atlantic? How much more effective will it be in aid of Britain than the present extension of our naval patrol? Is it better strategy to wait no longer and strike now? Shall we arm merchant ships? Which is the best safeguard against a repetition of the Robin Moor outrage?

No one is so well equipped to give the answers as the experts in war. If the order is for them to fight, they salute, and it is do or die. The President's is the great decision. The supreme responsibility is his. Who if not he should want to know the truth in full?

He must seek it not only from our reports, but from those of the British, and both through all the subterfuges of Nazi concealment. There is a conflict of opinions among British experts as to needs. What w r as most vital in yesterday's emergency yields to a still more pressing demand to-morrow under the swift fluctuations of war.

To strategists, who had perspective on this side of the ocean, sending a small army to Greece seemed nothing short of military folly. Crete was still another in the sequence of misfortunes. Since the Mediterranean had become useless as a British life line, wonder was expressed in some quarters in Washington if it would not be better for Britain to withdraw altogether from the Mediterranean and centre all her energy and our aid on home defence. Should Britain be lost, all would be lost.

The Right Aid in Right Place

But in magnificent determination and faith the British decided to hold out to the bitter end in the Middle East. So be it. This spread our aid across the Pacific to the Far East around the far-flung overseas reaches of the Empire.

Dreams and emotion aside, the right amount of aid in the right place is a subject of timing and adaptation in the present measure of British and American resources of to-day, and not of a year, six months, or even a month hence. She has soldiers enough. The question now is to get the material for them and the ships to transport them to the Middle East, which has been chosen as a decisive battleground second only to that of Britain herself.

It is said that the President has a warrant for keeping details in his own hands because of the complicated world stretch of the pattern of his problem. For technical information he is accustomed to go far afield from his Cabinet. "The President wants," which is the most meaning phrase in Washington life, brings an expert in any branch of a subject quietly and swiftly to the White House.

Those who ought to know the President's attitude say that he wants to be convinced the Congress and the people are back of him when it comes to final action. The one sure thing we are still "short of war" is in that we have not yet started shooting. And when we do start, the navy will strike fast and hard.—"Auckland Star" and N.A.N.A.