The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, The Echo and The Sun SATURDAY, OCTOBER 25, 1941. THE UNDER-ESTIMATED ENEMY

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 253, 25 October 1941, Page 6

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, The Echo and The Sun SATURDAY, OCTOBER 25, 1941. THE UNDER-ESTIMATED ENEMY

"THE House of Commons, with the situation in Russia growing desperate, rcccntly spent time in debating the question whether eleven men, described as lay preachers of the Oxford Group movement, should be exempt from war service. Thursday's debate was about something much more important—Britain's military strength, and the practicability of giving greater aid to the Soviet. Nevertheless, a debate at this time, even on such a subject, is a costly luxury unless in direct consequence of it the Government is impelled to action which it might not otherwise have taken. There is no indication that this debate will have that result. Some of the critics asserted that the political prejudice of some members of the Cabinet was responsible for what they deem the inadequacy of Britain's aid to Russia. In replying to this the Government spokesman was under the disadvantage that he could not tell all, or nearly all, he knew. He could but reaffim that the Government was doing all it could do, and that in supplies it was giving the Russians exactly what they had asked for.

Will this assurance be accepted by the Government's critics? Some of these critics, are of the type, not unknown in New Zealand, who have never been able to see anything wrong in Russia, and, now that the Soviet is in grave difficulties, seem to be searching around in Britain for someone to blame. But the motives of others cannot be questioned. They know, as all must know who have read of Lord Gort's dispatches, and have heard or read of the conditions under which British troops fought in Greece and Crete, and in Syria (where the Vichy French had 90 tanks and the Australians had none), that the judgment of the War Office has sometimes in the past been appallingly bad. They want the Government to satisfy itself that the advice it is receiving now is sound. They know that not only the public, but Parliament, was kept in the dark about the real state of armament production before May, 1940, and they want to satisfy themselves that they have the truth now. For chis suspicious attitude there is a reason: it is the attitude of mind, in die War Office, particularly, which wishes to treat the conduct of the war as its own affair, and which results in extraordinary measuz-es being aken to keep information from the public, even long after such informaion has been known to the enemy. If the War Office had a record of substantial success in the operations for which it has been responsible liis attitude might be tolerated; but .when its failures have been exposed >y events, the only course open to disinterested patriots is to keep •hammering away" until men who cannot dissociate themselves from he failures are replaced.

But over and above these domestic matters, important as they are, .here remains the great question of aid to Russia. What some of the genuine, disinterested critics do not seem to have realised is the tremenious scale of the conflict now raging. There has been nothing like it ■jefore. By comparison with the size of the armies engaged and the quantity of equipment they use, and use up, the British Army, even .o-day, must seem small. And when it is realised that all the armament ind other supplies which Britain can send, and is sending, to Russia. -iave to be transported by sea, under naval escort, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the physical obstacles to the delivery of quantities arge enough to influence the course of the struggle are practically insuperable. Russia, as one of the Government's critics said, is "no sideshow." It is not. If it were, it might be easy to solve the problem of supplying it. As to the advocacy of helping Russia by a large-scale .nvasion of the Continent, nothing has been responsibly said to show that it is practicable, or, indeed, that it would not be suicidal. If Lord Halifax told Americans that British shipping and equipment were insufficient to make it possible, he probably spoke the precise truth. But there follows from that truth the inescapable necessity to realise, at ong last, the mighty forces that Germany has mustered to win 'the nastery of Europe, and much beyond, and how much greater are the efforts which Britain and all the Dominions must yet put forward to counter the German menace, and Anally to destroy it. In spite of all warnings and examples we have to this very day under-estimated the ■power-of the enemy. We cannot afford to persist in the error.