France – And The Issues At Stake In This War

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 287, 4 December 1941, Page 6

France - And The Issues At Stake In This War

"TO read of the swift progress of the Germans into France, and then of the unbelievable French capitulation, was a harrowing experience even for people half the world away who had never known France. For people who had lived in France for years, and knew and loved the country, it was an experience much worse. The story, and much else besides, are told in a recent remarkable book by a Hungarian, who was one of the refugees who escaped via Spain and Portugal.

Other writers, most of them| American journalists, have written! of their experiences in those terrible weeks. Their narratives, often vivid and exciting, have usually lacked background knowledge. They saw France from Paris, and could not at the same time see it from the country; and some of them conspicuously lacked knowledge of French history, except the recent history of party politics. .Mr. Bagger, himself formerly a journalist, but latterly a writer of biographies and a philosopher, had been living in the South of France. He knew other European countries besides France; he had also lived and worked in America, of which he is a citizen by naturalisation. He is, therefore, much better qualified than many another writer to interpret the French collapse to English-speaking people. He says:

Future ages, If any, will find much in the collapse of France to wonder about. But two things they will find incredible; though, since they have been established beyond the shadow of doubt, they will have to be credited. One of these things is that the Maginot Line ended at Montmedy. The other is that the French statesmen and generals, and the French people, thought that this Maginot Line, which ended at Montmedy, formed an impregpiable defence, and lived for nine months after the outbreak of war as if the armoured divisions of Hitler had been transferred to Saturn as soon as they had finished their job in Poland.

But, Mr. Bagger argues, behind this apparent obtuseness lay the fact that the French people were tired, "for the faith had gone out of thehi." And he is convinced that something much greater than France was involved in the collapse of France; in fact, nothing less than the end of Europe as it had existed for centuries. It was the tragedy of the French that although they had perhaps as great a reason as any other people to distrust Germany, they failed to appreciate the nature of Hitlerism. This observation is not a piece of retrospective wisdom, for Mr. Bagger in 1934 wrote to a friend in America an essay (part of which he reprints in this book) which shows that he was one of the four men who at that early date foresaw what was coming. He wrote then:

"For the true meaning of Hltlerlsm Is this: it is the world-view of Power achieving its last corollary in and by a universal Destruction^—thus the meaning of Hitlerism, its fundamental, theological meaning, is this: 'We are good, because we know that we are, and you are evil, because we know that you are; and it is the duty of Good to fight and destroy Evil.' The nation that it is possible to come to terms with Nazi Germany by giving her what she wants—may yet cost Western civilisation its very life."

As to the men who rate France to-day, Mr. Bagger says that with some exceptions, including Petain, they are "traitors to France. to> Europe and the Christian civilisation. But his book, it should be clear, is concerned with much more than the men and conditions immediately associated with the l French collapse. If it has the circulation it deserves, it will do more than ten other books to spread an appreciation of the deeper issues which are at stake in this war. •"The Heathen Are Wrong: An Impersonal Autobiography." By Eugene Bagger. (Eyre and Spottiswoode). THE WAR AT SEA t A few months ago George H. Johnston, a Melbourne journalist, wrote in "Grey Gladiator" a capital account of the war service of H.M'A.S. Sydney, whose career has now been ended in extraordinary and tragic circumstances. He has followed with a second book, "Battle of the Seaways" (Angus and Robertson), which is a survey, wide though necessarily incomplete, of the whole course of the sea war. His object was to give "some picture of what the war really means—for the men of the merchant navy and for the men of the Royal Navy," and for material he has drawn upon published and unpublished records, and upon information gained directly from sailors and seamen. Many of the stories he tells have been told before, though, they are here found] in greater detail; others are hardly known. All of them deserve to be l better known, so that there may be a universal realisation of the importance to Britain, and to us in the Dominions, of the grim and neverceasing struggle at sea, and a still keener appreciation of the sacrificial spirit of the men who are waging it. The spirit is epitomised in the comment heard among the minesweepers who keep the channels swept for British warships and merchant vessels—"Better for 'em to bag a little ship than a big 'un."

INTERNEE'S CAMP

" N ever Mind, Mr. Lom," with a subtitle The Uses of Adversity," is a MacMillan and Co. book from a new angle, written by Alfred Lomnitz, a German artist who was amongst aliens arrested in London last June. He worked at his art in Paris and then in London, and made many friends in both cities. When the police came to his rooms in the great round-up of. enemy subjects, and he was escorted to some place unknown, nis char' called to him, "Never Mmd, Mr. Lomb," and "Never Mind" was the thought that he took with hiin to his prison camp behind the barb-wire.

Mr. Lom s philosophy has for us a consoling touch. "The only possible way to preserve ourselves and our sanity is to accept the situation . Let s not torture ourselves with thoughts of the future based on the past we knew until lately. The present, and taking things as thev come—that's all that matters now."