WILL QUICK VICTORY FOLLOW "R. DAY"?

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 76, 31 March 1945, Page 4

WILL QUICK VICTORY FOLLOW "R. DAY"?

A Review from TREVOR SMlTH—Special to Star

LONDON, March 28. CVERYONE who should know, from *- J Mr. Churchill down, believes that R day—the crossing of "the Rhine day—will be followed swiftly by V day.

Victory is certainly in the air, victory, all in capital letters, and if cold logic and commonsense mean anything victory should be ours very soon.

But I will believe it near only when the V-bombs cease, when the disorganisation of the Wehrmacht is really widespread and U-boats no longer function methodically, when there is cast iron evidence that the Nazi supply systems and communications have broken down throughout the Reich.

All this may come suddenly, but it has not come yet, however exciting the possibilities may seem. There are a lot of facts about what Germany is doing which we do not know.

Fighting On Why do the Germans fight on? To cause the maximum destruction and disintegration throughout Europe and the maximum economic chaos throughout the world. As each day brings greater food, distribution and supply difficulties, so the Germans believe that they bring the world a day. nearer to anarchy. It is towards this end that they are fighting. They are scheming fanatically to protract hostilities and simultaneously intensifying U-boat activities, long-range V weapons and Fifth Column sabotage. They are hanging on to Holland as much to prevent the relief of the starving Dutch as to maintain their use of V weapon sites. They are fighting like tigers in Hungary with the idea of concentrating within the defensible mountain perimeter of Bohemia, Austria and Bavaria.

They believe that, with military victory impossible and the chance of splitting the Big Three almost unthinkable, they can fan the flames of economic and social chaos and get the liberated European countries to turn against the democracies. This plan, the London journal the New Statesman and Nation warns, must not be dismissed lightly as the romantic gesture of doomed gangsters. It is a serious, coldblooded endeavour, backed by the German General Staff, to wrest a political victory out of a defeat in arms. Nerve Cases If the Germans do not intend to continue fighting while guns and territory remain to them, this frightening destruction to which they are submitting themselves would seem to be even more senseless from their view point than it does now. The Allies daily are finding many cases of actual madness and nervous breakdown among the Germans, and finding that a large proportion of those who appear to be normal are, in fact, in a bad nervous state. Moreover, the bulk of the Germans have a guilty conscience about the atrocities their soldiers committed in occupied countries. Reports, so far unconfirmed have been pretty persistent lately that the Hun war criminals contemplate fighting their last ditch stand in the Bavarian Alps, and taking with them several thousands British and American war prisoners as hostages. For their own safe conduct such an act would not be very fantastic. These desperate thugs have perpetrated already outrages in Europe which compare with the worst recorded in history. What better summing up of the Huns than this, which comes from Colonel Bonham-Carter, of the British Army, who has just been released from a German prison camp:

"If you. meet a German alone he says, 'I wish this war would end tomorrow, no matter how. . If you meet two Germans they'll say 'Heil Hitler.' "

Nobody looks a better bet to score 100 years than the seemingly ageless Mr. George Bernard Shaw. He is full of zest, and will be 89 in July.

But, says Shaw, "I have never wanted to be a centenarian. I dread it. I was the first to expose the horror of personal immortality."

Shaw has been asked again whether he considers his vigorous old age is due to his vegetarian diet and lifelong abstinence from alcohol, tobacco and even tea and coffee.

He replied: "The Italian physician who left a big book as his testament wrote nothing in it but 'keep your feet warm and your head cool.' " No Quick End The "quick end to Japan" school is as irrepressible as the "all over in Germany" school was a year ago. Thiis it is refreshing to find increasing numbers of people here insisting that Japan will probably be even tougher to beat than Germany. One of the latest of these is the Assistant Bishop of Ely (Dr. Gordon John Walsh) who was in Japan from 1914 unti 1940. He does not believe the bombing of Japanese cities will lead to panic, because the Japanese are accustomed to calamities like earthquakes, storms, floods and fires wiping out even a great city in a few hours, and regard them fatalistically. Dr. Walsh adds: "I do not believe that the Japanese will give up until they are invaded and defeated on their own soil. They will probably fight it out even after the invasion, "There has never been an invasion in all Japan's history, and if one succeeded the whole theory of the supremacy of the Emperor and the military oligarchy might crash. Defeat of the militarists is our only hope of re-educating Japan." Hall a League This is the latest slogan for next month's United Nations' Conference in San Francisco: "Half a league, half a league, half a league onward."

Tito, when he met Field-Marshal Alexander in Rome, brought along a bodyguard of 10 of the biggest Yugoslav Partisans he could muster, ten tommy-gunned giants. This created a tremendous impression. Field Marshal Alexander, when he visited Marshal Tito at Belgrade, took as a bodyguard 10 of the biggest men from a British Guards' Regiment, likewise tommy-gunned. All Belgrade was impressed. "Heir Apparent?" Mr. Curtin's tribute to the British Foreign Secretary (Mr. Eden) as the greatest of all British Foreign Secretaries, with a genius for making friends, has been widely read and discussed here.

Mr. Curtin, curiously, said it in Canberra at almost the identical moment that Mr. Churchill, in the House of Commons, went out of his way to make Mr. Eden's ears burn with a similar generous tribute. Mr. Eden's recent diplomatic and parliamentary successes have caused several influential Conservatives, hitherto lukewarm about him, to think seriously now that he might make a suitable successor to Mr. Churchill. They say that he is showing a strength of will which they did not suspect he possessed. There is not the slightest doubt about what Mr. Churchill feels anrl thinks. The Old Man, by even' act and gesture, virtually has publicly proclaimed Mr. Eden as his heir apparent.