Line-Up For Victory

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXX, Issue 13622, 21 April 1942, Page 8

Line-Up For Victory

(.Copyright by P.P.S.)

The international situation is very complicated. No: one person in a thousand is able to say which Allied country is at war with which. With the exception of some smaller Allies, for example Czechoslovakia, which is at war with every ally of Germany, Italy and Japan, most of the United Nations are at war with some but not with all, members of the Axis. There is the case of Russia's non-aggression Pact with Japan. Not that this Pact has any more than temporary value; it is a scrap of paper, but for the moment the "non-aggression" stuff suits both of the potention adversaries. At the same time the fact that Russia is "so near and yet so far away" to stop or divert the Japanese march in the Pacific, creates a certain amount of bitterness arising out of confusion in appraisal of the true position. There is America whose international relationships ' are perhaps more complicated than of any other Ally. She is not at war with a lot of countries. In the minds of many peoples, as a member of _ the United Nations' line-up, America should be at war with every country all the other members are; for example, Britain is at war with Hungary, Rumania and Finland, and America is not.

There are still many complicated currents and cross-currents in every country, belligerent and neutral, Allied or enemy, which militate against consolidation of the united front of the Allied nations, particularly in respect of unified diplomacy, military strategy and pooling of economic resources, and hamper the total war-effort in the industrial field (viz, revelations in America about ramifications of the big vested interests' activities into enemy countries, troubles over international patents, etc). To single out only the case of American-French relations. Washington tried to bolster up Petain's resistance to Germany's demands for active co-operation. Many critics quite logically supported the Free French contention that to prevent Vichy's subservience to Hitler by a policy of "business, humanitarian and diplomatic appeasement" is doomed to failure and that such a policy only benefits the Axis. Only future impartial historians will be able to judge whether these benefits outweighed the gain of time which the unprepared America needed. After the experience of Dakar, perhaps, Britain adroitely exploited the good offices of Fresident Roosevelt to keep the French navy out of Hitler's grasp. We know that Darlan was helping German and Italian transports to Libya. It was bad enough, but the Allied positions in the Middle East might have been a good deal worse had Hitler had the French navy at his disposal. Britain's policy toward Spain was motivated by the same principle of keeping Franco from "co-operating" with the Axis "too much." The Leftists are right when they say that such a policy, was a sign of weakness though probably not in the sense they mean it. Admittedly dynamic tacf tics are necessary to impress with our sincerity those countries which are sitting on the fence and to consolidate the united front of those sections of the public opinion which are on Allied side. But the lineup of the world democracy in one indivisible front as Russia always demanded is not as simple a procedure as that. It must be backed up by guns as well. To get those guns, meaning a total line-up of the industrial potential—singling out, say, America—can be achieved either bv the State taking over all essential industries, which would result in a dangerous lag in production and in antagonism of the powerful wested interests, or it can be achieved by integration of the industries into the total -war effort.