The Press FRIDAY, JANUARY 29, 1943. CASABLANCA

Press, Volume LXXIX, Issue 23858, 29 January 1943, Page 4

The Press FRIDAY, JANUARY 29, 1943. CASABLANCA

The importance of the Casablanca conference between Mr Churchill and Mr Roosevelt and their staffs may well be measured in the enemy’s reaction. The conference was designed to complete plans for the use of the offensive initiative in 1943 and to throw into them, in the favourable situation created by the latter events of 1942, the utmost resolution and the utmost force. This, certainly, was the object, rather than to begin such plans. They have been completed. They can only mean that tremendous blows will be aimed at the Axis, and will not be long delayed; and the Axis is afraid of them. That is why Axis propaganda has immediately begun to work for two purposes; to summon up Germany’s reserves of desperate resolution, as well as of material resource, and to break the front of Allied unity. Already in October Hitler and Goering were exploiting the appeal to fear; if the Allies won the war, Germany and Italy would be “ destroyed.” This, again, is the response to the Casablanca declaration that the Allies will be satisfied by unconditional surrender and nothing less; and it will be wrong to suppose it an ineffectual one. It should be countered, as it can be, by the truth; and the truth is that the Atlantic Charter expressly disavows destructive and oppressive war aims. “ All States,” the charter promises, “ great or small, victor or “ vanquished,” are to be assured the means of a normal economic life. Allied propaganda of hope can undo Axis propaganda of fear. The enemy’s second propagandist coun-ter-attack, which suggests that Russia is preparing to spread world revolution and that at Casablanca Britain and the United States were preparing to frustrate their ally, not to aid, will be defeated in action; but that does not mean that there is no need to meet it sooner, and otherwise. The danger is less that this particular lie will succeed than that report, rumour, and misinterpretation of this kind have been damaging and may still be. The history of the second front agitation in Britain, with its stupid charges from the Left and clumsy retorts from the Right, is one proof. The controversy in America over Mr Willkie’s mission to Moscow and over the singularly injudicious chatter of Mr Gardner Cowles, Assistant Director of War Information, who accompanied him, is another. The Allied front needs to be protected by swifter and more effective propaganda against the single-purposed enemy and the muddle-headed partisan. Offensive Fronts It is from this point of view unfortunate that Stalin was unable to join his friends at Casablanca: perhaps even more unfortunate that he sent neither personal representative nor military collaborators. The reason can only be conjectured, Stalin’s preoccupatidn with the Russian offensives will hardly serve to explain why no Russian staff officers could be sent. It is possible, however, that the truth is simple: that Russia had little to contribute or to learn, the problems under discussion being wholly those of Anglo-American collaboration in undertakings already explicit and sufficient. The official communique says that Stalin was “ fully informed.” In his much-discussed statement, early in October, Stalin did not complain that his Allies had done less than they had promised; he said, merely, that their aid had so far been of much less effect than Russia’s aid to them. He added: “To amplify and improve this aid “ only one thing is required, that the “Allies fulfil their obligations fully “ and on time.” The precise, prospective significance of this, and especially of the last two words, could not be guessed then; it began to emerge in the Eisenhower-Mont-gomery strokes in North Africa. If Russia had, and has, further assurances of aid, active rather than material, in this and that form, and by this and that time, it will now come into full view in their fulfilment, which Russia awaits. This conjecture does not, however, so persuasively extend to the absence of Chiang Kai-shek or of any staff to represent him. His representative in Washington, not long ago, withdrew after fruitless waiting for discussions of Allied plans in the Pacific. The conclusion is unavoidable that these remain rigidly tied to the principle of limited offensive action, while Britain and the United States concentrate their main efforts against Germany and Italy; and that the new promise of assistance to China is subject to the same limits as earlier ones. If so, Mr Curtin’s broadcast and his dramatic appeal —“ I put it to the American people ” —should be interpreted as a protest against the scale and method of the “holding” strategy, left to be carried out by “ a force of caretakers,” rather than as a protest against the strategy itself. Against the broad conception Mr Curtin could not protest, in fact, without retreating from his October statement, in which he accepted it, though reluctantly and conditionally. The essential condition was that Australia’s full effort should receive all necessary support. If Mr Curtin is now insisting on that condition, it may be expected that he will be met by accelerated efforts to arm and supply the Pacific strategy; it cannot be expected that Pacific strategy will be rapidly transformed. The Time to Strike Whatever may be attempted and achieved by diversionary or limited offensives in other theatres, during the next six or nine months, there can be no doubt that the main Allied efforts to force the unconditional surrender of the enemy will

be prosecuted in the European and Mediterranean theatres. It can hardly be doubted, either, that they will be rapidly developed. In North Africa, one stage is already well advanced. On the Continent, the opening of another is probably to be seen in the new heavy-bomber attacks on submarine bases. Other targets for concentrated attack are certain to be production centres and, above all, the key rail junctions for military transport east and west from Germany. There are great and obvious difficulties. The enforced use of the long Cape route still heavily handicaps the Allies; shipping losses have created an anxious shortage of shipping; the increasing margin of British-Ameri-can over Axis production promises overwhelming superiority, when these difficulties have been overcome. Nevertheless, there are the gravest reasons why the effort to surmount them must be swift rather than deferred. “ The need to act “ promptly and strongly to seize “ the chance offered by Russian “ feats, and to end the war soon, “remains inexorable”: so the “ Economist ” said in November, and the truth of it has been hardened and pointed by events since. Stalin’s phrase, “ on time,” has its weightiest application here. The Russian resistance and counter-offensive have been prodigious, sustained by unpredictably heavy reserves of metal and trained men and by exertions and sacrifices and devotion wellnigh miraculous. But there is a limit to Russian reserves, a point at which effort must begin to weaken, if material resources fail it. What Russia has done and is still doing has been done in spite of heavy losses of fuel, mineral, and food resources. The recovery of territory cannot at once make these losses good; there must be delays of weeks and months. The production effort which. has enabled Russia to defeat the German plan and turn to the attack has almost certainly reached and passed the peak. It has brought victorious results; they have also been paid for at heavy cost. What must, by every possible enterprise and all available means, be prevented is that the Germans should gain the time to reorganise. They are already desperately engaged on their task, and driving all occupied Europe to their aid in it. If they are given time, they can and will largely recover themselves. They cannot be allowed that time. “ Once the time has come to take “the offensive and to strike while “the iron is hot,” said General Smuts three months ago, “ it would “ be folly to delay, to over-prepare, “ and perhaps miss our opportunity. “ Nor are we likely to do so—of that “I feel satisfied.” The meaning of Casablanca is that the time is near —or now.