Playing the Axis Game

Press, Volume LXXIX, Issue 23891, 9 March 1943, Page 4

Playing the Axis Game

The South African House of Assembly, it was reported yesterday, defeated by 54 votes to 36 a resolution calling for the expulsion of the Soviet consular agents and the suppression of the Communist Party. The Opposition, however, threatens to take the issue to the country. Within the last few days the cables have carried other danger signals. The American newspaper which followed Mr Melvin Maas into totally unfounded charges against the New Zealand Government, in the matter of the construction cost of aerodromes, has used the Battle of the Bismarck Sea as an occasion for an equally unfounded interpretation of the new Australian Militia Act and its effect. There is room for more than one opinion about the distinction preserved in the act between a limited area of service for drafted men and the unlimited service of volunteers: but there is no room at all for the suggestion, as mischievous as it is false, that the act sets a limit to Australia’s effort, either present or prospective, and loads the United States with heavier sacrifices. A little earlier, another American newspaper protested against the transfer to Australia, India, and Russia of eight industrial plants: “ It means that the plants “ will be converted to peace-time “ production after the war . . . there- “ by helping to accentuate the post- " war American business slump.” It is bad enough that this ignores everything that has been done in reverse lease-lend; it is worse that it ignores the imperative need for the use of all Allied resources where they can be used best; it is perhaps worse still that it presents the American workers with a defeatist picture of the post-war world, a denial of the United Nations' aims and their power to fulfil them. A little longer ago, President Roosevelt was besieged with questions about Stalin’s intentions of pursuing his offensives to the point of advantage at which he could make an independent peace and pursue an independent policy there-

after. The questions, as questions, were rightly asked, and they had their answer; but the reports which prompted them were dangerous, their sources and motives suspect. Their danger, as of the agitation in South Africa and so on, is that all this is playing the Axis game. Those who play it do not know that they are playing it. They act, it may be supposed, in entire good faith. It is not necessary to believe, and it is even difficult to believe, that, from somewhere back along the line of influence by which opinions are formed and their utterance prompted, Dr. Goebbels has been able to reach their ears and touch their minds. It is possible. But the result is the same whether it is so or not. The United Nations tend to think in parallel [said the "Economist" in October], not in unison; and the outward sign of this lack of a common system of gears is the search in Russian propaganda for an outside scapegoat and the thrust and counterthrust of accusations between the sponsors of British and American intcrcsts All this is meat and drink to the Axis. It is their one firm belief that the democracies cannot act together, and that Soviet Russia will be isolated more by Allied reluctance than by German military prowess. The leadership of the United Nations has no task more difficult, none more important, than that of guarding their unity against the mischief that the lies of the enemy may do, repeated and amplified for him by men too foolish or too blind to see his image in them; and it is a task, not for censorship and secrecy', but for swift, bold, truthful propaganda.