If War Comes : The Odds Surveyed

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 160, 1 April 1939, Page 1 (Supplement)

If War Comes : The Odds Surveyed

I I ERMAN and Italian strategy," writes Mr. Graham Hutton in his book. “Danubian Destiny,” “has long been based on the asH w sumption that (a) a general European war. or a war in rhe West, should at all costs be avoided by a diplomacy that threatens war merely iii order to secure peaceful successes; and (b) that, should a general European war break out. involving Italy along with Germany, it must be a war in which every kind of ’frightfulness' must be employed at the outset in order to secure a rapid decision (not. as in the Great War. progressively as the war wound its way along). “This second contingency is responsible for the Italo-Gernmn policy ol building up enormous reserves of foodstuffs, industrial raw materials, armaments. munitions. armies etc. If these resources, thrown into the scales at the outset, are sufficiently large they can be expected suddenly to overwhelm the combined resources of Britain and France by more than, let us say. the four-to-oue ratio of superiority needed by lite offensive in modern war. “Britain ami France, methodically and slowly laying out their industries and defence services to meet a war as long as the last, may. it is thought in totalitarian States, receive the rudest awakening of their entire history. “On the other hand, it should be known in Italy ami Germany that the

combined British ami French Navies can afford cold-bloodedly to snap their fingers over their possessions in the Far East, can afford to cut losses in Asia, even perhaps in Asia Minor, the Near East, the Suez Canal, and ibe Eastern Mediterranean —as long as their warships can control the Atlantic, the Cape route to India ami the Persian Gulf, and French ami British home waters.

“As long as the British and French Navies can ensure the feeding and supplying of Anglo-French peoples and industries with the products of the Americas, the Dominions, Africa, ami India, the vulnerability of Britain ami France can be kept down to vulnerability from tile air alone. The French may have to evacuate Savoy, lose Tunisia and Nice and even Corsica: Italy

and Germany together may partition Switzerland, overrun Holland and Belgium ami Denmark and North Africa, dig themselves in (though this would be a ‘suicide squadron's'job 1) in Spain, gain the military, political and economic mastery of the New Danubia as far as Turkey ami the Near East bill all this would not bring about what General Staff officers term a 'decision. “The war would go on. it can Im argued until scarcely a stone might be left standing in London or the Ruhr, in Paris ami Lyons, or Milan ami Munich . but as long as the 57.000000 British and French in Europe, plus whomsoever they can draw and transport from overseas. <an hold their fortified hind fronts, feed their machines and men. ami hem the two Axis Powers in by naval actions within the coniines of the Western front, the Baltic and Bittck Seas, and Russia —then, however frightful and barbaric be Ibe cost of such a war the Axis Powers could mil win. “They could not win because they could not impose a military decision And till their tolaiilarian apparatus and warfare, heaped up more rapidly and at greater cost than lhal of their less-prepared foes, might only serve l<> exhaust them more rapidly. "it is comprehensible from this strategic analysis that both the German ami Italian regimes should fear, more than anything else, a geneial European war. If ever they provoke Britain and France actually to tight—however hard to imagine that may at present appear—their own initial advantages so impossibly overbearing in so-called peace-time diplomacy, will begin to dwindle rapidly while the initial disadvantages of the disorganized and enfeebled Anglo-French democracies will equally rapidly begin to be changed into growing advantages. “Of the frightful cost of civil populations ethical ami economic standards. human life and culture on both sides, we cannot take account here. “But, viewed dispassionately as a scientific ease, the strategic laetor, apparently so favourable to the post-Muuich overlords of till Euriqie beyond lite Rhine and Alps, does not seem so in fact.