A BACKGROUND OF THE WAR

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 157, 29 March 1941, Page 10

A BACKGROUND OF THE WAR

Battle Of The Atlantic A CONFIDENT CLAIM

“Britain was never so strong nor sc hopeful. I cannot .doubt that before many months are past I shall be able to declare to you that the Battle of the Atlantic has been decisively won.’ These are the confident words of Mr Winston Churchill, and they are en dorsed by the considered opinions of a Dutch and a British Admiral. In this war Mr. Churchill has held out no false hopes. When he assumed the leadership of the nation in May, 1940, he said.: “i have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering.” The nation has borne all these things during the last 10 months, is still bearing them, and has still ahead of it “blood, toil, tears and sweat.” But Mr. Churchill can be believed when he says that the vital Battle of the Atlantic will be decisively won by Britain. Way To Victory

How will the Bittle of the Atlantic be w’on? It will be won in much the same way and by the same means as brought about the collapse of Germany in 1918. It Is probable that the means will operate more quickly than in 191418. Behind the dash of arms in the Near East, the crash of bombs in Britain and in Germany, and the explosions of shells and torpedoes on the high seas, the combatants are locked in an unseen and unheard economic struggle. On the common frontiers, the coast-line of most of Europe, they are locked in a deadly strife In which no lethal weapon is drawn.

The very existence of this unseen economic struggle was unsuspected by the majority of the British people and their Allies in 19-14-18. Its existence and its fundamental importance in this war are not generally realized. They are realized by Hitler and bis Nazis; hence their so-called counterblockade of Britain and the Battle of the Atlantic. 1 Hitler never wearies of telling the German people, and the world,- that Germany was not militarily defeated in 1918, but that her collapse was duo to “treachery” causing the breakdown of the home front. in Lis “Decadence of Europe” remarked that “Germany laid down her arms, overcome more by famine than by military force.” Economic Struggle

Yet what provided the condition from which this distress or Hitler’s "treachery” arose? Military (naval) force which controlled the communications at sea and caused the economic collapse of Germany. “To call the measure of either [the British or Napoleon] not military,” wrote Admiral Mahan in his "Influence of Sea Power on the French Revolution and Empire/’ “is as inaccurate as to call the ancient practice of circumvallation unmilitary, because the only weapon used for it was the spade”—the spade, working under the protection of the spear and sword. In 1914 Britain’s entry into the war and the Battle of the Marne placed all hope of an early decision for Germany out of the question; and the problem with which Germany was faced was an economic one. She was not selfsupporting, and the greater part of the supplies upon which she depended for feeding, clothing and munitioning her armed forces, and for supporting her civil population, had to come from overseas. Unarmed Forces

The four years of 1914-18 was a struggle for the mastery of these supplies. The clash of arms, the destruction of cities and even the passing subjugation of smaller nations were not the sole determining factors of a Struggle in which one-half of the more highly organized nations sought to impose its will upon the other half. “The real struggle itself,” writes Admiral Cousett in his “Triumph of Unarmed Forces,” "was unaccompanied by any single act of violence; yet it was more deadly in its passive’relentlessness than the military forces and engines of war, on which the attention of the whole world was riveted. For more than two years, Germany maintained an unequal economic struggle with us; she suffered famine, but she won through. In 1917 she sealed her own doom by declaring war upon all merchant shipping in the waters round the British Isles. . . . America entered the arena and Germany was reduced to starvation point.” Relentless Blockade

History is repeating itself. Despite the Nazi boasts of “vast reserves” and self-sufficiency, Germany today is even more dependent upon essential overseas supplies for the waging of a three dimensional mechanized war than during 1914-18. AU the added resources of the occupied countries—an ever-dimin-ishing quantity—will not save her from the . “ruthless, relentless, remorseless” pressure of the British blockade. Whatever temporary benefits Germany has derived from her “conquests,” the stark fact remains that the reduction in the number of free, neutral countries during the last 12 months has enabled Britain’s sea power to clamp down the blockade more tightly and effectively than ever before. And so we come to the Battle of the Atlantic. Germany' has declared a “total blockade” of Britain, and has extended it to the coast of Greenland, in a desperate effort to throttle the vast Hood of foodstuffs and supplies that are maintaining and building up the British war effort. Hitler is pitting bis U-boats and bombing planes and such of his few cruisers as can sffeak furtively about the Atlantic against the great and rapidly-growing Sea Power of Britain. Odds Against Nazis

The merit of a blockade lies in its effectiveness. Britain is not short of food and her ever-mounting strength by sea, land and air, which Is rapidly knocking out the junior partner in the Axis and becoming an increasing menace to Germany herself, is proof that the Nazi blockade is far from beeomiiig effective.

Britain’s merchant shipping losses are grievously heavy; so they were in Napoleon’s time and in 1914-18. But her shipbuilding industry is organized and working as never before. Warships of all types are taking the seas in ever-increasing numbers, and merchant ships are being completed art the rate of at least one a cay. Across the Atlantic the vast resources of the United States are pledged to give Britain and her Allies the fullest aid possible in planes, war supplies and foodstuffs. arnd the means to get them across ttie ocean. Hitler’s blockade and his “new order in Europe”—the modern counterpart of Napoleon’s “Continental system”—will rot win for Germany the Battle of the Atlantic. — (S.D.W.)