A BACKGROUND OF THE WAR

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 189, 8 May 1941, Page 8

A BACKGROUND OF THE WAR

The Invisible Balance NAZI LIABILITIES

Recent events in the Balkans, in Libya and in Iraq have tended to engender in the minds of many people that the war is not going at all well for Great Britain and her allies. They point to the territorial gains made by the enemy and argue that because the Germans are masters of the greater part of Europe they now have access to unlimited supplies that will nullify the British blockade and enable them indefinitely to prolong the struggle. This is the short view that ignores the fundamentals of modern warfare on the scale of the present struggle or that of 1914-18. Mr. Churchill summed up the position in a few words when he said that in the larger aspect of the war, everything turns on the struggle at sea, which is proceeding with growing intensity.

Unseen Struggle Economists, when dealing with international trade, have to take account of not only commodities and merchandise which are termed “visible” exports or imports, but also the “services” between countries that are termed “invisible exports” or “invisible imports.” Thus while Great Britain has an adverse trade balance in terms of “visible" exports and imports, this is redressed by the favourable balance of “invisible exports.” So, too, in this war, if it were possible to cast up an approximate balance-sheet, it would be found that the invisible items largely outweigh the visible results to.the immense ultimate ' advantage of Great Britain.

In many of its purely military aspects this war differs greatly from that of 1914-18; due to developments in the air and the mechanization of armies its “streamlined” operations are carried out at a speed that was impossible 25 years ago. But, fundamentally, the struggle is the same. The problem that faced Germany in 1914-18 was. an economic one; she was not self-sup-porting and a very large part of the supplies upon which she depended,not only to wage war, but to support her civil , population, could only come from Overseas. The four years’ struggle was, essentially, a struggle for the mastery of those supplies.

In- 1914-18 the clash of arms, the destruction of cities and even the passing subjugation of smaller nations were not the sole determining factors of an issue in- which one-half of the more highly-organized nations of the earth sought to impose its will upon the other half. The real struggle itself 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 whole attention of the world wa" exclusively riveted. Blockade Decisive

For more than two years Germany maintained an unequal economic struggle with Great Britain; she suffered greatly, but she won through. In 1917 she sealed her fate by declaring war upon all merchant ships in the seas round the British Isles; for by this act Britain’s trade with Germany’s neutral neighbours ceased. America entered the war and Germany was reduced to starvation point. As in Napoleon’s time and in 1914-18, so today the contestants are again met in that “deadly strife in which no weapon is drawn.” There are no neutral countries in Europe today that count to any extent in overseas trade. Hitler’s conquests from Norway to the Bay of Biscay and in the Mediterranean have immensely simplified Britain’s blockade problems by closing the coasts of Europe to supplies from overseas. Economically, every occupied country in the long run adds to Germany’s difficulties. Italy was a liability to Britain in the last war: she is an even greater liability to Germany in Ibis war. The most casual survey of the imports of every European country in normal times reveals that a large proportion consists of raw materials, mineral and vegetable oils, foodstuffs and other vital supplies. The Great Lesson

‘ The outstanding lesson of the war of 1914-18 was the importance of sea communications and the extent to which the combatants were dependent upon overseas supplies. That dependence was the inevitable result of the economic developments of the century preceding the war, the increasing importance to industrial countries of raw materials and fuel, and the increasing tendency of such countries to rely ou foreign sources to supplement their.own production of foodstuffs. In Germany, where the process of industrialization bad been very rapid, it had beeu accompanied by an intensification of agricultural development. “But this agricultural development itself was based upon very large oversea supplies of artificial fertilizers and concentrated foodstuffs. Indeed, the extent to which European food production depended on imported fodder and fertilizers was one of the lessons most clearly brought out by the war.” For the belligerents today, as well as for the peoples of the occupied countries, this dependence on overseas supplies’ is greatly accentuated by the nature of the war. The immense developments in naval, military and air equipment, and the direct demands of the fighting services on the products of industry, greatly exceed anything known in the war of 1914-18. These demands increase both directly and indirectly, the importance of sea -communications ; directly, because no country produces in itself the materials necessary to the arming and equipping of its forces; indirectly, because the diversion of labour to war industries reacts upon home output, whether of food or of the civil industries. Sea Power

Moreover, the occupation by Germany of the several countries, Norway, Denmark and Holland, that remained neutral to the end in 1914-1 S and the present state of France, Belgium and Italy have cut off overseas supplies from Europe to a far greater extent and have caused a much greater upset to economic conditions than was the case in the last -war. Great Britain possesses a working command of the sea that, enables her to exercise such a light control, ol the trade routes as renders evasion extremely difficult and accentuates the immense importance of economic pressure ou Germany and Italy. Hitler and his Nazis fully realize now that to "win the war” they must break Britain’s stranglehold; hence the Battle of the Atlantic. Great Britain’s growing military strength is conditioned by her ability to maintain her sea communications, as is her capacity to receive from the United States the immense supplies ot war munitions becoming available under the Lease-Lend Act. This is clearly realized in America when- there is a rapidly-growing determination that Britain must and will win the Battle oi the Atlantic. On the issue of the struggle at sea depends the whole issue of the war. — (‘S.L'AV.)