WHO WINS THE WINTER WAR?

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIII, Issue 42, 19 February 1942, Page 6

WHO WINS THE WINTER WAR?

After the fall of Poland in 1939 a great lassitude fell on the French*war front. It was broken in May, 1940, by Hitler's smashing entry into a paralysed France. Prior to that, Hitler had invited the watching world to watch and see which of the belligerents "had made the best use of the intervening winter months." Hitler's boast was well justified. Germany had used that winter to complete a one hundred per cent, preparation, and the Allied armies in front of him had wasted their winter. Arid now, in 1942, another northern winter is beginning to 6 draw to a close, and once again Germany has made strenuous use of the intervening months in preparing for a spring offensive. Has Britain made equal use of those months?

An official of the British Ministry of Economic Warfare describes how Germany is now engaged in the greatest war production drive the country has ever known. These latest Nazi efforts are described as a special spurt over six months' duration. Textile industries are being closed down to provide more workers for German war production, and the newly-appointed director of rationalisation has issued a decree this month ordering the pooling of trade secrets between all factories making similar goods. There has also been a drive for foreign labour, and German newspapers forecast the conscription of workers in occupied Europe. . . .

The Nazi leaders are, in fact, conveying the impression that for Germany it is now or never.

A winter of industrial super-energy precedes a spring of dynamic force, and Hitler now faces something tougher than France. Will the Allies be readier than they were in France in May, 1940, and than they were in Malaya in December, 1941? In Britain the First Lord of the Admiralty, Mr. Alexander, makes an Alex-ander-like appeal to the whole people for an effort that will "outbuild and finally outmatch the enemy." And his appeal is to all the Allies' populations as well as to the British. In Singapore two of the Dominions have found their Dunkirk. Are they responding sufficiently? Somebody is already winning the Battle of the Winter, on which will depend the Battle of the Spring. Who is winning no one yet knows; but in the spring everyone may be enlightened. Let no one under-estimate this crisis in the race» which must be won both in factory and in field. The prize goes to the swiftest.