WAR'S DURATION-HOW DOCTORS DIFFER

Evening Post, Volume CXXXV, Issue 2, 4 January 1943, Page 4

WAR'S DURATION-HOW DOCTORS DIFFER

-This war," says Berlin radio, "will last for a good twenty years." "This war," says Admiral Halsey, "will end in 1943 with the complete and absolute defeat of the Axis, including Japan." When doctors disagree, it would be presumptuous for a layman to arbitrate. But attention may be drawn to a very ominous factor: as the Nazi expectation of war lengthens in point of time, the Nazi goal diminishes. In other words, Hitler's time-estimate of victory swells, but his ambition contracts; and this is quite unlike the tone of "Mem Kampf," which was written altogether in the spirit of crescendo, and which has no place whatever for the diminuendo now so perceptible in the phraseology of Hitler, of Goebbels, and of all Nazi utterances. Measured by the standards of these utterances, the Hitler course is like the course of the rocket that has reached its highest point, has discharged its stars, and is returning starless to earth. First of all, Hitler's ambition was to release Germans; he did not wish to be polluted with other races. Then he found that it was no pollution to absorb Czechs. Still later, dropping the racial limitations, he blossomed forth with the New Order for Europe, framed to capture everybody on the Continent. And later again, in 1940, he reproached Providence for making him the agent for the destruction of the British Empire. At this stage the frog had blown itself up to giant proportions. It had to burst. It did. But the bursting has no place in "Mem Kampf," and throws discredit on the whole Hitler story. The New Year finds the frog itself in the position of having to admit a I considerable degree of deflation. For instance, Hitler's latest proclamation defines his objective as "a clear and definite solution safeguarding the German people and their descendants from future wars." Herein is found a return to the old plausible story of a purely German racial regrouping and renascence—the story that seized on Sudetenland as one step on the ladder to a general war. This New Year proclamation reveals Hitler a good many steps down the ladder from the point which he occupied on the

• fatal night when he invaded Russia. Stepping down a ladder backwards is difficult for a stumpy fat man, and Hitler performs the manoeuvre ungracefully. Instead of the old "I came, 1 saw, I conquered" style of address, Hitler now substitutes "I will never be conquered." This transition from the active to the passive must be a very awkward trick to perform for a fat man on a ladder. Not only has it no place whatever in "Mem Kampf," but it is also the sort of come-down that even the stupidest German must be able to detect. "Even the dullest German eyes," writes the "New York Times," "will not miss the sharp contrast between Hitler's latest proclamation and his boasts of 1941, when he promised consummation of the greatest victory in German history with a great New Order for Europe. Now he warns: that the struggle will be hard and says that Germany will never be conquered, never capitulate. What must be the state of mind of the German people, who after the assurance of a triumphant peace as good as won, are now told that the hardest tasks are still ahead?" The. gulf between the Hitler who had Europe at his feet and the Hitler who promises the Germans that he will not be licked and run away like the Kaiser is a measureless gulf. The German who cannot see it is blind indeed. - While the Red Army is proving daily that Hitler has nothing left except the U-boat, America is supplying that output of war machinery which will I help the' British output to outmatch and overcome all German war machinery, the U-boat included. For years the predatory sea war of the | Axis has imposed on British industry— and now on Anglo-American industry —the immense task of building more ships than the Axis can sink. Shipbuilding may be termed the passive defence against the war upon shipping. The more shipbuilding is called on to set off a rising sinkage rate, the more the Allies are compelled to divert to shipbuilding materials and labour that could be used in the more active forms of war effort. The British in the past, and Britain and America in the present, have not accepted and do not accept and never will accept the purely passive conception of defence against the • U-boat—shipbuilding. There is a time coming when the Anglo-American offensive at sea will strike the U-boat just as the Red Army's winter offensive has struck Hitler's so-called invincible land forces. Heralding that time of all-round offensive, the United States announces that in 1943 "the output of American merchant shipping tonnage will be doubled to ensure the delivery of supplies to American and allied forces," and that the building of naval escort and also of naval combat Vessels will be considerably increased, while the aircraft output will be doubled. This will not be good news for the fat exCaesar retreating down the ladder with his back to the blast. "There must be," writes the "New York Times," "millions of troubled German hearts as they contemplate the holocaust of German life in Russia, the growing power of the British Air Force, and the spectre of the unexpended resources of America and the New World."