Evening Post MONDAY, JUNE 28, 1943. IS "THE GREAT HOUR" HAND?

Evening Post, Volume CXXXV, Issue 151, 28 June 1943, Page 4

Evening Post MONDAY, JUNE 28, 1943. IS "THE GREAT HOUR" HAND?

Not as a postulate, but as a possibility, and perhaps even as a probability, Field-Marshal Smuts holds out the prospect in Europe of "some of the heaviest fighting of the whole war." In'other words, the Allies must expect such heavy fighting on the Continentwhile still hoping that it will be less heavy than indications suggest. What is such fervent hope based on? The hope" of reducing the fighting task of | Allied armies on the soil of Europe is j based on (1) the continued ascendancy j of anti-submarine measures over the j U-boat, and the continued increase of available Allied shipping; (2) the continued ascendancy of Allied air power and (most important) the degree to which it can, by "softening" and other processes, reduce the fighting ordeal of Allied armies as they invade and advance .through Europe; (3) the degree to which Germany's suffering from the air blitz and the blockade! will break down the morale (already deteriorating) of the German people as, a whole. The military hazard touched on in No. 2, and' the moral hazard covered in No. 3, are both unknovVn factors, because they pivot primarily on the degree to which air power can impede armies and demoralise peoples —and air power's capacity in that direction is itself an unknown factor As the war goes on, it teaches. Until air power teaches otherwise, the Allies must assume, as Smuts assumes, that "some of the heaviest fighting of the whole war" is about to occur in Europe. Whether it will begin in the Balkans, or in Sicily, or in some other Mediterranean island, or on the Italian mainland, or somewhere else, no one knows. But we know that Mr. Stalin is saying that "victory will come the'-sooner.we strike our joint blows against the enemy from the east and west," while, Mr. Roosevelt is declaring, reciprocally, that "his desire for a second front is as stro'rxg as the desire of the Russian people," Reading these utterances of the constitutional head of the United States and of the all-power-ful ruler of Russia, one must agree with ; Smuts that "the great hour is approaching. There is a hush of expectancy in men's hearts. Immense issues are at stake." For this great struggle "the Allies are marshalling all their- man-power and material resources." They are moving their mobile forces hither and thither round the perimeter of the Axis European circle. The most vulnerable points on that perimeter may not be the most vital to the Axis; therefore, the first Allied move may not produce the deadliest fighting—or it may. It is policy to maintain the enemy's doubt, and to dictate dispersal of his forces. For the same reason, the Allied peoples equally cannot predict "the great hour." The Russian - Government, and the Anglo-American ; bloc of Governments, are equal partners in a war-winning contract. It is of immediate importance that the work of war-winning should be divided evenly between them. That implies the "joint blows against the enemy from east and west" of which Stalin speaks; and those joint blows mean, for Britain and America, "some of the heaviest land fighting of the whole war" unless the Allies receive a very high, life-saving, military dividend from their air power and anti-submarine measures, plus perhaps a moral dividend through collapse of the German population. As has been said already in these columns, Germany's moral collapse must be treated as a contingent asset that may not become quickly available; but hopes under this head have brightened since Lieut-General Freyberg described how a great German army, including crack divisions, "chucked it in" in Tunisia. Next in importance to equal cooperation with Russia in war-winning (at whatever cost) is equal co-opera-tion, with Russia in winning the peace. It will be noted that the special United States mi^sioner to Russia, Mr. Joseph Davies, told a New York audience that neither war-winning nor peacewinning was possible without Russian co-operation. "There could be no final victory without the Soviet and no post-war peace could be effective without Russia." • •