The Evening Post. WELLINGTON, MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 1944. SALLYPORT NOW VITAL WEAKNESS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 68, 18 September 1944, Page 4

The Evening Post.

WELLINGTON, MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 1944.

SALLYPORT NOW VITAL WEAKNESS

The new landing by Allied forces in Holland, in the delta region of the River Rhine, represents an extension of perimeter pressure on Germany, and an augmentation of the Allied effort to get behind the Siegfried Line at its northern end. Whether the Allied armies to the south .will be able to penetrate and break the Siegfried Line in any case—independently of whether the Line is turned from the northern end or not —is not yet clear; certainly the Allied armies to the south seem to be making excellent progress: The story of the crime against Holland is the story of an aggressor who, in American parlance, bit off more than he could chew. In 1914 this aggressor did not invade Holland; he technically observed Holland's neutrality while treating Belgian neutrality as a scrap of paper. One result was that Foch's armies in 1918 could not have pursued the Germans into Germany via Holland, as Eisenhower's armies are doing now. Another result .in 1918 was that the German Kaiser found a neutral sanctuary in Holland, which the German Fuhrer certainly would not find today. The Fuhrer bit off very much more of Europe than the Kaiser bit off, and for years this possession of European coastline from the top of Norway to the Pyrenees has paid the Fuhrer well, for the purposes of submarine and air warfare, blockaderunning, .and as a means of training big guns on Dover. But now the tide has i/urned. Holland, hitherto an offensive ■sallyport, is now a vital weakness in Germany's flank, as Denmark and Norway well may be.

All the advantages of all the interior' lines %of the German and Japanese contracting circles will not. save from defeat these two aggressors who puffed themselves out like frogs and who are now in process of deflation. The Germans are running about on land, trying to resist multiplying pressures— in vain. The Japanese in the island garrisons can no longer run about; they can only stand and wait. Goering, who thought to throttle all Europe by means of his aerial war preparation, now is forced to permit an airborne invasion, of Holland without any Luftwaffe intervention/ For centuries the Germans have coveted the Dutch mouths of the Rhine; in 1940 they seized them, yet today Goering's boasted air power, the symbol of the domination of Europe, cannot answer the challenge of the airborne invaders sent out of the little island that in 1940 won the air battle- for Britain. Field-Marshal Montgomery might well say, concerning events of June, July, August,. and September: "This is the Lord's doing; it is marvellous in our eyes." Instead of being pushed back from the French coast on June 6 leaving half a million men there, the Allies have landed and marched to Germany's gates. The French coast that seemed so far away was gained in a few hours. The Normandy pause ended .with the break-through on the right. The Seine, which seemed so far away, was soon passed. The battlefields of 1914-18 barely saw the Allied advance as it swept by. The launching sites of the flying bomb succumbed, and now Germany, smitten on Holland's Rhine, will be hard put to defend her own. When has such a march, in so short a : space of time, happened in history?

In the course of "The Great War"— the history of World War I by .the present Prime Minister of Great Britain—the statement is made that "a neutral Holland was of far more use to Germany than a hostile, a conquered, or even an allied Holland." Under utterly changed conditions of war, Germany in 1940 preferred a conquered Holland; but even war as it is practised today has, at long last, seen this choice turned against the chooser. In 1914-18 Churchill considered that the British Navy was capable of closing the Dutch mouths of the Rhine and of occupying Dutch islands, like Texel (off the Zuyder Zee) with "enormous strategic"* result. But by 1940 air power had put a spoke in that wheel; and it is precisely in | the matter of air power that Germany has made a fatal somersault. In 1940 her air power superiority was sufficient for her to initiate, in Rotterdam, that bombing of cities which was to recoil on her own head. Yet in 1944 Allied airborne forces can land in the Rhine region of Holland without seeing the Luftwaffe, This fact proclaims its own moral. Those who sought to rule by the air-sword are perishing thereby. "This is the Lord's doing; it is marvellous ..."