CALAIS FALLS, DOVER REJOICES

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 80, 2 October 1944, Page 4

CALAIS FALLS, DOVER REJOICES

The port and town of Calais, "the nearest point to England" that the Germans have ever occupied in this century, has surrendered to Canadian forces. The surrender seems to have developed from bottom to top rather than from top to bottom, because the Nazi commander stuck like glue to ■Hitler's no-surrender edict, and he refused to sanction orders to give in until his men began to give themselves orders, having no very strong desire to spill their own blood for the mere satisfaction.of winning oak leaves for, their obstinate chief. The advantages derived by Hitler and the Nazis from the prolonged defence of Calais include a moral advertisement for Nazism, somewhat, discounted by the fact that loyalty to Hitler's order was much more pronounced in the commander than in the rank and'file; also, they military advantage of' denying the. Allies the useof the port of Calais for as-Jong a period as armed resistance and demolitions -render possible;'1 and the military-moral advantages attaching to the fact that the big guns firing across the Channel towards Dover fired till almost the last moment, before handing on to the flying bomb their task of battering, the south of England, spitefully if not strategically. Dover people i demonstrated in the streets their joy at the fact that the cross-Channel German guns will be heard no more,' even if the flying bomb continues to live up to tlje motto of Hitler and the Calais commander—"fight to the last ditch."

, The Calais prisoners are expected to .number from 4000 to 8000. Their .commander offers them no testimonial, considering that, although the gunners ibehaved well, many of his other men ( let him down. His first reply to sugjgestions of surrender is said to have [been: "Hitler has ordered us to stand ifirm"—a rather verbose variant' of "Tojo say no." The placing of England beyond the range of German big guns is certainly an event in the war which no German -camouflage can gloss over, but the whole question of the military future of. what'may be called the delivery of explosive otherwise than by .big gun stands open. So long as other methods of dropping explosive on an enemy continue to outrange the gun method as applied in Calais, so long will the. protection provided by waterways be under challenge. It has been shown that twenty-odd miles of the English Channel is no obstacle to either the big'gun-or its newer rivals; but will the day come when even a thousand miles .of ocean may be crossed heavy packages of explosive, approximately if not accurately aimed? This is a staggering question which many people expect to see casting a shadow across a future war, and which Hitler would like to pose as ?_ £yjiamic question in the" present to* But every "scientific" step. tha'. Is taken towards making war synonymous with suicide will surely spur mankind along the difficult road of war's abolition.

As an example of'what the delivery of explosive by aeroplane could do more than two years ago, it is announced that on the night of April 25 and April 26, 1942, German air raids on vßath inflicted 1272 casualties, including 400 deaths, and destroyed or damaged .19,000 premises., When the Germans see fit to disclose what one night's raid has done to German life and property" since the Luftwaffe became, defender instead of attacker, still more remarkable figures may come to-:\- light, and the mathematical approach to a practical demonstration that "war is hell" may- startle the world" If a" moral improvement of mankind's attitude' towards war can be approached along any mathematical, route, then the mathematician who has a moral to .preach should find useful figures in that branch of the World War which constitutes, in effect, war against civilians. Whatever may lap the result of a comparison, on ittie soldier ' front, of casualties.,in World War I and in World War 11, it seems.. ,to be beyond doubt civilian sufferings in the present conflict will present,the war abolitionists with moral ammunition.' in excess of any that has existed before. Either .the world must build peae'e or unbuild civilisation, in which case proud, closely-packed cities might be the first to go.