IF WAR COMES

Evening Star, Issue 23325, 22 July 1939, Page 28

IF WAR COMES

THE ODDS SURVEYED' “ German and Italian strategy,” writes Mr Graham Hutton in his book, ‘ Uanubian Destiny,’ “ has long been based on tho assumption (a) a general European war or a war in tho W r cst, should at all costs be avoided by a diplomacy that threatens war merely in order to secure peaceful successes; and (b) that should a general European war break out, involving Italy along with Germany, it must lie a war in which every kind of ‘ frightfulness ’ must bo employed at the outset in order to secure a rapid decision (not, as in the Great War, progressively as the war wound its way along). “ This second contingency is responsible for tho Italo-German policy of building up enormous reserves of foodstuffs, industrial raw materials, armaments, munitions, armies, etc. If these resources thrown into the scales at the outset are sufficiently largo they can be expected suddenly to overwhelm the combined resources of Britain and France by more than, let us say, the four-to-one ratio of _ superiority needed by the offensive in modern war. “ Britain and France, methodically and slowly laying out their industries and defence services to, meet a war as long as the last, may, it is thought in totalitarian States, _ receive the rudest awakening of their entire his‘“On the other hand, it should be known in. Italy and Germany that the combined British- and French navies can afford cold-bloodedly to snap their fingers over their possessions in the Far East, can afford to cut losses in Asia, even perhaps in Asia Minor, the Near East, the Suez Canal, and the Eastern Mediterranean—as long as their warships can control the Atlantic, tho Cape route to India, and tho Persian Gulf, and French and British home waters. “ As long as the British and French navies can ensure the feeding and supplying of Anglo-French peoples and industries with the of the Americas, the dominpns, Africa, and India, the vulnerability of Britain and France can bo kept down to vulnotability from tho air alone. Ino French may have to evacuate Savoy, lose Tunisia and Nice and even Corsica ; Italy and Germany together may partition Switzerland, overrun Holfand and Belgium and Denmark and North Africa, dig themselves _ in (though this would bo _ a suicide squadron’s’ job!) in Spain, gain the military, political, and economic mastery of the New Danubia as far as Turkey and the Near East—but all this would not bring what general staff officers term a ‘ decision.’ . “ The war would go on, it can be argued, until scarcely a stone might he left standing in London or the Kuhr, In Paris and Lyons, or Mdan and Munich; but as long as the 87,000.000 British and French in Europe, plus, whomsoever they can draw and transport from overseas, can hold their fortified land fronts, feed their machines and men, and hem the two Axis Powers in by naval actions within the confines of the western front, the Baltic and Black Seas, and Russia—then, however frightful and barbaric he the cost of such a war the Axis Powers could not win. . ; “They could not win because they could not impose a military decision. And all their totalitarian apparatus and warfare, heaped up more rapidly and at greater! cost than that of their less-prepared foes, might _ only serve bo exhaust them more rapidly. “It is comprehensible from tins strategic analysis that both the' German and Italian regimes should fear, more than anything else, a general European war. If ever they provoke Britain and Franco actually to fight—however hard to imagine that may at present appear—their own initial advantages so impossibly overbearing so-called peace-time diplomacy will, begin to dwindle rapidly while the initial disadvantages of the disorganised and enfeebled Anglo-French democracies will equally rapidly begin to be changed into growing advantages.; “ Of the frightful cost of civil populations, ethical and economic standards, human life, and culture on both sides, we cannot take account here. “But, viewed dispassionately as a scientific case, the strategic factor, apparently so favourable to the postMunich overlords of all Europe beyond the Rhine and Alps, does not seem so in fact.