COMMENT and REFLECTIONS

Evening Star, Issue 23527, 16 March 1940, Page 13

COMMENT and REFLECTIONS

Finland has had to come to tragically humiliating terms with superior power, terms involving territorial concessions as drastic as the original Russian demands which the Finns successfully resisted in the field for four months. With the thing accomplished it is idle to apportion blame for the lack of assistance on the large scale that alone could have saved the little nation, but it can be said that the Swedish and Norwegian Governments may live to regret their timorous attitude. They are now reduced to a lamentable position politically, a state of almost complete vassalage to Germany and Russia. As for the Allies, while militarily they may be no worse off than before the debacle, they have certainly suffered a diplomatic defeat, and sustained a “ loss of face ” that does not enhance their prestige, or encourage other neutrals to resist the aggressive blackmail of the totalitarian States. They have seen Poland trampled into the mud and Finland brought to heel, and these experiences are not likely to make them feel like translating into action the natural bias that all small neutrals have against Germany — to-day the most hated and the most feared nation on earth.

As to the effect of the capitulation upon the Allies * military situation, opinions differ widely. One school holds that the Allied Command is well rid of a puzzling military problem; another that it should have seized the chance to snatch the initiative from Germany, even to the point of declaring war on Russia, in the certitude of Swedish acceptance of Allied encroachment upon her territory and eventual participation with us if -our effort had sufficient weight to promise success. Obviously this would have created at one blow an entirely new strategic situation, as well as effecting an important extension of the blockade; for Germany is under so vital a necessity to maintain her supplies of Swedish iron ore that she must have moved at once, and have been placed in the situation of fighting on two fronts —the bugbear of the German strategist. But, of course, the Allies could not extend the war in this way, merely to gain a possible strategical advantage; that would be to condone upon the grounds of expediency the very thing the world condemned in Germany—•yin invasion of neutral territory. Loss of goodwill might more than countervail strategical advantage. Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that the Russian victory will enable Germany to bring greater pressure to hear on Sweden, and by coercion to cofnpel Scandinavia to wink at the the already gross misuse of its coastline as a lurking place for submarine pirates and an alleyway for the passage of goods. As to the intensified pressure that Sweden, and probably Rumania, will have to sustain in the close future, it is, in a way, a portent of the success of the Allies' economic warfare. It means that the stranglehold of the blockade is causing Germany a real shortage of raw materials. That is the only possible explanation of the fact that she has had. to disrupt her whole economic life by closing all factories but those producing war potential; and the complete disruption of its economic life is something that even the best-drilled nation cannot support for long, without some stimulation fas of victories) to counter its depressing community effect. The German leaders are confidently; nay vaingloriously, promising such victories; the war is to be over in six months i (vide Ribbentrop, Who incidentally got short shrift from the Holy Father in his special audience), and Britain will be seeking terms. We have heard it all many times before, this Nazi parade of pretension without performance, but we do know that the time is ripe for at least an attempt at performance, and that the enemy will very presently deliver a heavy blow somewhere, probably in the west by one of the. flanking avenues often mentioned in these notes, possibly elsewhere. We are in darkness; a hundred conflicting points confuse the issue. The money situation itself is so astronomical in proportion as to bemuse the intellect. A recent American summary sets the figure for all the warring nations at £25,000,000 a day—£9,l2s,000,000 a year. Two days ago Britain's daily war expenditure was assessed at £6,000,000, and our own little Dominion, on the annual basis given recently, is spending £600,000 a week. Repair of man wastage is another aspect. Both Germany and France are taking measures to provide as far as possible that their populations 20 years hence will not still be depleted as the result of this struggle. German measures go the length of lifting the illegitimacy ban from any child born out of wedlock during the war, conferring upon any woman hearing children the right to the married title “Frau," encouraging her soldiers to sow their seed widely; and even discussing the practice of insemination.

A queer story that may explain at last the extraordinary legend of the Mans angels of last war comes from a special correspondent on the French section of the Western Front. “ One foggy night an advanced detachment at a French post were amazed by the appearance in the sky of a figure of the Virgin Mary. It appeared again next night, and it was then found that the Germans were using a powerful projector to throw it against the mist. The French captured both the operator and his machine. This explains, according to the same correspondent, * another strange tale ’ of the war, which is that several men have seen the ghost of the Duke of Marlborough on a white horse.” '

Oswald Garrison V'llard, the New York publicist, who spent a month in Germany in October last, makes very frank revelations of his impressions in his little work ‘lnside Germany.’ His remarks on the demeanouf and spirit of the German people are very heartening to us. Thus: —

“ My trouble in Germany was to find men outside the army and official circles who were 100 per cent. Nazi.” v “ Workmen spoke out against Hitler and his government with a frankness that astounded me—and terrified me for their safety.”

“ Most of the people I met were utterly opposed to the robbing and rotting out and driving out the Jews,” “ My outstanding impression, after nearly a month in Germany, is of a people depressed and unhappy, facing the future with deep discouragement.”

“ / have travelled on trains with hundreds of troops, and I did not see a happy or cheerful face. They seem to talk very little with one another and there is not the slightest joking or horseplay.”

“/ found myself involuntarily saying again and again as I walked the streets: 'This is Russia, and not Berlin!’ The shabbiness of the clothing suggests it, the drabness of life; the high boots worn by so many women; the pale, unhealthy colour as well as the gloomy sombreness of the masses ....”