BATTLE OF BRITAIN

Evening Star, Issue 23665, 27 August 1940, Page 8

BATTLE OF BRITAIN

SIGNS OF APPROACHING ZERO HOUR ( WORLD-WIDE REPERCUSSIONS The great air battle of eight hours over the Channel gave drastic point to Mr Churchill’s warning not to relax vigilance and not to under-estimate the likelihood of an early attack on Great Britain (recently wrote Professor S. H. Stephens, in the ‘ Sydney Morning Herald’). The British Prime Minister categorically stated that an attempted invasion was a danger which had by no means passed, and that any tendency to discount its possibility would be a form of passive treason playing into the enemy’s hands. With a sublime disregard for horographical exactitude, the organ of the Black Guards, the ‘ Schwarze Korps,’ has. gloated that the eleventh and indeed the twelfth hours had already passed. The British have preferred to say that zero hour was undoubtedly approaching and that Italian activity in Africa probably heralds the wider attack on England itself. There is much evidence to support this belief. All over the Germanoccupied areas of the Continent there are obvious signs of mustering troops, supplies, and ships for the invasion of Great Britain. The temporary abatement of air raids fitted into the picture, indicating that Germany was mustering her strength for attacks on an unprecedented and crushing scale. The British knew that they could not expect an indefinite prolongation of the comparative quiescence of the last month, when only 258 deaths occurred in the British Isles as a result of air raids, and when British shipping losses increased by no more than a third, despite the concentration of effort on the Channel. OMINOUS SIGNS. Many ominous signs served to prove that Germany was planning a comprehensive simultaneous attack on Britain and on all British interests abroad with as great a strength as possible. When the Italian columns moved out from Kara and Diredawa and broke through the slight defences of British Somaliland, it was clear what Hitler had in mind. If Zeila was to be the commencement of the attack on Britain, then Berbera, Egypt, Gibraltar, and England were all parts of the common sequence of attack. Somaliland itself is a miserable desert pawn in a much larger game, and it seems reasonable to suppose that in using it the Axis leaders hoped that Britain would bo tempted to follow >t up with other gambits which would take troops and planes away from regions which really counted, "in this they have failed, for the Churchill Government realises that its main problem at the moment is to hold Great Britain itself and to keep open the vital seaways. Every local attack will thus be considered in its relationship to the central problem and in that light alone. Mussolini moy get the barren sands and rocky hills up to and perhaps including Berbera, but he will not distract attention from the real strategic core in so doing. The threat to Egypt is much, more important, and all the evidence points - to immediate action by the Italian forces which are massing in the ravines near the Barda frontier. The fact that Mussolini in his speech declaring war specifically promised not to invade Egypt is now looked upon as possessing academic interest alone, and there seems no doubt that Italy will use her superiority in land forces, mechanised equipment, and aeroplanes ’to make a dash across northern Egypt despite the adverse naval position in the eastern Mediterranean. RUMANIA’S DILEMMA. Such a threat to the very nerve centre of British influence at a point where three continents meet would have the additional advantage of possibly swaying Turkey away from Britain and of thus militating against the formation of an Allied front in the Balkans. Germany is already wreaking her will on the unhappy Rumanians. The (Rumanian Premier has just announced that Germany has “ ordered ” a partition of his State and that “ any delay will be dangerous ” in making territorial concessions both to Hungary and Bulgaria. The Rumanian Minister to Rome, an admitted authority on minority questions, went to Budapest with the avowed intention of performing a surgical operation upon the swollen body of Rumania. With the present state of military inefficiency, diplomatic isolation, and weak morale within the country, Bucharest has no alterantive than to submit. This is especially the case if the Allied forces in the Middle East are compelled, by the risk of an Italian massed attack, to keep their eyes fixed on Egypt and the Levantine coast. German colonial threats further afield, as at Dakar, in West Africa, work in the same direction. As part of the same scheme of paralysing British resistance by procuring a series of conflicting claims on her resources, Germany has .also tried to stir up trouble in the Far East, through the instrumentality of a wellorganised Nazi cell in Japan itself. At the beginning of the week it seemed as if their trouble-making efforts had a good chance of success, for various Britons were arrested in Japan on charges of espionage, while some Japanese nationals were arrested in England on a quite distinct charge of contravening the National Security regulations. Fortunately a combination of moderate councils in Tokio and the refusal of Britain to be intimidated by Japanese extremists has resulted in a marked slackening of tension in the last few days. At the very least, a breathing space is given to check the rapid rate of deterioration of the previous week and to allow incidents to be reduced to their proper proportions. At present, Britain still has eight Japanese under arrest, while Japan holds 11 British nationals on the espionage charge. The Japanese are detaining a British vessel at Canton, while Britain is preventing two Japanese ships from entering Hongkong harbour. ENIGMA OF INDO-CHINA. Under Far Eastern conditions, it is often difficult to distinguish fact from fiction, and still more to assess at their proper value statements of various minority representatives. A typical example of this confusion is to be found in French Indo-China at the moment. Earlier in the week it seemed as if a Japanese challenge to those regions was imminent, and it was reported that large Japanese naval forces wore steaming south and that Tokio had demanded naval and military bases there. Both of these reports have been denied, and a Shanghai message now states that the Japanese Foreign Minister has assured the American Ambassador that Japan has no intention of establishing bases in Tonkin.

Other reports say that the Chinese eeneralissimo is massing troops on the

border to aid the small French garrisons in Indo-China, while from Europe comes news that the Vichy Government in France is prepared to take a firm stand. The only clear facts are that Japan shows no signs of departing from her New Order policy, but that she has taken no open measures against the French and Dutch possessions in the Far East. As these clouds were rolling up in the East and as the direct threat of Axis attack developed in Europe, the Americas have more than ever felt themselves to be at the centre of the approaching cyclone rather than comfortably out of its track. Their feeling of growing insecurity has found expression in diametrically opposed tendencies. The flyer, Lindbergh, who tried to solve anatomical problems by making artificial hearts, now with an equal aptitude wants to resolve the international! dilemma by coming to terms with Hitlerism, while quite illogically advocating a vast rearmament programme at the same time. The American Ambassador to Belgium, whose eyes wore unable to see any trace of German atrocities in the Low Countries, wants to ship American food to Europe, failing to perceive that the responsibility for any starvation in Europe rests with Hitler alone, and overlooking the fact that to send food to Hitler would be just as helpful to Germany as sending guns and planes. AMERICAN REARMAMENT. More responsible spokesmen in the United States have taken a totally different line. The defence programme has aimed at an increase of ordnance production by two-thirds, and the Senate has approved the Bill authorising the President to mobilise the National Guard. General Pershing, with Secretary ' Knox’s general approval, has strongly favoured the transfer to Britain of 50 Great War American destroyers, on the ground that such an acquisition of naval strength might make all the difference between victory and defeat and might spare America from the necessity of fighting Nazidom alone at some later date. With German activities at Dakar, and with the Spanish Falangists openly speaking of the imminence of Spain’s entry into the war on the side of the enemy. America is perceiving how an aggressive Nazidom is building up jumping-off places facing the American continent. Public opinion is increasingly realising that Britain is America’s first line of defence, and that 50 obsolescent destroyers now will be more useful than a whole battle fleet a couple of years hence. It is the next few weeks that count, and, with the acceleration of American plane production limited by the inexorable time factor, help in destroyers is America’s most effective immediate contribution to the struggle for civilisation. America is safe only if “ the Descent upon England ” fails, and no legal niceties can got away from that grim reality.