COMMENT and REFLECTIONS

Evening Star, Issue 23717, 26 October 1940, Page 11

COMMENT and REFLECTIONS

There can no longer he doubt that Britain’s determined resistance and shrewd counter-blows have caused a crucial amendment of the Axis plans, and that Hitler, foiled for the moment of his invasion coup and increasingly , alarmed at the inevitable protraction of the war in its present shape, is summoning all his resources of intrigue, cajolery, and intimidation to gain alliances that would enable him to siving his major campaign into a new drang nach osten, an Eastern drive through the Balkans with Syria and the oilfields of Mosul as objectives, such drive synchronising with the Italian advance upon the Suez; the two moves exemplifying the pincers tactic employed in the French campaign. A crisis very dangerous to our cause is seen developing in the apparent plot with that arch-intriguist of French politics, Laval, to secure some official sanction for French co-operation, or at any rate the cession of key points in the Mediterranean which would assist in closing the Inner Sea at its Western end, as Italian success in Egypt would close it at the Eastern end; in the HitlerFranco meeting with the object of bringing Spain into active support of the Axis; and in the despatch to Libya of Field-Marshal Keitel, the man who directed the Polish and Western campaigns, and whose presence assures a series of rapid, hammer blows in the hitherto stagnant Egypt campaign. The most vital point of concern for us is how far Hitler can persuade or compel his Vichy puppets to accord active co-operation in his design. It is not likely that Petain, for example, or Weigand would consent to actual declaration of war by France upon her former ally, nor that the French people, with the irritation of systematic oppression and suppression now superadded to a tradition of hereditary hatred for Germans, could be persuaded, let alone trusted, to fight alongside their conquerors; hut in the filth of intrigue that swirls around the puppet Government, it is quite possible that some compromise, sufficient to serve Hitler’s purpose, might be extracted and accepted by the French people, who seem buried in the indifference of despair. Such misgiving probably prompted Churchill’s address to the French nation this week, a masterpiece of persuasive oratory and invective, with its message of faith and hope to Frenchmen, and its comically mordant picture of Hitlers little Italian accomplice trotting along hopefully and hungrily, but rather wearily and very timidly at his side, hoping for a wing, a leg, or even a breast when the game is bagged. It is questionable whether many Frenchmen heard it, or hearing it, heeded its import; and the official attitude, even in unoccupied France, remains uncompromisingly hostile to Britain. Behind the scenes it is Germany always that is speaking and the French politicians and newspapers obeying.

France s instinctive hatred of the Boche is accompanied at the moment by utter impotence for revenge, and a coma of indifference that may conceivably lead to further capitulations, prejudicial to our cause. Whatever should happen, however, whatever new enemies and crises may confront Britain, she has demonstrated the toughest quality of nerve, very different from her enemy’s, whose civilian morale is reported to have been highly demoralised by our air raids; and that schooled, disciplined attitude in danger, an inheritance now proved not to have been eradicated even by these later years of drift and self-indulgence, will enable her to sustain and survive ivhatever blows the next few months may bring. Recently the American journal Time, dilating upon the coolness and confidence of the British people, said: —“ The rest of the world might wonder ivhether Adolf Hitler would parade one day soon from Trafalgar Square to Piccadilly, up. Regents Street and across to Hyde Park and, down to the gates of Buckingham Palace. But there was no question in the minds of British men and women. They boast the world’s greatest poet and the world’s greatest confidence. TVith both they said last week:

‘This England never did, nor never shall. Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror.’ ”

Nevertheless the flow of battle to the East will bring into play again Germany’s formidable land cohorts, which must be used if a Balkans thrust eventuates, and which almost certainly are reinforcing the Italians in Libya; and the disasters that overtook the Allied arms in France provide a warning against treating lightly a blitzkrieg attack by modern mobile forces, even in the desert. It- is heartening, therefore, to New. Zealanders, whose anxieties are only now beginning, to learn that there have recently been heavy reinforcements of all our arms in Egypt, and that the men are strongly positioned and full of confidence. The ‘Sydney Morning Herald’s’ military writer takes the view that even though Graziani has not been displaced from leadership, the enemy attack will be directed by the German, Keitel, and, commenting upon the possibilities, he writes: — It is possible that the admitted difficulties of desert fighting will counteract the advantages which will flow to the Italians from their superior mechanisation and air strength, and the Italians may sweep on to disaster on the scale experienced when the legions of Cambyses set out to invade the Siwa oasis 2,400 years ago. But it is equally possible that Keitel, who is accustomed to think in large strategical terms, may attempt some entirely new system of mechanised and aerial attack, linking the coast with the Siwa and Bahara routes of the interior. Reports that the Italians are already reinforcing Jarabub, the starting point for any southerly advance, are suggestive in this connection. Certainly, it would be folly to under-rate the character or strength of the threat which our forces in Egypt may soon have to meet .” As to the Balkans situation, the stage is fully set for such venture, should Hitler essay it. He is already on the Black Sea, with only Bulgaria between him and Greece and Turkey; but these show no symptom of being as facile victims as supine Rumania, and it is, as we noted before, most unlikely that Russia will suffer tamely a move that would encircle her in the south. November is likely to prove a crisis month, with possibly a complete realignment of the strategic chessboard.