MR CHURCHILL’S REVIEW.

Evening Star, Issue 23727, 7 November 1940, Page 8

MR CHURCHILL’S REVIEW.

Mr CifunciJiLL’a speech, reviewing the latest progress of the war, is one to make the enemies of England, hearing it, feel sick. Not without cause did the pathetic Vichy Government, obedient to its masters’ commands, two days before its deliverance issue a regulation prohibiting its betrayed subjects, who will yet be free men again, from listening in public .places to tho British wireless. One can imagine that that cold feeling in the pit of. tho stomach which was the first sensation of British civilians hearing the air raid sirens till familiarity made it less frequent has become hr these last few weeks well known to Axis leaders pondering the course and prospects of their war. It was an American commentator who noted, after'the first year of hostilities, that the year ended with a continent being held at bay by an island. “ Until two short months ago tho opposite was the case. Tho British Isles wore in tho utmost peril, at bay before the Continental avalanche of German motorised might. Britain now holds Nazi Germany and its ally, Fascist Italy, at bay, at least as much as it is itself hard-pressed. . . . Britain now has taken the offensive in two out of three of war—in the air and on the sea.” There are perils still to encounter —Mr Churchill did not treat them lightly for ono moment—but we can measure them more surely, with more knowledge of strength equal to the time than when his earlier speeches were made The last phase of tho Nazis* air offensive, which is now abated, has revealed itself as a mere murder campaign, a series of assaults by armed forces on civilians with tho object of breaking their nerve, which has not been accomplished. There will be no attempt at invasion during the winter, and after the winter, with her resources augmented by her own efforts and the aid of all tho dominions and America, Britain will have new strength, and be preparing for offensives on land, as well as in tho air and on the sea, herself. Mr Churchill was justified in his claim that the plain fact that an invasion was not attempted when tho enemy had so much to gain by it and had made such prodigious preparations “ alone constitutes one of the historic victories of the British Isles.”

The U-boat is still a formidable assailant. The recent sinkings of vessels in the Atlantic approaches, the Prime Minister did not hesitate to say, were more serious than the air raids. Losses were light for the last week reported, extraordinarily heavy for the week before it, and they may be heavy again, though winter makes its own disadvantages for the submarines. The tota>*of shipping tonnage has not been appreciably diminished, but more shipping is required in the conditions of lengthened and indirect voyages. The U-boats would bo more easily dealt with if Britain could use Ireland’s southern and western harbours for destroyer bases, but Eire’s neutrality can only bo ended, apparently, in one of two ways —by a German attack on her coast or Irish magnanimity. In the Near East the Greeks are fighting, so far as can bo gathered, much more cheerfully than the Italians, and it is worth remembering that it ivas in. the Near East that Napoleon “ missed his destiny ” before Moscow succeeded Spain. The war is not nearly won yet, but won it will be if every portion of the Empire, putting aside all else, gives its full strength to the effort—to armed service, to production, and war savings as the “little body with a mighty heart,” Great Britain, has clone and is doing. And to lose the war would be the disaster of the ages—a disaster lor the human, not merely the British, race.