Taking a Long View of the War

New Zealand Herald, Volume 78, Issue 24141, 6 December 1941, Page 15

Taking a Long View of the War

B y KOTARE

1" R. CHURCHILL, with his \/| unerring instinct for the J-'-*- right word, in one of those trumpet speeches that so splendidly rallied the spirit of Britain in its darkest hours, quoted Arthur Hugh Clough's "Say Not the Struggle Nought Availeth.",Clough's enemies were "wholly of the The lions of his arena were the doubts and hesitancies of a super-sensitive spirit confronting the rush of. new ideas liberated by Darwin an 4 the modern scientific age, and seeing one cherished belief after another weaken and fade under the onslaught. But in every.field "man is a sodger and life is a faught," and what sustains him j n a spiritual battle will put iron into, his blood in the face of more material foes: if indeed every conflict is not in the last issue spiritual. "For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness." I , dough imagines himself standing on a beach and watching the turn of the tide. The waters seem to be making no headway. From one minute to another he cannot say the tide is rising. Often there seems a definite regression. For while the tired waves, vainly breaking, Seem here no painful inch to gain, FBr back, through creeks and inlets making, Comes silent, flooding in, tho main. The Flowing Tide We"have lived again Clough's experiences during the incess. t ebb and flow of the fortunes of the immense Battle of Libya. We knew 'the tide was making, ancl .-in the end would march majestically, irresistibly, forward. But we could understand that only as we lifted our eyes from the confused details at our feet and saw every part in relation to the wide sweep of the whole. And if that is true of one great battle ifc is equally true of the war itself. Libya is a microcosm of the whole. Hope and confidence lie in the wider, longer view. And it is the wider, longer view that fills our hearts with the calm assurance of victory, no matter how long and weary the road to it. The victory in this war, as in all wars, will rest with the nations that can endure the longest. The power of endurance-depends on* both - material

and spiritual factors. On the one hand there are the resources in manpower and munitions and all the instruments of war, and the ability to organise them for the most effective service; on the other, the national character expressing itself in the fighting quality of the soldiers and sailors and airmen, and the morale of the civilian, population. It is more easy to estimate relative strength on the material than on the spiritual side. On the Sea The most significant fact is that while we began with our potential resources practically untapped in many wide and all-important fields, we have been rising steadily to a climax of effort. On the other hand, the Germans began with their power at its maximum, and by every apparent rule of the game should have found the whole world as easy a prey as they found France. We have been all the time on the rising tide, while Germany, in spite of her spectacular victories and enslavement of other nations to her service, must, through the terrible wastage of modern war, be already past her peak. All along we havo had the mastery of the sea, and every German attempt to challenge that has in the end been met and conquered. In most other great

wars the mastery of the sea has been decisive. It may well be so in this war. Blockade is a cumbersome weapon but it is extraordinarily effective. It operates slowly and its effects are cumulative. Even an ingenious people like the Germans cannot go on for ever with makeshifts. The blockade not only has disastrous effects on the material equipment for war, but in the end it has a disintegrating effect on. civilian morale. An iron Prussian discipline can achieve an almost miracu-lous-homogeneity in a population, which may last a long time; but it produces, too, a brittleness that in the end cracks under relentless pressure. The work our navy is doing in keeping the sealancs open for food supplies and the passage of men and munitions has complement in the progressive weakening of the will to resist in the final rampart of German power, the heart of the German people. We must not build too much on this, and it can operate at its highest intensity only while our war effort in all other fields is.at its maximum. But we are justified in assuming that in the end the blockade will do its work no less effectively than it did slowly but surely in the last war.

In the air, starting with an immeasurable inferiority in everything but the quality of our airmen and the type of machine British skill had developed, we have now a parity that is steadily passing into superiority. The Germans trusted as much to their preponderance in the> air as to the supremacy of

the magnificent war-machine they had forged in their army. In the light against Britain they put more reliance on their air supremacy than on anj other factor in their amazing war preparations. They would never have challenged Britain if Goermg had not been absolutely certain on that point. i\ow the thing they had most cause to dread has happened. The command of the air is passing as surely to. our side as tho command of the sea has always been ours. In the Field Only in one field is Germany still the greatest fighting power on earth. Her armies aro still unrivalled in numbers and training and equipment. But the wastage of the ltussian campaign, which was expected to be another walk-over like the French drive, must be enormous. All that; vast accumulation ot men and material that has been hurling itself so desperately against the heroic armies of Russia was intended to finish things with us. F>v.en the German war-machine must have been seriously affected by the shattering blows Russian valour and skill have inflicted upon it. The Germans can always raise more men, as Napoleon was always able to do. "Take what you want, says God; but pay for it." That Spanish proverb is significant here. The Germans have taken a "big slice of Russia; they may even take more. But they have had to pay a price for it that is certain to have a decisive effect upon the ultimate issue of the war.