DICTATORS’ BLUFF CALLED

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24326, 17 June 1940, Page 11

DICTATORS’ BLUFF CALLED

The customary interpretation of the conflicts with which this civilised world entered the decade of 1940 is this: Wars show that the dictators mean business. That writes the American journalist, Mr Charles E. Gratke, is precisely what the strong men would have us believe. Because they fight, they pretend that they have succeeded in' their boasts. ..But in Fin land, on the Western Front v and m China, the wars have been the result of miscalculation. Neither Stalin, nor Hitler, nor the ruling clique in Japan, expected to become so deeply embroiled. They believed that their objectives could be obtained by threat, plus a bomb or two, if need be. None of them, would have minded a short campaign. That would have been only a military phase of the bluffing. But in the West, in the North, and m the Far East, the dictators over-reached themselves. The difficult conflicts which they encountered were not on the Berlin-Moscow-Tokio calendars. but once too often.