THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES MONDAY, June 17, 1940. THE FALL OF PARIS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24326, 17 June 1940, Page 6

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES MONDAY, June 17, 1940. THE FALL OF PARIS

Severe though the loss must be strategically, the abandonment of Paris intact into the Nazi grasp will be generally considered to be vastly preferable to the destruction of this beautiful -city which the attempt to defend it would have provoked. As an open town, Paris is reprieved from the withering fate that threatened it. Whether the German invaders will treat with respect the charge of a centre of civilisation, winch the French peoples have delivered temporarily into their hands, is a question that cannot yet be answered. Even under what Thackeray calls “ the Devil’s code of honour” prevailing in a bitter war, it may at least be hoped that her present occupants will be constrained to spare Paris the worst indignities to which a fallen city may be subjected. For the French people the ceding to a traditional enemy of their peerless capital, the centre of their cultural life, must be a sorrowful act. And the human misery that is involved in the great, tragic exodus of the civilian population, inadequately equipped, dependent upon their anxious, menaced countrymen in the south for the necessaries which sustain life, defies the imagination. But it is clear, in the incredibly stubborn and valiant resistance of the French armies before superior forces, that, in the brave words of the Premier in the hour of his country’s extreme travail, the fall of the capital need not be interpreted as portending the fall of France. Though Paris is lost, France is hot defeated. It . seems not unreasonable to suppose that, although the sledgehammer blows of the Nazis are being continued, the force of them may for a time at least diminish. The German losses in this advance must have been tremendous in both men and material. The supply problem is of such a nature in a mechanised army that, now that the Nazis have attained a supreme objective, a halt on their part may be compulsory, and every hour of relief which the Allies may obtain from the battering-ram of the German offensive can be of inestimable value. From Great Britain troops are beifig sent in large numbers to the support of the weary French. It is extremely encouraging to learn, in the almost laconic announcements reporting the departure of fresh British forces for France, that their equipment is complete, and superior in certain forms to that previously used. Though the war in the west commenced inauspiciously, even for a time it appeared disastrously, for the democracies, the hope may well be entertained that its, fortunes should change as the supremely exhausting nature of the German offensive begins to make itself felt and as, the Allied armies receive much needed fresh equipment. There can be little question, however, that the period of real crisis has now arrived. If the Allies successfully emerge from it—and the expectation that they will rests on the substantial basis of the proven capacity of their soldiers to fight against overwhelming odds—the strain must begin to tell upon the aggressor. While his material reserves are being depleted, those of the Allies are only now being steadily increased. The resources of two great empires are being thrown into the field while the immense productive power of the United States becomes more and more available as an immediate and potential source of replenishment to the Allied Powers. President Roosevelt’s reply to M. Reynaud’s appeal, in which he promises the maximum of aid in the form of munitions and aircraft, must be a source of extraordinary encouragement to the French and British peoples. Their armies have struggled gallantly in the face of grave difficulties, through a shortage of material supplies, for which the blame must fall on former Governments of their countries, and the prospect that they may be able to meet the enemy on terms that will increasingly become less unfavourable is highly cheering.