THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES WEDNESDAY, June 19, 1940. THE CRUCIAL HOUR

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24328, 19 June 1940, Page 6

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES WEDNESDAY, June 19, 1940. THE CRUCIAL HOUR

Borne down by sheer weight of arms, France has been compelled to treat for terms with an enemy from whom she can expect no quarter. The bitterness of this compulsion will be felt scarcely less by the peoples of the other democracies than by the people of France herself. Yet no shadow of reproach for this development can attach either to the reconstituted Government of the Republic reconstituted, it would appear now, for the grim purpose of negotiating a surrender —or to the heroic defenders of French soil. Germany’s initial advantages, won in the opening stages of invasion of the Lowland countries a brief five weeks ago, have been extended with devastating speed and thoroughness, until France to-day, with her armies for the most part broken and exhausted, and her reserves of military supplies seriously depleted, faces the appalling alternative of surrender or annihilation. That is the pass to which the monstrous power of German arms, ruthlessly employed, has brought a great and liberal people. The offer to negotiate is yet awaiting consideration by Herr Hitler and his fellow-conspirator, Signor Mussolini. Marshal Petain, in his communication to Herr Hitler, asked for the exploration of means of ending hostilities, as between soldier and soldier. He must expect to receive demands, as from the conqueror to a defeated enemy. We need not delude ourselves into expecting a show of Nazi generosity or appreciation of a valiant resistance. The splenetic bitterness of Herr Hitler’s war has already left its trail of misery and despair over half of Europe. For France the Fuhrer will have no mercy in store. He sees his war of conquest, of Germany’s “vindication,” going according to plan, and' he will seek to press forward, with the Prussian heel grinding the French nation in a degradation of submission, to the larger task of subduing the hated British. That, we need not doubt, will be his programme. But our own full part in the drama has yet to be played. On English soil, as on the soil that has become part of England throughout the world, there will be no quailing before the onrush of the Nazi terror. There will be only a calm and steadfast resolve to see this thing through to the bitter end, which, for free men everywhere, will be the end of victory. It would be idle to attempt to anticipate future developments in this present world tragedy. The French spokesmen claim that what they are now proposing is not unconditional surrender, but such an end of hostilities on French soil as might be achieved with honour for the vanquished. The will to fight on can thus be accepted, even though it has to be placed, in the French case, alongside the decisive fact of capacity. Whatever may emerge from the negotiations, .we would be wise, to prepare ourselves for the disclosure of France’s total inability to continue the struggle on her own fronts. On land she has spent herself in a hopeless effort to stay the march of aggression. The questions that remain relate to the ultimate disposition of her naval and air forces, the former as yet practically unscathed and the latter still of considerable strength. We can cherish the reasonable expectation that no peace terms accepted by the French Government will have the effect of immunising her powerful fleet from future action on the Allied side, and we must continue to hope also that those serviceable units of the Air Force that remain will not contribute to the enemy’s reinforcement in the air, even if the means are not found for their permanent transference to Allied soil. Again, decision is awaited on the dramatic proposal for Anglo-French union which Mr Churchill has sent to Bordeaux. The practicability of such a proposal, comprehending as it does, between a monarchy and a republic, the merging of all functions of Government and the sharing of all privileges and responsibilities of citizenship, has to be doubted. There will be a feeling, in any case, that whereas union may have been possible, as a temporary war expedient, at an earlier stage of a war joining the two countries in a common cause, the. time has passed when it can be effectively sought. France, beaten to her knees, is in no position to drive a two-way bargain; and Herr Hitler would be less perceptive and less intransigent than we know him to be if he did not oppose with all the rigour at his command an attempt now to cement still more strongly the bonds uniting his major opponents in the bid for European domination. Division is his aim, and division he will work for with every base and inhuman resource available to him. In the meantime the stem fact of French collapse is accepted, without qualification, by the British peoples wherever they may be. Mr Churchill has expressed the unquenchable determination of our Empire, come what may, to carry this fight to the enemies of mankind until the curse of Nazi-ism is removed from the world for all time. Wordsworth had some lines that might have been written of Great Briitain in this moment of her greatest pride and greatest danger: , Thou hast great allies; Thy friends are exultations, agonies, And love, and man’s unconquerable mind.

With allies such as these, marshalled together with our material and physical resources in the miracle of effort that is to come, we may still entertain the confident hope that this war will be brought to an end in a triumph of liberation.