THE REAL WAR

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 60, Issue 4234, 22 January 1940, Page 6

THE REAL WAR

IT HAS~YET TG BEGIN “The real war has set to begin,” says “The Economist.” “The reason why the Allies have not taken the offensive is obvious to all but the impatient minority. We are still, in some respects, less plentifully equipped, and time is on our side. But why have the Nazis not delivered the lightning blow which they have so often 'boasted? It was held up for a time by the peace offensive. But that is now officially at an end. Why, then, do they hesitate any longer? ‘•‘The argument that Goering has forborne to give the order for a full-scale attack on England because of hjs feeling of humanity has excited derisive laughter even in Berlin. |A more probable reason is that the Nazis were caught planless by the unexpected determination of Britain and France. “To attempt a short war now by a ruthless attack might, if it failed, ensure that they were defeated in a long war by using up their material reserves. There are very difficult problems of high strategy to be solved in Berlin. Perhaps the decisions have been taken. “The activity of the Dutch and Belgian Governments, resulting in a ne»w offer of mediation, are perhaps Ito be regarded not as the last shot in the German peace offensive, but | as the opening defensive gun in a new campaign to acquire air bases | in Holland, protected from land at- |

tack ty a neutral Belgium. For this and all other desperate sorties of the beleaguered Germans we must be ready. But until the German armies cross a fresh frontier we can be well content with the policy of standing on guard on the Maginot Line. A ‘quiet war’ at thSs moment suijts our book far more than Hitler’s. “Standing on guard, however, will not always be the right policy. So long as it is successfully continued we cannot lose the iwar—but equally we cannot win it. The justification, in high strategy, for merely holding the frontiers now is that, behind the frontiers, we can be preparing that overwhelming superiority of military force which is the only certain way cf winning the war. “Far too many people are slipping into the comfortable belief that if we merely hold on, Germany will crack beneath her internal strain and surrender to our terms without a major battle ever being fought. This is possible. We know that the morale of the German people is bad, and that of some of their leaders little better. The blockade will, in time, produce acute shortages of a number of vital commodities, and it is always possible that the Nazis may be overthrown by a far more reasonable Government. “But it is not at all likely that, say, th,e Reichswehr will form a Government that would voluntarily offer to evacuate Poland and Czechoslovakia, the one a conquest of Germany, the other an area ofj the utmost strategic importance in the middle of Germany’s Lebensraum? "The blockade is, indeed, a weapon of the utmost potency. But it

will hardly win the war 'alone- If the iwar remains ‘quiet,’ German heeds of materials will be so much smaller, and the blockade correspondingly less effective. 'And though time is on otir dide for a few years, we must not forget the possibility of such an energetic development fo transport and natural resources in Russia as wfould convert a GermanRussian alliance into what it is not to-day, a means of breaking the blockade.

“The real purpose of the blockade is to serve as a fiflcrum which will give our military effort all the more leverage. It is unlikely that the blockade will lead to a crumbling of the Siegfried Line. “But if we continue an airtight blockade with a development to the utmost possible exent of our strength we shall, in 18 months’ or 30 months’ time, have an army on the Western front so greatly superior in weight of manpower and metal-power and so dominant in the air that we can launch an attack on an enfeebled Germany with the certainty of quick success.

"To plan for that is the only sure way of winning the war. And it follows that though the war could be lost on land, at sea, or in the air, it can only be won at home. ‘Tt is precisely in this respect that thqre is most ground for disquiet. Our war effort is enough to hold the Maginot Line now. It does not look like being enough to break the Siegfried Line in 1941 or 1942. To do that we must plan on a truly gigantic sclae; but there is little sign of our doing so in any direction. Are we, for example, doing enough to

mobilize our man-power? “We have there an enormous advantage if only we will use it. Great Britain requires the labour of only 660,000 persons in agriculture and export industry to provide food for 10,900.000 consumers; Germany has to use 1,400.1000 persons for- the same purpose. Are we mobilizing the extra 750,000 workers in every 10,000,000? Are we planning the production of munitions on ait adequate scale ? “The official programme of aircraft production is to turn out more than twice as many machines as were being pnodulced at the outbreak of the war. Will this be enough to overtake the German production, still less to treat the Germans’ communications, when the time comes, as they treated the Poles? The Ministry of Supply is equipped to produce as much as can be produced with the existing industrial organisation of the country. > '“ls"this eriough? The official attitude on food rationing seems to show no conception of the fact that we cannot exert our maximum effort without deliberately reducing the consumption of food, whether the food is physically available or not. We are in grave danger of doing only as much to win the war as can be done without inconvenience for dislocation. But totalitarian wad cannot be won in our spare time. “The strength of our position is, in fact, its weakness. Our strength lies in the fact that Hitler can only win by a successful attack now. Our weakness lies in the fact that, to win the war, we must attack some time. The permanent maintenance of the present status quo would be a victory for Hitler.’’