European Front

ON THE WORLD TODAY

THE present assaults on the German-dominated Continent are but the first of a series. More are coming. By mid-July, blows may be raining on the Axis along an almost continuous battle line, looping Hitler’s Fortress from the North Sea through the Mediterranean to the Gulf of Finland.

Progress in and from the Cherbourg peninsula will depend on the extent to which the German High Command will commit their mobile reserves to meet the challenge General Eisenhower has thrown at them in Normandy.

The Nazis, by a flurry of false alarms and nervous maneuvers, indicate their vulnerable spots. They have to reckon on the possibility of an attack over the Aegean on Greece, or over the Adriatic from Italy on the Western Balkans, or on the Ligurian coast, or on the southern shore of France. In view of the fact that the combat forces available to the United Nations in the Mediterranean number close to 1,000,000 men, and that a complete, self-contained system of transport and supply operates there under General Sir Henry Maitland Wilson, these German worries are reasonable. So is German alarm about the vulnerability of the west coast of Europe. The spectacular smash delivered by General Eisenhower in Normandy proves that the much vaunted Atlantic Wall is less formidable than its architects supposed.

As summer opens, this three-sided battle forces the German staff on the horns of a dilemma. Germany’s worst fears center on the eastern front, where eight Russian armies — totaling more than 4,000,000 combat troops — press like a tidal wave against the Baltic States, South-central Poland, the Carpathians, and the Rumanian gate to the lower Danube. Yet there can be no concentration against this danger while Allied pressure in Western Europe increases.

The amazing performance of Allied air power makes the outlook still darker for the Germans. Under Air Chief Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory the Allied Expeditionary Air Force, the most gigantic instrument ever devised for aerial warfare, is revealing a strength, a flexibility, and a precision that startle not the Nazis alone, but the whole Allied world.

The army in the skies

Most ominous for the Germans during the coming weeks is the revelation of Allied strength in air-borne troop carriers. The lessons learned in Crete three years ago have been improved upon by the Allied air command beyond Hitler’s worst forebodings. Aerial trains of transports and gliders, nine planes abreast in a column 200 miles long, pour not a few divisions, but an army, out of the skies before and behind his lines. What will happen when General Eisenhower begins to exploit airfields captured on the Continent itself?

The lessons learned by the Allied air command in North Africa, Sicily, and Italy are being applied with a vengeance in France. The combination of tactical and strategic air power is proving disastrous to the Nazis’ rail and highway system in France, as it did in Italy. General Brereton’s experience in commanding the First Tactical Air Force in the Mediterranean, and the system perfected in General Alexander’s power drive through Rome to Northern Italy, explain what is happening in the air war in France.

Contrary to common belief, the densities of the rail lines in France and in Italy are almost identical. In France there are 7.7 kilometers of railway per 100 square kilometers of territory; in Italy there are 7.1. Only in Belgium and Denmark does the ratio jump steeply — 12.1 in the latter, 33.6 in the former. The chief dependence of the Wehrmacht in France is upon roads. Hence the unending foray of the RAF and the American Air Force from Britain against highways and bridges.

In Italy as well as in France, the Germans possess an advantage in the range of their heavier guns, especially during bad weather when the punch of Allied bombers is blunted. But neither in Italy nor in France have the Nazis found means of countering Allied reconnaissance, tactical, or strategic bombing. The overall advantage they enjoy in the range of their guns vanishes in clear weather. It is offset by air power, by the precision of fire of the American 105’s and 155’s, which German artillery cannot match, and by a rapidity of fire which the German prisoners discuss with amazement. The query of one of these in Italy, whether American heavy guns are not “belt-fed,” is evidence enough.

Unless the German High Command can dispatch immediate and strong reinforcements to the rescue, the prospect will grow steadily darker for the Nazis in Italy. But where are such supplements to be found? From France, where the Wehrmacht already faces an opponent possessing superior reserves, equipment, and something closely akin to air supremacy? From the East, where nearly two thirds of the entire strength of the German armies will not suffice to halt the Russian avalanche? Removal of but two or three German divisions from the upper Adriatic, in a bootless attempt to stave off debacle in Central Italy, has unbalanced the Nazi program throughout the Western Balkans by increasing the relative strength of Marshal Tito’s Partisans.

The brass tacks of peace

While the armies press forward, the statesmen at home are getting down to brass tacks. In a speech which came down hard on the thumbs of many idealists, Prime Minister Churchill hammered home his war aims and his intimations of peace.

Secretary Hull immediately countered with an invitation to Great Britain, Russia, and China (Mr. Churchill ignored China) to discuss the organization of peace — and he felt it necessary to reaffirm the principles governing our American policy. The Dutch spoke up for the smaller allies. The Russian press saw red as it tried to swallow Mr. Churchill’s apologia for British relations with Franco.

Differences among the Allies are inevitable as peace approaches. The nature of the British Empire and Commonwealth, the structure of the U.S.S.R., the potential of China which is emerging, the unique strength of the United States in the Western Hemisphere — these are the ponderables which must somehow be reconciled as the Grand Alliance moves into peace. Reconciliation of differences is not impossible, but it is certainly one of the most formidable tasks of our century. The lessons learned from the League of Nations, the ideals and the impracticalities of the Wilsonian principles, will be useful.

Mr. Churchill is a champion of Britain in the tradition of Pitt and Disraeli. He is interested in strengthening the imperial structure, preserving its strategic position, and rehabilitating its trade, more than with the march of ideas outside its limits. For him the war has “become less ideological as it has progressed.” He wants only “to beat the enemy and then, in a happy and serene peace, let the best expression be given the will of the people.”

The British war leader’s outline of his government’s current policy implies a revival of “spheres of influence” — another familiar adjunct of empire. Russia is to receive a free hand in Eastern Europe; Britain is to consolidate her position in the Mediterranean. Between these broad spheres a political “void” opens, occupied physically not only by the Germans and their satellites (who are to be dealt with rigorously) but by some 200,000,000 other Europeans in a dozen nations. What of them? How shall this void be divided? First, by a precarious balance of power; eventually by a war? Here is a very hard knot for diplomacy to untie.

For better dictators

Mr. Churchill foresees a post-war triumvirate of Russia, Great Britain, and the United States, welded into a world-controlling Council. The exclusive nature of this proposed organism is underlined by calling it also a world Executive and by suggesting that France is earning “fourth place in the Grand Alliance.”

Its basis, he says bluntly, is to be armed force. He does not specify its responsibility to other nations or to any official body including them. There is to be an Assembly, about whose functions he is vague.

How does such an Executive differ from a dictatorship? How would the other three quarters of the human race greet it? How does it square with the pledges given at Moscow? At Teheran? With the provisions of the Atlantic Charter?

Mr. Hull speaks up

Mr. Hull’s significant statement of June 2 clearly counters Mr. Churchill’s point of view. It reaffirms the position of the United States, which “has always emphasized the all-inclusive nature of the world situation and our disposition and purpose to see that all the nations, especially the small nations, are kept on a position of equality with all others.”

History would seem to stand with Mr. Hull. Great alliances for war tend to break up when the bonds of common fear which create them slacken in victory. What reason is there for supposing that tugs of national interest — several of which are evident in Mr. Churchill’s policy — would leave an alliance of the Big Three, or the Big Four, intact for long in the world of Mr. Churchill’s tentative sketch? To assume that such divisive forces do not exist is to ignore a world in revolution.

The Franco muddle

The British Prime Minister’s strange eulogy of Francisco Franco’s Spanish regime stems from his anxiety over the British Empire’s strategic position in the Mediterranean and from his concern about the recovery and expansion of Britain’s trade.

Spain dominates the western end of the Mediterranean, where Britain keeps the gate at Gibraltar. Britain holds the key to the eastern outlet at Suez. Her remiss ally, Turkey, sprawls over the highway to the Black Sea, at the northeastern corner. Here is the explanation of Mr. Churchill’s interest in the future of Greece, Italy, and Spain. Together with the Yugoslavs, these nations dominate the three strategic peninsulas jutting into the vitals of the main British communications system.

In keeping with these visible facts, Mr. Churchill advances again a policy toward France Spain he has held throughout the war. The immobility which Franco is compelled to adopt by his own precarious position in a country prostrated by civil war, by Spain’s financial straits, by his inability to implement the many verbose threats he has uttered against all parliamentary regimes — the British and American in particular — Mr. Churchill interprets as an indication of forbearance, of nostalgic affection dating from the campaigns of Wellington.

Forgotten is the fact that this dictator’s rise was hatched by Mussolini and abetted by Hitler. Ignored is the military assistance given by Franco to Germany in the present war, against Britain’s ally, Russia. Forgiven are the activities of German agents connived at by Franco (and only this month ended because of direct pressure from London and Washington); the bombs placed in British ships a few months ago; the attacks on British consulates by Falangist hoodlums; the aid given by Franco’s shore stations to German U-boats; the use of the Balearic Isles by the Luftwaffe during the worst period of the war in the Mediterranean. None of these matters.

So Mr. Churchill arrives at the discovery that there are two kinds of fascism. One is dangerous; the other can be tolerated.

The British press and public entertain no such delusion. Neither does Mr. Hull, who has corrected his earlier easy way with the Spanish dictator. “Stability and order do not mean, and cannot mean, reaction,” he declared on April 14, defining the policy of the United States. And again: “We have moved from careless tolerance of evil institutions to the conviction that free governments and Nazi and fascist governments cannot exist together.” To point up this divergence of views between Washington and London on the subject of fascism, Mr. Hull took an oblique wallop at Spanish activities in Latin America. He reminded the nations on that continent that the United States aided them in achieving their freedom from Spanish tyranny and in fortifying their security against its return.

We isolate de Gaulle

Spain illustrates Mr. Churchill’s inattention to the social and political imperatives of a stable peace. France symbolizes Washington’s blindness to equally momentous political facts. The feud carried on by American diplomacy against the regime at Algiers is already complicating the difficult tasks imposed upon General Eisenhower.

The “legitimacy” or “legality” of the Provisional Government at Algiers is questioned. That was what President Roosevelt meant, a few months ago, when he declared that “there is no France.” By this theory, France does not legally exist until her people have spoken at the ballot box at home. To impose upon them a provisional government, such as the one at Algiers, would be to violate French sovereignty.

This thesis does not bear scrutiny. The French Provisional Government governs the second-largest empire on earth. It is constituted not only from all parts of that Empire: all groups in the Army of the Interior, in France, have representatives on it. Why are not these facts admitted in their proper force?

As for Washington’s inability to violate “legitimacy,” recognition by the United States of the Czech government in exile (which is justified by obvious common sense) shows that, in this instance, Washington is quite willing to give diplomatic status to a government admittedly without any “legitimate” foundation whatever. Have we one policy for the Czechs and another for the French? If so, what becomes of “legitimacy”?

Which is wiser: to force General Eisenhower to deal with bits and pieces of France as military expediency may dictate — thereby promoting in France itself the botch of North Africa — or to hand over French tasks to responsibly organized French control? We are babes in the European political jungle, and it is later than Washington thinks. Let us hope that speedy improvement will follow a meeting between General de Gaulle and President Roosevelt.