HomeMy WebLinkAboutZurich Herald, 1942-04-09, Page 6OICE
O E T H. R.
PRESS
THE OFFENSIVE WINS
'When Hannibal's armies were
at the very gates of Rome the
Romans sent an expeditionary
• forco against his homeland of
Carthage. And Route won the
war. When the infidel Turk
threatened all Christendom, the
West did not we:t for hint to come
and c+.int;r:er. The ecus °leis ad-
vanced to the Golden Hurn, de-
heated the Turk and threw hien
out of Europe. At the first bat-
tle of the Marne Foch despatched
to the indecisive Joffre this mes-
saget "My right is exposed, my
- left is heavily attacked, my cen-
tre is unable to hold its position.
I cannot redistribute niy forces.
The situation is excellent. I shall
attack."
—Kitchonet Record.
— 0—
HE'S ONLY 1-1UMAN
To no one more than to Gen.
Douglas frac Arthur himself must
many of these references to him
seers a bit overdone. He is a
good soldier, a capable leader
who has (lone a good job in the
Philippines, and, we hope, will
lead the United Nations forces in
the Pacific to victory. But he's
only human; he can't perform
miracles. And putting him forth
as a superman isn't fair to him
or to tile cause.
—St. Thomas Times -Journal.
_e.—.
WI -'-Y QUIBBLE?
C.I.O. protests to the National
War La'.or Board that wage rates
set ba shipyard workers at King-
ston. Collingwood and Midland
are lover than those in effect at
Toronto and Port Arthur. And,
by the same token, a bit better
than those at Plymouth, where
whole night shifts have been rub-
bed out while putting in 16 hours
. without overtime.
—Windsor Star.
—0 ---
PROPAGANDA
"The dark meat of a chicken
contains about twice as much
vitamin B as the light meat."
Slick bit of propaganda by father,
who doesn't go for vitamins him-
self, to make the rest of the fa-
mily take a leg and lay off the
breast.
—Ottawa Citizen.
—o—
WIFE TORTURE
Get appointed an. air warden,
and blow in at 3 a.m. with the
announcement, "Sorry, dear —
that's military information."
—Winnipeg Tribune.
—o—
AND SHIRT TOO
People who think they can't get
by without a two -trouser suit
should give some thought to what
It would feel like if we had the
pants beaten right off us.
—Ottawa Citizen.
TIMELY -WARNING
A Toronto baby ate her father's
gasoline coupons. He'd better
watch his spare tire—if any.
—Stratford Beacon -Herald.
Predicts Drop In
Britain's Population
Great Britain will he populated
by "old folks" after the war, ac-
cording to Sir Henry Bracken -
bury, writing in the British Medi-
cal Journal.
"Nothing can prevent this dur-
ing the next thirty or forty years,"
Brackenbury's article said.
"Unless effective measures can
by taken to increase the number
of births and the size of families,
similar results will follow during
the subsequent generation."
It has been estimated that the
total population of England and
Wales will decline by 3,540,000
by 1965.
British Call Planes
By Fighting Names
We trust it is not unpatriotic
to say that in the matter of find-
ing good names for fighing planes
the British have it all over us of
the United States. According to
newspaper accounts, General
Knudsen arrived in Des Moines
in a "21 -passenger army trans-
port." The same issue carried a
story about Lieut, E. H. O'Hare
!shooting down six Japanese bomb-
ers in his "fighter plane."
The British, on the other hand,
have given names to their plane
types. We refer to one plane as
Lockheed P-38; the British call
It the "Lightning." A plane
which we call Consolidated II -24,
they all "Liberator." They say
"Catalina" for our Consolidated
• I HY.-S.
A. for British -made machines,
who has failed to be thrilled by
the mere sound of Tornado,
Whirlwind, Spitfire or Defiant?
Must we battle for 'freedom and
human rights in Consolidated
VOY-Gs?
It ie probably a sniali matter,
but we should like "!Knockouts,"
"Cyclones" and "Eagles" better.
*VICHY LEGION: DISTINCTION OR EXTINCTION
7
4, es �•: mss,. « se e s
llioring along a frozen Russian plain, without Benefit of appurtenances of modern war, a unit of the French Legion iigaitarig. for
Adolf Hitler on the Eastern Front pass a ruined homestead. They fight to win for France a place of distinction in the New Order, Their
liquidation is proceeding.
Churchill's Pre -War Chet
1'.
(A Syndicated Article in United States Newspapers, - by
Torn. Treanor.)
The political wolves are after
Mr, Churchill. •
The accusations are being made
that he hypnotized England with
rhetoric and drugged her with
phrases.
I have no axe to griud for Mr.
Churchill. I have never met him,
nor have I visited England since
the war, nor am I a particular ad-
mirer of the English.
However, if England had per-
mitted herself to be hypnotized by
Mr. Churchill's rhetoric a little
sooner, if she had drugged herself
with his phrases 10 years earlier,
she would not be where she is now.
It is obvious to anyone with a
grain of sense that England's de-
feats at Singapore, Crete, Norway
and Dunkirk were not due to lack
of planning by Mr. Churchill.
They were due to England's fail-
ure to take his perfectly extra-
ordinary warnings during the 10
years before he came to power.
He has only inherited the vast
load of failure against whieh he
warned England so vigorously year
after year in the face of abuse
and ridicule.
It must make him laugh, if a
man can laugh at a time like this,
that he, Winston Churchill, is be-
ing blamed for the defeats.
Those to blame have gone and
in going they' passed their load of
failure on to this gallant old man
who told them again and again
what would happen.
And it has happened with a ven-
geance.
* * *
Surely no reader believes for
one instant that Mr. Churchill was
so stupid that he did not think to
protect Singapore with aircraft.
Not the Mr. Churchill who
preached for 10 long lonely years
the dominant role that aircraft
would play In war.
• Not the Mr. Churchill who knew
before any of us what aircraft
meant.
He didn't get aircraft to Singa-
pore because he couldn't. He was
too busy repairing the damage
which his political enemies did
many years ago when he had no
power and when he was treated
with cold disdain as an unwanted
outsider.
As he said, during the past
months he has had Germany at
his throat and Italy at his belly.
He was hard put not to lose
North Africa.
As ,he said, it took him four
months to get a ship to Egypt and
bank, carrying planes.
How long would it take then
to get them to Singapore? And
where was he to get the ships?
The longer the trip to Libya
took, the fewer ships he had to
spate for Singapore.
As to the stupidities and the
failure in the actual defence of
Singapore, those are not Mr.
Churchill's. Those are the inevit-
able consequences of a hopeless
situation.
Demoralization precedes the cer-
tainty of disgraceful defeat.
* * *
I will give you a few samples of
Mr. Churchill's "rhetori-c," prior to
the war. This word "rhetoric" was
used by his detractors in the sense
of hollow phrases. See how hollow
this phrase is:
"'For all these reasons we
we ought to decide now to main-
tain, at all costs, in the next
10 years, an air force substan-
tially stronger than. Germany,
and that it should be considered
a high crime against the state,
whatever government is in pow-
er, if that forge is allowed, even
for a month, to fall substan-
tially below the potential forco
which may be possessed by that
country abroad."
For which, er for similar re-
marks, he was attacked in this
vein by his exponents:
"..Fie comes forward," said Mr.
Herbert Samuel, "and tells the na-
tion that we ought straightaway
to double and redouble our air
force four times as big as we have
now ... 'Tbat is rather the lang-
uage of a Malay running amok
than of a responsible British states-
man. It is rather the language of
blind and causeless panic."
And they are blamiug Church-
ill that Singapore didn't have en-
ough airplanes!
Both these .statements, Church-
ill's and Samuel's, -were made in
1934.
And is the following the sort
of phrase that would drug the Bri-
tish.?
"We are a rich and easy prey.
No country is so vulnerable and
no country would better repay
pillage than our own. With our
enormous metropolis here, the
greatest target in the world, a
kind of tremendous, fat, val-
uable cow tied up to attract a
beast of prey, we are in a posi-
tion in which we have never
been before, in which no other
country in the world is at the
present time."
That was also in 1934,
He was accused of being caught
unaware. But it wasn't unaware
that he was caught. He was caught
helpless to act because in "the
years that the locust hath eaten"
his political adversaries beat him
back.
Does the following sound like a
man who would be caught nap-
ping?
"Beware, Germany is a country
fertile in military surprises. The
great Napoleon in the years after
Jena, was completely taken by
surprise by the strength of the
Garman army which fought the
War et Liberation. Although he
had officers all over the place,
the German army whieh fought
in the campaign of Leipzig was
three or four times as strong as
he expected. Similarly, when the
Great War broke out the French
general staff had no idea of the
reserve divisions which would
be brought immediately into the
field. They expected to be con-
fronted by 25 army corps; ac-
tually more than 40 came against
them. It is never advisable to
underrate the military qualities
of this resourceful and gifted
people, nor to underrate the
dangers that may be brought
against us."
This was in 1935.
* * *
In the same speech he said:
"The Lord President asked
me and us all not to indulge in
panic. I hope we shall not in-
dulge in panic. But I wish to
say this: It is very much better
sometimes to have a panic be-
forehand and then to be quite
calm when things happen, than
to be extremely calm beforehand
and to get in a panic when
things happen. Nothing has sur-
prised me more than—I will not
say the indifference, but the
coolness—with which the com-
mittee has treated the extraor-
dinary revelations of the Ger-
man air strength relative to our
country. For the first time for
centuries we are not fully equip.
ped to repel or retaliate for an
invasion. That to an island peo-
ple is astonishing. Panic indeed!
The position is the other way
round. We are the incredulous,
indifferent children of centuries
of security behind the shield of
the Royal Navy, not yet able
to wake up to the woefully
transformed conditions of the
modern world."
* * *
The only great failure of Mr.
Churchill was his inability to drive
these thoughts through a lot of
thick skulls—our own homegrown
skulls among the thickest.
a
c
By LIEUT. E. H, BARTLETT, R.C.N.V.R.
They are • "Convoy Commo-
dores," in whose ranks are ad-
mirals who once commanded
battle fleets in the Seven Seas.
To -day they command, fleets of
comparatively slow, lumbering
merchant ships.
Their years of sea experience
made them invaluable when war
broke out, and the call to service
once more brought them gladly
from retirement to serve afloat
again.
Time and again they take their
fleets through the danger areas.
They sail in merchant ships—but
they get their share of gunfire
and of action; know what it is to
see their fighting escorts seek out
and engage the enemy; and know,
too, the responsibility of man-
oeuvring fleets in battle again—
this time the Battle of the At-
lantic.
They have no staff officers. A
few naval signalmen now coni. -
pose their "staff," just enough
men to maintain constant signal
service to the rest of the fleets
from the merchant ships which
bear the commodores. Their
quarters are generally cramped,
sometimes uncomfortable — but
the commodores who once paced
their Admiral's Walk, ignore their
changed roles as they glory in
their active participation in the
war at sea.
There were three such com-
modores in the mammoth fleet
which this writer accompanied, in
an escorting Royal Canadian Navy.
corvette, to sea. Three commo-
dores, for at a certain point the
fleet was to divide into separate
convoys, each bound for their own
ports in the war areas.
Naval terms followed the com-
modores into the merchant fleet.
There was the senior commodore,
whose ship was to take the head
of the line when the fleet set sail.
He had his Vice -Commodore ana
the Rear -Commodore, each to lead
e his own division.
Their badges of rank showed
no differentiation. Each, on his
sleeves, bore the broad gold ring
of commodore's rankin the Navy.
Above the ring was the small
circle of criss-crossed braid which
denoted the convoy appointments.
In the Navy they would have worn
the regulation "executive curl" of
straight lace. The criss-crossed
lace, the same as that used by the
Naval Reserve, gave them yet an-
other link with the merchant ser-
vice in which they now sail.
The commodore 'was himself of
the Naval Reserve, had command:-
ed
ommand-ed liners in peace -time and war-
ships in conflict. In the last war
he "bagged" a submarine, but dis-
claims any special merit in the
feat.
"Just chased her into a mine-
field, you know," he explains,
with a rather diffident senile.
"Heard her blow up, and that's
all there was to it. Only prob-
lem was not to -get too close to
the mines ourselves, tricky things
they are."
It is on record that he "bagged"
two submarines this war, before
he was transferred from his
fighting ship to sail with the
merchant fleets. But of these
two he tells nothing, as is the
way of the Silent Service.
When it comes to talking of
the merchant ship captains, then
it is a different matter.
He holds then in the highest
esteem, and does not hesitate to
say so. ,
There is a Norwegian captain
for whom lie has an especially
high regard. He tells of how this
captain, in a tanker full of fuel
oil, kept his ship in line although
two torpedoes had struck home.
One, hitting amidships, had set
her afire. The other, hitting her
stern, should have—but did not
—send her to the bottom. An es-
cort ship •stood and helped the
tanker tight her fire, and then
escorted her as she struggled back
into position in the convoy.
"1 signalled to find out whether
the tanker could keep up," the
eommodore recalls, "and was told
that she could, but she 'couldn't
stand any weather.' I should jolly
well think she could not. Why,
her bulkheads were going one by
one and I don't know how she
managed even to reach port."
"You know," he added, "that
captain must have been very much
of a man. His ship was spreading
a slick of oil l°rom her leaking
tanks, and he signalled me to ask
if he should leave the convoy as
he was afraid the oil would give
away bur position to the submar-
ines.. Of course, I refused to let
him go, he would have been sunk
as sure as fate if he had left our
protection. But just think of it
—two torpedoes already and he
was ready to go off and commit
suicide in order not to bring
danger to us."
The convoy commodore could
see how the Norwegian captain
"was quite a man." He did not
seem to think that his own decis-
ion to keep the ship under his
protection in itself told a tale!
He has a sense of humour
which, however, rather deserted
him one day when, having brought
through a large convoy which had
been under incessant attack, and
which had seen eight ships tor-
pedoed, five of which had been
sunk, he was ordered to Gibraltar.
He told his wife, vaguely, the
general direction hi which his new
duties would take him.
"You know," he says, "she said
to me `well, it looks as if you will
be in the thick of it, now.' "
"'In the thick of it' ", he re-
peated, "wonder what. she thought
that last convoy was?"
With his sense of humour is an
understanding of his fellow -men
which makes hire many friends.
We escorted him to his ship, a
stub -nosed cargo -carrier whose
captain was waiting at the top of
the gangway to receive him.
There were no shrilling pipes
or sideboys in ceremonial salute.
Instead there was the greeting of
two friends a broadly smiling
welcome from the ship's captain,
and a firm hand -shake, -
"Not a very .comfortable bunk
for you, commodore," the captain •
warned.
":Don't worry, old man, I never
take my clothes off on this job
anyway," was the repay, "Let's
just get on with it."
His signalmen Blade their way
to the briugc, and a i.caho'ist rose
on the halliards, The captain
gave a brasque order or two, and
i;Iie anchor winulass clanked in.o
action. In a matter of minutes
the ship was under weigh—the
conneo ure and his :fleet wore
"getting on with it,"
The vice and gear Commodoree
were similarly engaged. The Vice
(he had been an auini.•al) was
rather proud of the fact tnat ne
had "drawn" an oil taneer zor his
Atlantic crossing.
"least eonaoesablo ships these,
you know" he had arawled. ''very
good .accommodation, it's a pleas-
ure to sail in 'em,"
"asiost coinfortable"--"good ac-
commodation"—yes, but iais s.g-
nahnen tell, too, that their "old
man" doesn't take his clothes off -
when he seeks his bunk or se,tee
for his sleep. At any minute of
the day or night he is ready for
instant action, whieh is another
good naval trait.
They are "too old" to command
fighting ships, now, but still they
take their ships into the fight.
Once they hoisted • their flags in
mammoth battleships, and direct-
ed fleets of fighting craft. Now
they are pleased when they
"draw" a tanker, and their skill
is bent toward shepherding lum-
bering cargo carriers.
And, in the experience they
gained in fighting ships, and the
skill they have brought to direct-
ing merchant ships, lie one of the
reasons why the convoys are "get-
ting through."
Which is all these commodores, -
who once were admirals, ask.
Red Rains Follow
Raging Dust Storms
When dust storms have been
raging in Australia's dust bowl,
which takes in most of the inland
area, red rails is common -rain
which falls through the dust pall
overhanging the country.
When a really big storm blows
up inland, 11,000,000. tons of valu-
able top soil is swept into the
air, experts estimate. Some of
it comes down on the coast, some
settles in the Tasman Sea and
helps to thicken the red sediment
which coats part of the seabed
there, while some carries on and
paints a pink tinge on the snow
of the New Zealand Alps.
Wind erosion has affected 10,-
000,000 acres of Victoria alone.
The State Rivers Commission.
spends £100,000 a year on clear-
ing sand out of its irrigation
channels,. trains are derailed and.
roads covered. But the dust goes
on piling up. Loss of product-
ivity is estimated at £500,000
a year.
LIFE'S LIKE THAT By Fred Neher
Honor ..... I want a divorce, alimony and a return bout! r
FELLERS --The Gadders
By GENE BYRNES
J.kgf.GONICLE