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Show General HUGH S. JOHNSON Washington, D. C. NOT OVER YET It is not known how many British and French escaped the Belgian fiasco, but it is almost certain that little of their equipment did. The chief French reliance, the Maginot line, is completely outflanked. out-flanked. As a front east toward Germany, its back door is open. The front toward Germany is now in the north. If the Germans and Italians can go through Switzerland as the Germans went through the other neutrals, the war on the continent of Europe is over. The remaining French forces would be caught be hind their Maginot line outflanked on both ends and in the grip of the most deadly pincers we've yet seen. This may be clear out of the picture. pic-ture. The country is very difficult and while the Swiss have only about the same force as Belgium, it is supposed to be better equipped though less well trained. But is it? Large parts of the Swiss population are of either German or Italian racial stock. If fifth columns could work so well in Nordic but not Germanic Ger-manic Denmark, Norway, Holland, and Belgium, what is going to happen hap-pen in Switzerland? We don't know. The fog of war is denser than ever, but nothing looks good on the continent of Europe. Does that mean that the war is over? That is the worst nonsense yet. I think we are in for some still more terrible shocks and we have had enough in a month to do for a whole generation. But nothing has yet indicated that Hitler's blitzkrieg patent contraption can destroy the British navy. England Eng-land isn't the British empire. She couldn't surrender Canada, for example. ex-ample. Napoleon at one time controlled con-trolled as much of Europe as does Hitler more. He also controlled the channel ports. But because he didn't command the sea he failed. It is true that there are now great differences in armament and the deadlines of air attack. It is true that Hitler has moved with far more swiftness, distance and striking strik-ing power than Napoleon ever dreamed. But the crossing of the English channel to find a lodgment there and transport the weight of metal and material necessary to meet the forces possible in defense will prove a tougher problem than Hitler has ever faced yet. It is almost certain that he cannot can-not do it and leave the undefeated French army in his rear if the French are still capable of fighting and have the will to do it. There is no proof yet that they have not both. There is, of course, the sensational sensation-al story that Hitler will hold London hostage to vast and repeated waves of bombers and force the surrender of the British fleet. That is possible, pos-sible, but most unlikely. For as long as that fleet floats in its present supremacy, Hitler is as securely tied to Europe and his commerce is as certainly off the seas as was Napoleon's. Germany can never prevail as a great industrial indus-trial nation unless she is able to transport mountains of manufac tured goods. To get that is Hitler's real "Mein Kampf" and, while he has made great progress, this is a large world and he is still far from his goal. We have to expect further disasters disas-ters but the defeatist spirit that is spreading here is about the worst thing that could happen to us. As for ourselves, we haven't even begun to prepare to fight and we are, potentially, the mightiest nation na-tion at arms the world has seen. ANTI-AIRCRAFT An anti-aircraft regiment is an outfit equipped with anti-aircraft cannon, machine guns, searchlights and a mechanical marvel of range-finders range-finders and fire control equipment. All this is mounted on trucks and is designed to roll along at the motorized motor-ized pace of a rapidly moving army, just as modern field artillery does. That is all very ingenious and necessary as part of any mobile army, but it doesn't promise much protection to vital industrial locations, loca-tions, some of them far in the interior. in-terior. Even with all the speed of modern military movement, no formal for-mal field organization can surely do that. There is too much territory to cover. But there is also a new strategy, economic strategy. We must work out a dependable defense of our great industrial centers. Nothing in our tactical defensive preparations thus far provides for that. In this anti-aircraft business, I have seen a national guard regiment of civilians perform as well as could be expected of regular regiments. The point of all this is that we could put up some barracks where unemployed or single men on part-time part-time jobs could learn to operate local lo-cal anti-aircraft defenses, if only in exchange for board and lodging. They don't need to be physically perfect. They don't even need to be young men. Certainly they don't need to be all prettied up with brass buttons and fuss feathers, or to stand like a ramrod and salute every ev-ery time a second looie heaves up on the horizon. It's a jcb for expert mechanics and the best uniforms for them are dungaries. |