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Show WEEKLY NEWS ANALYSIS By Edward C. Wayne Great Britain's Loss of Crete to Nazis Endangers Mediterranean Position; President's Pledge to 'Help Britain' Spurs Study of Aid Being Extended (F.nrrOR'S NOTE When opinions are expressed In these eotumns, they are tho of the news analyst and not necesaarlly of thi newspaper.) iReleased by Western Newspaper Union.) . t - ' 14 " " 1 ' i Billows of smoke rise from the Erie railroad terminal in Jersey City, 71 a cloud that palled the entire city of New York. Frantically the f"' Scats below play tiny streams of water on the gigantic fire which U'A ci over Hve miiHon dollars worth of defense and other materials, tin.' r. a minorities had been warned of sabotage and were watching, ;i .. .r:;itiijke out following an explosion in a hay shed. IRAQ: Just in Time With the Germans well occupied in Crete, so much so that they were unable to send aid in force to the Axis puppet government in Iraq, the British finally were able to eke out a victory over Rashid Ali Gailani's little army. The German planes which had been sent there were forced hastily to fly out of the country when a new Bagdad regime, suddenly formed on the flight of Rashid Ali Gailani to Iran, called for an armistice and was granted it by the British. The battle for the Mosul oil pipeline pipe-line from Kirkuk to Haifa thus was won, at least temporarily, though even before the end of the battle of Crete, as soon as the Germans were definitely in the saddle, they resumed re-sumed their flights into Syria, and were beginning to sit in force in Iraq's neighboring French protectorate, protecto-rate, ready to start a new offensive to the southward. Again the British were faced with the problem of how to fight a delaying delay-ing action through Iraq, how to defend de-fend the newly re-won pipeline, how to keep the Axis pincers from closing clos-ing in on Suez and on the all important impor-tant oil supply for the fleet. The British had moved into Iraq not through Saudi Arabia, not through Palestine, but from Basra on the Persian gulf, and from this point had driven successfully to Bagdad Bag-dad and had forced the surrender. However, military strategists recognized rec-ognized -the difficulty of "a holding campaign against an attack from Syria. Again American aid was the crux of the situation, for the British hoped that the German losses in the Cretan campaign, plus the fact that the Germans never moved until fully prepared, might delay the start of the attack from Syria until proper forces could be moved in. This delay, provided the lease-lend lease-lend aid from the United States started to move, might give the British sufficient equipment to make a stern defense of Iraq and the Mosul Mo-sul oil. The victory for the British in Iraq came just in time, but the British wondered if the American aid would come in time, also. For if the tanks and planes were shipped, as presumed, pre-sumed, to Suez through the Red sea, it would all have to be trans-shipped to Basra if that approach, already tested and found O. K., were tried again. BRITAIN: And Vichy Admiral Darlan, when he published pub-lished a bill of particulars against Britain, a bill dating way back to World War I and the 20 years thereafter, there-after, went a long way toward widening the breach between France and her former ally to a point where repair would seem impossible. im-possible. Indeed, the British in the bombing of Tunisia and the sinking of French merchantmen in the Mediterranean on the ground that they were carrying carry-ing contraband which was destined for Axis use were apparently convinced con-vinced thtt the break between themselves and France was irreparable, ir-reparable, and that strong measures must be usei. Many commentators believed that Darlan's statement was more or less of a smoke-screen to cover further French aid to the Axis war moves, and that France still was t king way from declaring war on the British. Yet it was conceded that France was walking a tightrope, Darlan attempting at-tempting to do three things at once keep his people out of war, feed them and still placate the German conquerors. MISCELLANY: London: Eyewitnesses of the Bismarck Bis-marck sea battle reported the German Ger-man battleship was 50,000 tons, not 35.000 tons, and that she carried 2,400 officers and men, not 1,300, as reported. San Sebastian, Spain: One hundred hun-dred and seventeen Americans, survivors sur-vivors of the Zamzam, reached Spain, the young men who were heading for ambulance service with the British being detained in occupied occu-pied France. SUPREME COURT: i Retirement Seventy-nine-year-old Chief Justice '.iarles Evans Hughes of the U. S. jpreme court is retiring from the bench, July 1 of this year. In a tele- ' gram in answer to the request on the part of Hughes to cease active duty at that time, President Roose- . velt accepted the retirement and spoke of "the splendid service" rendered. ren-dered. The "grand old man" of the court has been eligible for retirement retire-ment since 1934 but he continued to serve in a regular capacity up to the present time. It is known that Mrs. Hughes has been urging him for some time to retire and spend his time in rest and travel. He gave age and health as his reasons for wanting to retire. His career of public service has few parallels in U. S. history. He has served as governor of New York, secretary of state, presidential candidate, member mem-ber of the world arbitration tribunal and was twice justice of the Supreme Su-preme court. CRETE: Its Mehnihg The Battle of Crete, another outstanding out-standing victory for Germany, won almost without Italian aid except in the closing stages, was not only a serious loss for Britain, but it was marking an epoch in warfare from several standpoints. The German claim apparently was justified that it was the first airborne air-borne capture of an island where the attacker did not have control of the water lane separating it from the mainland. In the case of the Norwegian invasion, in-vasion, which in some ways was similar to Crete, the Germans did control the water division between themselves and Norway. But into Crete they had to send and supply an army into a country occupied by the enemy, presumably an enemy in position to send reinforcements re-inforcements and supplies by ship to their own forces. The hand-to-hand fighting at the beginning of this campaign should have been more to the advantage of the British, yet the parachutists and gliders arrived in such force that the advantage rapidly wilted away and the British found themselves being pushed back by superior forces, sufficiently well armed and well supplied to hold out and await their air-borne reinforcements. That the Germans themselves had little confidence in the experimental war was shown by the fact that both they and the Italians were ready with shiploads of expeditionary soldiers, sol-diers, and the Germans, at least, tried to land theirs and lost an announced an-nounced 5,000 men. But this very attempt proved another an-other thing that fleets are vulnerable vulner-able to attack from swarms of airplanes. air-planes. Reports showed that the Germans allotted hundreds of Stukas to this attack, and survivors of the plane-ship battle, British survivors, sur-vivors, told stories of 20 Stukas at a time being assigned to each ship, and that when they went away their places were taken by 20 others. Now, the dive-bomber is apparently apparent-ly able to hit or come close to its objective ob-jective and it makes a poor target for anti-aircraft fire, so great is its speed and so narrow the appearance appear-ance of its approach. Hence the destroyers and cruisers were hit and badly hit, and many went to the bottom, the fleet had to withdraw to Alexandria to repair its wounds, and the coast was clear for the Italians to land their ship-borne ship-borne forces. This was the last straw, but the battle had been won without that, and the German propagandists took full advantage of the fact to predict England would fall the same way. The Australian premier decried the battle as a simple lack of machines ma-chines on the part of the British defenders. AID: A Question Congress and many newspapers were beginning to question how much lease-lend aid was reaching British points, and this question the President Presi-dent promised to answer "in round figures." But one of Harry Hopkins' associates, asso-ciates, in answer to a senatorial inquiry, in-quiry, wrote a letter which tended to the belief, expressed by Senator Byrd of Virginia, that the aid thus far sent had been "infinitesimal." Burns, the Hopkins associate, explained ex-plained the delays required to set stuff aboard ship for Britain, explained ex-plained that much of the material being turned out was required by "our own forces," and suggested that the few weeks since the passage pas-sage of the bill had been needed just to start things in motion. Senator Byrd got the idea that not much had gone, in fact the Burns letter had attempted to explain why he couldn't give figures on how much had been sunk, which was what Byrd wanted to know. Burns said there couldn't have been much sunk because be-cause much hadn't gone. Byrd pointed to figures of 400 to 600 combat planes a month being built, medium tanks just started, 90-mm. 90-mm. cannon for anti-aircraft fire just started, and heavy tanks not started yet. He voiced sharp criticisms criti-cisms of the President's production and lease-lend set-up, and it was following this criticism that the President promised a report. But it was likely that this report would not come until the 90-day required re-quired period was up, 12 weeks and more after the passage of the bill. At all events it was plain that the hiatus between congress voting seven sev-en billions of dollars to implement the lease-lend bill and the setting down in British hands of the seven billions of dollars' worth of war material ma-terial was going to be considerable. The consensus of opinions as to defense production was that the country had done "pretty well" in the first year, but that the country was going to have to do "much better" bet-ter" in the future. SPEECH: Aftermath Some newspapers who had praised the President's fireside chat to the highest, in the days that followed began to write editorials criticizing the President for not carrying out his implied promises. The President's press conference on the Wednesday following the Tuesday of his speech had been a shock, and it produced some pretty bitter editorial comment. The President, who had demanded demand-ed "freedom of the seas" and had promised any and all measures necessary nec-essary to achieve this, turned around and said that he didn't mean that American ships had to go where they might be sunk, and he didn't think he would ask repeal of the neutrality act, which forbid just that. The American press began to wonder won-der whether the President's speech had been just words, and that his policy was going to be much weaker weak-er than what had been expected by the public from the speech. Even the anti-interventionists were frankly frank-ly surprised by the turn events had taken, though their thunder did not lessen. On the labor question, too, the President had indicated that he would not tolerate stoppage of work in defense plants, yet the Pacific coast machinists' walkout still continued. con-tinued. In this strike, as well as others which were continuing, there seemed no immediate change in the government's govern-ment's active attitude, the mediation media-tion board going through the same procedures as it had before the President's speech, and the President Presi-dent himself taking no active hand, or making any personal moves. |
