Show ECONOMIC highlights industrial news review the great lesson of world war 11 II is this victory belongs to the aggressor to the nation which carries the battle to the enemy hitler and his axis mates have consists consistently con nt followed that principle they have not hesitated to take the great est risks riska if the possible gain was worth the gamble theirs is the most daring plan of warfare in the history of armed conflict the grave losses which the united nation have taken may be laid in part to the once commonly held belief that it would be possible to fight a defensive war and still win F france rance pinned her faith on the maginot line which her military leaders baders said was impregnable and today she is a beaten starving slave nation england at first she could bring hitler to his knees through the use of that classic weapon the blockade and today hiter ler is master of all europe and exploiter of all its resources at the russia too placed her lopes hopes on defensive positions such as the so called staian line and saw them destroyed by the invader almost as if they were made of per not until the fine russian army took the offensive was the legend of nazi invincibility shattered the last example and one of the most tragic examples of the falla cy of defensive warfare is found in the fall of singapore the greatest naval base ever built in the world the english believed the Mayl ayan jungles would make land attack on this bastian impossible the japs proved otherwise here in our own country most of us have been defense minded instead of war minded the great natural barrier provided by our oceans has been our solace we took pride in our latent power and thought that no nation least of all japan would dare attack us and so at last decades of defensive wishful thinking of inaction decades of avoiding unpleasant truths have resulted in the grim debacles to which we and our allies have been subjected we are changing our views fast now in military circles and to a lessor extent in the public mind the fact that defensive war is losing war is being fully accepted and realized the blueprints are being made for taking the battle to the foe once our potentially limitless power in men and weapons can be organized it is significant that our airplane building program calls for a relatively small proportion of pursuit plans which are primarily instruments of defense and for a high proportion of long range bomb ers and dive bombers which are en instruments of offense where will the united nations strike no man can answer that now much will depend on what further successes the axis achieves now that singapore is gone tremendous numbers of jap troops ful ly equipped can be used for the assault on the dutch east indies in dia and even australia every position japan has taken or will take must be won back there must eventually ventu ally be air attacks on japanese industrial areas africa where the german forces under rommel have taken much lost ground mu must be placed firmly under allied control finally most military authorities are certain distasteful as the thought it that the war cannot be ended without an allied invasion of hillers Hit lers europe he must be beaten in short on his home grounds this is a project which stag staggers gerb the imagination by comparison with this war world war 1 was only a skirmish its demands on our resources and our population are already rl ady infinitely greater and will become greater still it is not orlly only possible but probable that it will last five years or more to recapture lost positions especially when overwater over water operations are involved is almost invariably a slow costly and tortuous job at this moment the principal A merican british task will be to musi ter sufficient naval strength to deal with the strong german surface fleet which took the incredible risk of attempting to escape from brest virtually within sight of the dover coast and succeeded it that fleet is loosed in the atlantic as it no doubt will be after repairs are made at helgeland Hel goland base it will be the worst threat which has yet appeared to britaina Brit ains long atlantic lifeline life line its destruction or immobilization is vital it may be another year before the united nations are in a position to wage offensive war on a big scale but no one can logically doubt that we must wage that kind of war if we are to win the axis has effectively demolished all past concepts of the potency of defensive warfare |