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Show fpl GENERAL E?sd HUGH s- JOHNSON v$ Jour: ElltJ United Fauna Jr WNU Serrica Washington, D. C. WHY A FRENCH ROUT? "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark" and now perhaps, in France. Not enough facts have come out of that stricken country to give even a shadowy opinion of what it is. But, regardless of the undoubted un-doubted superiority of the German strength in guns and equipment and giving due regard to the crushing power of the new mechanized and motorized equipment, the collapse of all French resistance in so short a time simply can't be explained except ex-cept by soft spots in the French command. The territory over which this headlong rout took place is unlike many areas of campaign. It has been a path of conquest and a battleground battle-ground since the beginning of recorded re-corded history. Every hill and fold of ground is known. Its military strength or weakness proved over and over again, its features mapped in intimate detail, not only on paper pa-per but in the minds of every competent com-petent officer in France. In this respect re-spect it is more like a checkerboard than a battlefield. There could be no "surprises of terrain." Army Was Strong. The French army, except in the air and as to some classes of equipment, equip-ment, was very strong. In its complement com-plement of highly trained professional profes-sional soldiers, many with war experience, ex-perience, it was much stronger than the German army. Some of our amateur military commentators say that the key to the puzzle is mistaken French reliance re-liance on the fixed fortifications of the Maginot line and that the campaign cam-paign proves such lines worthless. That is wrong. There was no assault as-sault here until that line was outflanked out-flanked and taken from the rear. The Germans built and successfully relied on the somewhat different fortifications of the Siegfried line. It is true that this aspect of the case shows a terrible blunder. But the blunder was solely in relying on Belgium Bel-gium and other nations to the north and leaving the left flank of that line bare to assault as the "paunch of the purser's sow." Then here is an added lesson for us among dozens of others in this war. In this double-crossing, treaty-breaking, treaty-breaking, lying world, no nation can risk its existence on any other or on anything but the strength of its own right arm and the courage, unity, uni-ty, liyalty and devotion of its own people. Why the Collapse? But, even with all that said, we are left still groping for the cause of this complete collapse. For one thing, it shows the weakness of any democracy not based on a two-party system. There were more than 20 parties in the Reichstag and in came Hitler. There were several in France and in came Hitler through another and bloodier door. That is a lesson for us. We still retain two parties, but one of them has degenerated into a group of gimme pressure groups. The principal cause of French weakness is beginning to seem to. be ita half-and-half division in both its army and its legislature between men with Communist and men with Fascist leanings. There is as yet no news of outright treachery but it is hard to explain the mushiness of French defense on any other basis. Columnar Poison. There is a third and false conclusion conclu-sion for us that is being preached by some of my columnar colleagues, and it is pure poison. It is that this war proves that democracies won't work In war, with an implication implica-tion that we should forget this election, elec-tion, give autocratic authority to the power-seeking group of incompetents incompe-tents in Washington and perpetuate Hopkins, Morgenthau, Perkins, and Ickes to stumble, fumble and blunder blun-der us into war and they to run it for us. We proved in 1918 that our democracy de-mocracy could out-Hitler ai . German Ger-man in war efficiency, but you've got to have competent leaders to do it. There is much also to be learned lrom the astonishing, almost miraculous, mi-raculous, German teamwork as between be-tween fifth columns, air, armored and mechanized land battleships and close following masses of old fashioned fash-ioned infantry. But to swallow that whole for our defense would be as stupid as to return to the World war for all our lessons. PARIS BELONGS TO WORLD In a sense Paris belongs to the world and nobody wanted to see it a mass of smoking ruins. In cold military science, neither the capture nor retention of a city is of primary importance except as that cily may be of strong defensive de-fensive or economic value. Failure to see this point clearly has cost more lives and lost more campaigns than any other single hoary blunder. For the first two years of our Civil war in the East, both the Federal and Confederate governments seemed to think that all that was necessary to win the war was to capture Richmond or Washington. In the West Grant saw the matter much more clearly. The reason he insisted on ramshackle ram-shackle Vicksburg was because its site controlled the Mississippi and its fall would cut the Cor.'edc-rany in two. |
