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THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW ESTABLISHED 1840 REGISTERED AS A NEWSPAPER VOL. 177 No. 5252 LONDON, JANUARY 4th, 1941 SIXPENCE IN THIS ISSUE ENGLAND, ITALY AND THE DUCE Some Thoughts on Mussolini’s Error and the British Opportunity in 1941 THE REVIVAL OF BELGIUM A Correspondent traces the Growth o f Resistance to the Nazis THE POPE’S CHRISTMAS EVE ALLOCUTION The Full Text in English THE WORLD WEEK BY WEEK President Roosevelt’s Plain Words The year 1940 was brought to a fitting close by President Roosevelt’s great address, stating the war issues in all their depth and range. He made it as plain as possible to the American people that the melodramatic and sensational view of Hitler and his movement happens in fact to be the truth, and that the United States would be quickly and tragically disillusioned if it took the view that it did not really very much matter who won in Europe. With a British victory the United States knows that it has nothing to fear, that the world will continue to be a place where American interests, public and private, can plan for the future with as much confidence and certainty as is permitted to mortal men. With a German triumph there would come immediately the intensification of all those subtle tricks for boring into countries, dividing them internally, and paralyzing them before the swift blow is struck. The great wealth of the American Continent, the comparative weakness of political tradition in Central and South America, the growing range of the bomber and the submarine, all serve to point the moral for President Roosevelt that very soon the United States would find itself cast for the role of “ the last remaining plutodemocracy,” a place needing to be reduced if the New Order was ever to feel secure. The greatest of the neutrals has seen the red light in time. When the Germans answer President Roosevelt’s charge that they are a menace to the rest of the world, they say he is repeating the familiar Jewish Democratic abuse, as though they had not taken care to justify and live down to that abuse. Poland remains the key country, where chapter and verse can be given for the worst things their enemies have ever said about the Nazis. New Year Prospects The re-election of President Roosevelt, and his declaration of policy in the face of German threats, are the great events which, closing 1940, point the way to the developments of 1941, with cumulative rapidity, the tardiness of American industrial mobilization, the very irksome and difficult transition from production for competitive peace-time markets into production for modern war, will be achieved across the Atlantic, and more and more Hitler, and with him Mussolini, will appear as flustered and cornered men with time against them, resolved on recklessly trying to shoot their way out. It is difficult to think that the German leaders would make the special fuss they made this Christmas of their troops in Northern France, or would have referred to the meeting with the last great enemy, “ when the Führer gives the signal,” if invasion is not to be attempted. It would have been quite easy to have dwelt on other topics like the U-boat campaign or the air war, and not to have started expectations among the German soldiery which it was never intended to fulfil. A survey of Hitler’s past shows that he generally decides for the positive if risky course, believing in good fortune as the reward of meticulous and untiring preparation, surprise methods, and suddenness. All this we may expect, and if the main surprises have perhaps been sprung against the nations overrun in April and May, others, including gas attacks, remain untested. America and Victory Last week’s New Republic contained a very frank and friendly article from the pen of Mr. George Soule, the economist. He advocated generous American help to save Britain from defeat, but ended with an important warning against “ helping Britain to be so victorious as to write the peace terms. The United States, ’’he argued, should “ demand the kind of peace that would be worth the sacrifice—but th a t ’s another story.” It is not quite clear from Mr. Soule’s English whose sacrifice it is that he is referring to. Nevertheless we should certainly be grateful to Mr. Soule. Such frankness can do nothing but good, and will save us from subsequent misunderstandings. We ask in return only the right to a similar frankness, and in that frankness we can say that it is most deceptive to talk about “ the sort of peace that America desires.” The sort of peace that Mr. Soule desires is the establishment of Parliamentary Governments and collective security all over Europe. The indications at present are that American opinion will not support such a programme, but it is not for us to dictate what Americans will think a year or two hence. We can be certain that if they supported Mr. Soule’s programme it would only be under the influence of some passing emotional wave, against which tnere would certainly be an isolationist reaction. We have much to hope for from America, much to be grateful for, but it is only friendly to state quite frankly what it is that we fear. We fear the enthusiastic temperament which involves the world in arrangements from which American realism will afterwards insist on backing out.

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THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW

ESTABLISHED 1840 REGISTERED AS A NEWSPAPER

VOL. 177 No. 5252

LONDON, JANUARY 4th, 1941

SIXPENCE

IN THIS ISSUE

ENGLAND, ITALY AND THE DUCE Some Thoughts on Mussolini’s Error and the British Opportunity in 1941

THE REVIVAL OF BELGIUM A Correspondent traces the Growth o f Resistance to the Nazis

THE POPE’S CHRISTMAS EVE ALLOCUTION

The Full Text in English

THE WORLD WEEK BY WEEK President Roosevelt’s Plain Words

The year 1940 was brought to a fitting close by President Roosevelt’s great address, stating the war issues in all their depth and range. He made it as plain as possible to the American people that the melodramatic and sensational view of Hitler and his movement happens in fact to be the truth, and that the United States would be quickly and tragically disillusioned if it took the view that it did not really very much matter who won in Europe. With a British victory the United States knows that it has nothing to fear, that the world will continue to be a place where American interests, public and private, can plan for the future with as much confidence and certainty as is permitted to mortal men. With a German triumph there would come immediately the intensification of all those subtle tricks for boring into countries, dividing them internally, and paralyzing them before the swift blow is struck. The great wealth of the American Continent, the comparative weakness of political tradition in Central and South America, the growing range of the bomber and the submarine, all serve to point the moral for President Roosevelt that very soon the United States would find itself cast for the role of “ the last remaining plutodemocracy,” a place needing to be reduced if the New Order was ever to feel secure. The greatest of the neutrals has seen the red light in time.

When the Germans answer President Roosevelt’s charge that they are a menace to the rest of the world, they say he is repeating the familiar Jewish Democratic abuse, as though they had not taken care to justify and live down to that abuse. Poland remains the key country, where chapter and verse can be given for the worst things their enemies have ever said about the Nazis. New Year Prospects

The re-election of President Roosevelt, and his declaration of policy in the face of German threats, are the great events which, closing 1940, point the way to the developments of 1941, with cumulative rapidity, the tardiness of American industrial mobilization, the very irksome and difficult transition from production for competitive peace-time markets into production for modern war, will be achieved across the Atlantic, and more and more Hitler, and with him Mussolini, will appear as flustered and cornered men with time against them, resolved on recklessly trying to shoot their way out.

It is difficult to think that the German leaders would make the special fuss they made this Christmas of their troops in Northern France, or would have referred to the meeting with the last great enemy, “ when the Führer gives the signal,” if invasion is not to be attempted. It would have been quite easy to have dwelt on other topics like the U-boat campaign or the air war, and not to have started expectations among the German soldiery which it was never intended to fulfil. A survey of Hitler’s past shows that he generally decides for the positive if risky course, believing in good fortune as the reward of meticulous and untiring preparation, surprise methods, and suddenness. All this we may expect, and if the main surprises have perhaps been sprung against the nations overrun in April and May, others, including gas attacks, remain untested. America and Victory

Last week’s New Republic contained a very frank and friendly article from the pen of Mr. George Soule, the economist. He advocated generous American help to save Britain from defeat, but ended with an important warning against “ helping Britain to be so victorious as to write the peace terms. The United States, ’’he argued, should “ demand the kind of peace that would be worth the sacrifice—but th a t ’s another story.” It is not quite clear from Mr. Soule’s English whose sacrifice it is that he is referring to. Nevertheless we should certainly be grateful to Mr. Soule. Such frankness can do nothing but good, and will save us from subsequent misunderstandings. We ask in return only the right to a similar frankness, and in that frankness we can say that it is most deceptive to talk about “ the sort of peace that America desires.” The sort of peace that Mr. Soule desires is the establishment of Parliamentary Governments and collective security all over Europe. The indications at present are that American opinion will not support such a programme, but it is not for us to dictate what Americans will think a year or two hence. We can be certain that if they supported Mr. Soule’s programme it would only be under the influence of some passing emotional wave, against which tnere would certainly be an isolationist reaction. We have much to hope for from America, much to be grateful for, but it is only friendly to state quite frankly what it is that we fear. We fear the enthusiastic temperament which involves the world in arrangements from which American realism will afterwards insist on backing out.

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