STRATEGY: First Month

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A detachment of neutral news correspondents, including five Americans, toured Germany last week from Aachen to Kaiserslautern, guided by German officers who happily, confidently showed them the wonders of the Westwall. The correspondents wrote marveling descriptions of the Wall's depth, complexity and strength; its clever tricks of camouflage; murderous traps for tanks and infantry; ponderous guns for long-range punishment of the Allies. "The Westwall will never be finished, just as a forest never ceases to grow," they quoted one general as saying. They gave the net impression that the Wall was, if not precisely impregnable, so immensely flexible that it could bend indefinitely under assault and ultimately exhaust its attackers.

In their dispatches, which of course were not sent without scrutiny by German censors, the neutral correspondents also gave the impression that "this is a strange war." They heard little firing, saw few effects of it. They saw only one airplane encounter. They visited evacuated Saarbrücken, reported freight trains still hauling away coal, steel and manufacturing equipment (to the Ruhr) in full view of the French. On the Rhine they stood with German officers in full view of poilus on the other side fishing, sawing wood, washing clothes. They heard stories and saw signs of badinage between the lines. Net effect of what they wrote was to underscore Senator Borah's amazing crack about World War II being "phoney."

Fact is there was nothing strange about the correspondents' impressions, and probably a minimum of censor coloration. The potency of the German positions is unquestioned, and official French communiques for the days the newsmen were on tour confirmed the quietness which they reported. Fact also is that this war is no -"phoney," but simply a war far different from any ever fought. At the end of its first 30 days, perspective brought the answers to a lot of questions asked by laymen about World War II.

Questions and Answers. England and France declared war on Germany, superficially because Poland was attacked, fundamentally because "Hitlerism must go." Helping Poland was an immediate consideration, but avenging Poland, eventually executing her murderer for the good of all, is the ultimate consideration.

Why didn't the Allies at once send planes to Poland? Because Poland had '"her eyes gouged out" so quickly, her Air .Force smashed before it left the ground, her airfields so pocked with bombs that .Allied planes could not have landed when they got there. To this add the facts that it takes eight service men on the ground ito keep one plane in the air, and that there was none too much airplane gasoline in Poland. Finally, the Nazi Air Force was enormously stronger, from its myriad small home bases, than an expeditionary air force could have been.

Why didn't the Allies at once bomb the Ruhr and the Rhineland? Wouldn't that have brought a sizable part of the German Air Force racing back out of Poland? Perhaps, but it would also have brought reprisal bombing of Allied industries. The German anti-aircraft defense had not been tested, and neither had the Allied. The possible price in their own civilians' lives gave the Allies pause. So did their fear that not yet were they Germany's match in the sky.