THE TWO-PRONGED OFFENSIVE I F the atmosphere of crisis in the
war may seem to us in this country a little less intense than it was a week ago, it is still the case that in Egypt the dangers which threatened then have not been removed, and in Russia the situation is more rather than less acute. At the moment of writing Rommel's advancing forces, checked at El Alamein, have been held for more than a week, and in the recent strenuous air operations and the harassing activities on land the advantage has been rather with the British than with the enemy. There can be no doubt that another main battle remains to be fought, for which both sides are bringing up reinforcements. With the vital base of Alexandria separated by so small an inter- vening space from the fighting zone there can be no sense of security till that battle has been fought. In Russia, too, the fighting centred near Voronezh has reached a stage when it is of crucial importance to check the spearhead of the German offensive. The enemy are fighting to set themselves astride the main north and south com- munications of the Russian armies, and to drive a wedge between them. The losses on both sides are colossal. There is an out- standing feature of the Russian communiqués the significance of which should be understood. They dwell constantly on the number of German killed and the amount of material destroyed. Our Allies with their experience of last year know how this kind of fighting on so large a scale is affecting the strength of the enemy. If the German Generals succeeded in their aim of breaking through to the oil of the Caucasus in the course of the summer campaign they would be rewarded for any losses ; but, if they fail, losses such as they are now suffering would be crippling. In dwelling on these the Soviet communiqués show how much of the life-blood of Germany is being drained away with each costly advance.
The Ministry of Information
The Commons debate on the vote for the Ministry of Informa- tion revealed much less indignation against that department than has appeared in previous debates, perhaps because that formidable institu- tion has been improving. Indeed, it was even praised for some of its activities, and nobody blamed Mr. Brendan Bracken because he had not produced a great military victory which, as everyone knows, is the most effective possible propaganda. It is undoubtedly the case that our propaganda has been more venturesome and more successful in enemy and enemy-occupied countries than in Allied and friendly countries. It would be impossible to urge too strongly the need of intelligent, informative propaganda in Russia, which, if tactfully conducted, would not be objected to by the Soviet Government. A publicity mission has recently been estab- lished, and the Ministry is now publishing a paper to inform Russians about the war effort. Now is the favourable time to begin a long-term, as well as a short-term policy for creating better under:- standing between Russia and this country—and there is much that should be done on the cultural side as well as in the dissemination of facts about the war effort. The problem of the United States is scarcely less difficult. Of course, Americans would resent it if we appeared to be pumping propaganda into them. What is wanted, next to victories, is more news and more facilities to American correspondents to get news quickly ; and, in addition, we ought to seek more opportunities of explaining to Americans what Sir Malcolm Robertson called the " make-up of the British people." Propaganda between America and this country should be on a reci- procal basis, resting on joint efforts on the part of both countries to create among their peoples a better mutual understanding.
More Indianisation The appointment of two Indians to represent India at the War Cabinet and on the Pacific War Council has been accompanied in India itself by the addition of five new Indian members to the Viceroy's Executive Council. The Council's membership has been enlarged from 12 to 15, of whom no fewer than eleven will be Indians. The single most interesting new portfolio is that of the Minister of Defence, to which a list of subjects is assigned more important than that originally put forward by Sir Stafford Cripps last April. One of them is man-power, i.e., recruiting, and includes the ad- ministration of the National Service (European British Subjects) Act. The Indian to fill this position, Sir Firoz Khan Noon, is an able man of tried capacity, and the same may be said of the rest ; they illustrate how much ability India possesses in the administra- tive sphere as distinct from the Congress politicians. It is one of the disservices which Congress has done to India that there is so much of a dividing wall between them—a wall which exists not only in the sense that the lawyers and wirepullers of Congress deprive eminent administrators, engineers, doctors, scientists, educationists, and business men of the political standing which they would other-
wise naturally enjoy, but also in the sense that these men of practical capacity find themselves repelled by the wordy atmosphere of Con- gress. Nevertheless, in spite of the wall, it is a gain that the Govern- ment of India should so largely be carried on by an Indian personnel. Except at the top it always has been, and therein lay from the first the germ of peaceful evolution from a British Raj to an Indian commonwealth.
Can Murder be Stopped ?
As daily and weekly there mounts up the toll of Czechs put to death by the Germans in reprisal for the killing of Heydrich (it is now well into four figures without counting the mass-massacre of two whole villages), the question forces itself on us once more, whether the Allied Governments have done all that is possible towards saving them. Two points may be noticed—first, that there is no doubt about the number of executions, since the Germans themselves proclaim it, and, secondly, that there are reasons for believing that to a considerable extent the victims are deliberately selected as being the natural leaders of the people, by extirpating whom it is hoped to prevent the Czech nation from ever rising again. The moral obligation of Great Britain towards the Czechs is obviously cogent ; and one would expect America to support her cordially in any attempt to discharge it. In general terms Mr. Churchill has said that our war aims include retribution for crimes committed ; but, judging by the absence of result, that has not convinced many, if any, individual Germans that their necks are in danger. Something more specific seems to be needed. The kind of declaration that might in practice deter, should refer not to crimes in general, but to a particular class of crime. In this instance it would be to the killing of civilians by way of reprisal for acts committed by others. The Allied Governments, having carefully defined the offence, would go on to declare that in their view it constitutes murder, and that all persons concerned in it from the lowest to the highest will hereafter be proceeded against on that basis. It is not, of course, the Czechs alone, who would benefit from anything that made a fear of individual retribution more real. Even greater gainers would be the gallant Poles, on whose soil a policy of national extirpation is being pursued on a vaster scale.
World Trade in Wheat
The wheat convention concluded between the United Kingdom, the United States, Argentina, Australia and Canada provides both a definite promise of relief to the hungry people of oppressed territories as soon as they are liberated from enemy control, and a plan for the controlled production and distribution of wheat in the future. The five governments are establishing a relief pool of too,000,000 bushels of wheat to satisfy the more immediate needs. It may- be assumed that no question of capacity to pay will enter into the question of emergency distribution. The long-term plan includes the setting up of a Wheat Council which, after the war, will prescribe maximum and minimum export prices for wheat and flour ; and the exporting countries will control their production, and provide what the Vice- President of the United States calls an " ever normal granary," with sufficient but not excessive stocks. The producer will thus be protected against severe slumps in prices, and the consumer against soaring prices arising from scarcity. The agreement is only a practi- cal beginning of what is to be the basis of wider efforts after the war. Then an international conference will be called in which other countries will be invited to take part. Fluctuations in the prices of wheat have had disastrous effects in the past on world prices ; but to make the programme complete other essential primary com- modities should be subject to similar world plans.
Lessons from U.S. Workshops
Mr. Lyttelton, speaking at Cardiff, gave an interesting account of certain lessons which he thought that engineering in this country might usefully learn from engineering in the United States. In the latter, he said, men are constantly experimenting to see whether materials in more plentiful supply can be substituted for scarcer materials, or whether by simplifications of design or method the work can be got more rap:dly through the plants. The point is that such avenues towards increased output are not left to be indi- cated from above, but are perpetually being explored by the men actually in charge of jobs at the works. In England this happens more rarely ; here the tendency is for all specifications to come cut-and-dried with the contract, and for the duty of the works to consist in carrying them out rigidly according to specification. With the increasing tightness in regard to raw materials, and the increasing necessity to secure an absolute maximum of mass-produced output, Mr. Lyttelton pleads for a certain adoption of American elasticity in this country. But the possibility of adopting it does not rest solely with the manufacturing firms. It depends finally on the attitude of the ordering departments—the Admiralty, the Ministry of Aircraft Pro- duction, and the Ministry of Supply. If Mr. Lyttelton wants results, he must not be content merely to make speeches, but must take also the appropriate administrative action.
The Problem of Officers
Those who seek the causes of our military failures are apt to fix either on faults of equipment or faults of the High Command ; and no doubt there may have been both, the former being certainly the more glaring and indisputable. But there are other possibilities of weakness, of which most intelligent men in training have had occa- sion to become aware. If one had to put one's finger on the weakest spot in the officering of the British Army, it would be neither on the generals nor on the subalterns, but on the colonels and majors commanding units of men. So far these have been drawn almost exclusively from pre-war Regulars or Territorials—that is, from a very small pool indeed, a pool, moreover, to which the Corre- sponding classes of the nation never made anything like a propor- tionate contribution of their best ability. The result is only what might have been expected, if in, we fear, too large a number of units the commanding officer is on a hopelessly lower level, whether of keenness or of capacity, than the better half of the officers under him. There is only one remedy, which is to train the best of the temporary officers to command the larger units. At a corre- sponding period in the last war this was already happening on a large scale ; the heavy losses of Regular officers from Ypres to the Somme rendered it inevitable. We ought not to wait for similar losses now. As for the highest ranks, the urgency is possibly less, and the showing of the last war less plain, since in Great Britain no temporary officer was promoted above the rank of brigadier. On the other hand, both the Australian and the Canadian commanders were men brought in from civil life, and both ranked very high indeed among the abler generals on our side.
Bombed Cathedral Cities
A thanksgiving service held in Canterbury Cathedral, subsequent to the air raid which did so much damage around it, inspired the Archbishop, the ex-Archbishop, the Dean and the Mayor to unite in a letter pointing out how wonderful is the opportunity " to rebuild a city with the cathedral set in it as a jewel." To realise this, they say, two conditions' must be met : first, the advice of " an artist or artists of real vision " ; secondly, readiness to sub- ordinate private interests. One would have thought that, from the practical standpoint, there was a third condition which needed emphasis at least as much, and which will apply to all the parallel cases—York, Norwich and Exeter, for example—as well as to Canter- bury. It is that, since these places are the heritage of the nation, and not merely of the locality, it ought not to be left solely to a municipal town-planning committee to decide what is to be done about them. In the case of Canterbury, the chairman of the town- planning committee has himself very properly endorsed that opinion ; so that there, at least, there should be no question of local self- assertion standing in the way. But on the State's side more is needed than control through the usual channels. A special Com- mission might well be set up to consider and advise on all these cases together—a technical Commission, of course, comprising (let us hope) the right technicians. A balance is needed between two points of view—that of the modern town-planner, who is some- times an iconoclast, and that of the historical architect, who should stand guard over all that is valuable in the accumulated tradition.
