triallsts? .

The Age of Miracles is Not Past

A Survey By R. W. Robson

I N fat t man C smißfl e nn^ tly W I heard a ma f l squealing. He was one news kno^-ali eSS pubhc pests ’ a war "

“Why doesn’t Britain land a million men in France, and go ’em™" he bawled. “Why doesn’t the RAF bomb the Roumanian oilfields’ Whv doesn’t the bloody fleet blast the Italian ports? What are we sitting around for, anyway?” s Qne just naturally wanted to cut his silly throat: but one must remember that we actually are fighting for the right of just such harmless people to express their own opinions, and that, in any event, it is not easy for the average, nonstudious man to get this frightful war-picture into correct focus (l° on< l year ' lay proscflicnfawf' Hussia was aloof, inwmmth»ti/w lca was vociferously

practically helpless

stm geared o hf n^ 81 ?™ 1 mllliol s sation g lnri d ni.tiAßt n dr ganisauon and outlook Britain, alone in Totalitarian l“ d up bef ° rd the and defiant monster, unconquered ana defiant r How vividly I remember June, 1940. tfayaD by “thT men 6 b fa * nen 01 vicny < a

name that will 80 with Q uislint ? into our language as a svnonvm of shame), and we faced stark realities.

How could Britain, a semi-armed nation of 50,000,000, def X J!~ ma sniHcently-armed, war- P ad Gel ’many of 80,000,000, assisted 5L a „. well-equipped Italy, a sym fnnnnnnnn Jap , an ’ , and a * least 100,000,000 enslaved European mdus

triallsts? .

Certainly, Britain had a matchless navy - But her Air Force, if incom- P ara ble, was still small, and half her arm y comprised the unequipped, dis organised, if unbeaten men just with drawn from Dunkirk. Is it any won der th at Hitler said “the war will be over by September”, and proceeded leisurely to the kill!

It did not seem possible that Britain could survive, I was one who spent many of those Sydney winter nights at the radio, picking up scraps a ”; d bits of information from every where, wondering why the Hun did not immediately spring upon the Old Country, and put out of existence. I still do not know why.

Dunkirk had been Miracle No. I.

Thls tet-off in July was Miracle No 2 back—God knows by how narrow a

margin. But he was decisively beaten Miracle No. 3. rpHEN came the European winter. x Tj l ? baffled Hun told Mussolini that, if he wanted to collect, he had better do something. A half million Italians, flag-wagging and drum thumpmg in typical Dago fashion prepared to march into the Valley of the Nile, from Libya and Abyssinia, and overwhelm the small British forces. Britain, trying in desperate haste to equip her home troops against the expected 1941 invasion and to build up the RAF so that it might strike at western Germany, was not likely to send heavy equip ment for her Middle East armies.

Yet within six months, those small British and Imperial forces drove all the Italian armies out of Africa, re stored Abyssinia to her ruler, took Syria from the Vichy French, and re occupied Iraq. Miracle No. 4. The reverses in Libya, Greece and Crete were bad. But we still held Egypt and the Middle East. r>EING defeated in daylight raids in August - September, 1940, the Hun, in the 1940-41 winter, developed the night “blitz”; and, early in 1941, with growing masses of night bom bers, he began systematically to destroy the capital and chief indus trial cities of Britain.

No words yet written have described adequately the terrors, horrors and destruction of those blitzes. Britain according to all rules and calculations, should have capitulated, as Hitler

intended. But the British kept on working, and they sang as they worked: and they further equipped their island against invasion, and trained new armies, and built more ships, and repaired a million tons of damaged shipping, and quadrupled their aeroplane output, and fought the silent, ceaseless Battle of the Atlantic, and somehow found time to send huge equipment to Singapore and masses of armaments to Greece and China. I think I should call all this another miracle. If I add the fact that, in this hectic period, January-April, 1941, the British per fected and operated a secret gadget that has driven the night bombers out of the English sky, I am sure I may bring all this into account as Miracle No. 5.

Think of what that little country achieved in organisation and produc tion, under almost ceaseless, merci-

This number of the "PIM" completes Volume 11. Index of the Volume is published on pages 63 and 64 of this issue.

less bombing, within a few months.

And then consider the place in his tory of fat men who squeal in trams about Britain’s war effort!

BUT the great test still was to come.

Germany, thrusting here, thrust ing there, by May, 1941, held enslaved all of Europe except Spain, Portugal, Finland, Sweden and Russia; and Spain, Sweden and Finland did her bidding. She had at least 8,000,000 men under arms. She was mistress of the world, except for Britain (still defying her), Russia (with whom she had a pact of non-aggression), Japan (her formal but non-belligerent ally), and the United States (defiant, but changing so slowly to belligerence as to be only partly in the picture, as yet).

Clearly, Britain must be crushed, and that quickly. That was how Britain herself read the Nazi mind, and she prepared accordingly. Writ ing here only on June 14 last, I visualised a terrifying thing. I could see every British man and woman in position on the defences, equipped with every device that ingenuity and industry could make or America could supply, awaiting a “blitz” that would go on and on until our heroic people were submerged by countless millions of oncoming Huns. I hated the picture I saw; but I had no doubt about what was coming.

But, even as I wrote on June 14, reports were accumulating of a mass ing of Germans on the Russian frontier. Hitler, they said, was go ing to attack Russia. I could not be lieve it. Some people had never lost faith in a Russo-German clash; but all the best-informed opinion in 194) (Walter Duranty, for instance, just back after years in Moscow) agreed that Russia would submit to almost any German demands, rather than engage in war. Reports in that week

insisted that, for reasons no one was capable of explaining, a vast war was about to break out between Teuton and Slav. But, although I myself had forecast a year before (in June, 1940) that if Germany attacked Jugo slavia and entered the Balkans, Russia probably would attack Germany, I could not imagine that the danger we all saw now hanging over Britain could so suddenly be diverted.

I was a sceptic until, on Sunday, June 22, I heard the BBC man in London say: “Hitler directed his armies to attack the Soviet at 4 a.m. to-day. Germany and Russia are now fighting”.

MIRACLE No. 6—and a miracle in deed. Even now, I cannot imagine how it happened. “Those whom the gods destroy, they first make mad”. What madness fell upon Hitler, that he was induced to dis sipate his mighty strength upon the Russian Colossus, when he could have kept Russia quiet while he anticipated American aid and smashed Britain?

We may never know. It remains as one of the war’s major mysteries, like Hitler’s failure to invade Britain in July, 1940, and the flight of Hess.

We cannot imagine what may come out of this Russo-German clash. Per haps Russia will be broken, and Ger many will gain a route around the Black Sea into the Middle East, and a source of vast, unlimited supplies that will allow her to carry on the war against Britain and USA for years, if necessary. Perhaps Russia will stand up against Germany’s military might long enough to dis locate Hitler’s plans. But this we know. If, when the snow falls in Moscow, in September, Hitler has not broken Russia, Germany will have lost the war.

MEANWHILE, the high - spirited British people are given a wholly unexpected breathing - space a chance, while Russia holds the des troying Hun, to build up defences and armaments to the utmost, re-organise shipping and put the Anglo-American accord upon a sounder and more practical basis. The chances, still, are that the Hun will smash Russia in time to allow him to throw his whole weight upon Britain, before the end of 1941. The danger is so great; there is so little time; and America moves so slowly.

Nonetheless, we may not forget that strange things have happened, in this strange war. Miracles.

Lieutenant-Commander A. W. R.

McNicoll. RAN, has been awarded the George Medal “for gallantry and un daunted devotion to duty”. This short cabled announcement was published in Sydney newspapers on July 9. Congratu lations to Sir Ramsay and Lady McNicoll, of Government House, Rabaul, on the great honour achieved by their son. The George Medal is the civil equivalent of the Victoria Cross.

Sister Veronica, who recently completed furlough in New Zealand, is expected to return shortly to Bunana Island, BSI, where she is a member of the “Sisters of the Cross” organisation.