A noted British writer says the Lon-
don bombardment has been futile
Hitler Loses
Round One
By HILAIRE BELLOC
Timet, London Independent Conservative Daily
T H E enemy has concentrated his
attack on London. W h y has he
done this? T h e obvious answer
would seem to b e : "Because his object
is the defeat of this country and Lon-
don is its capital." But the answer
is not so simple.
I t is an elementary principle in
strategy that one's object must be the
destruction of the enemy's organized
armed forces, or, at the least, the re-
duction of them to such inferiority
that a decision is bound to go in one's
own favor. T h e organized armed
force of this country consists in three
elements which are, in the order of
their importance, the Navy, the Air
Force and the armed land forces.
London is not principally involved in
any one of these three. W h y then the
attack on London ?
T h e reason of the present concen-
trated assault by air upon London is
that the enemy proposes to throw the
life of this country into confusion be-
fore he proceeds to a final attack,
whether this final attack take the form
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of attempted invasion or of achieving
mastery of the air—which mastery
would, in the long run, give him near-
ly all the advantages he could obtain
f r o m invasion and occupation. I t is the
enemy's conviction that if he can
achieve the full confusion and dis-
array of London he will have achieved
the same results f o r the whole coun-
try.
W h y does he think this—seeing
that London is only the capital, and
not the armed strength of the coun-
try? H i s conviction is based upon the
peculiar situation of London political-
ly and geographically, and of these
two the political situation is f a r the
most important.
Geographically London is the clear-
ing house of many, but not all our
communications. T h e great railways
converge upon London and diverge
f r o m it. T h e main roads do the same.
T h e crossing of the T h a m e s f r o m that
unknown prehistoric date when it de-
pended on a f o r d at low tide (where
now the H o r s e f e r r y Road marks the

track and to which the Watling Street
pointed f r o m the Straits of Dover
and Canterbury) has been the main
nodal point of the most important
area in Britain: the fertile Midlands
and South, and the approach f r o m
the Continent.
T h e London area is still in our own
day, enormously extended though it
is, the main clearing house of our
communications. Interrupt the com-
munications of the London area and
you interrupt most of the main com-
munications of the country. Further,
the prolonged T h a m e s Estuary and
the line of the river above it are, even
under modern conditions, the chief
transverse obstacle to all communica-
tion south of the Midlands. Sooner
or later mere geographical conditions
make London a necessary target for
invasion.
But the political considerations are
much more important today than the
geographical. The most important of
these is numerical. London, f a r more
than any other capital, presents a nu-
cleus of population so large in pro-
portion to the whole state that its in-
fluence is decisive. T h e amount of the
total London population is debatable,
for there are no exact boundaries. But
if we call it, all told, with its suburban
zone and tentacles, eight millions, that
is no excessive estimate. T h e r e are
certainly eight million souls counting
as the urban population of that enor-
mous gathering. N o w if you compare
this with any other capital of any
other first-class power in the world,
you will find it to be on a unique scale.
Even N e w York and its appendages
are not in the same proportion to the
United States. Paris is not in the same
proportion t o the p o p u l a t i o n of
France. Berlin may be called anything
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[309]
between 4 and 5 per cent (it is cer-
tainly not 6 per cent) of the Reich
which it administers. London holds at
least 14 per cent and probably nearer
16 per cent of the population of the
island.
S T I L L more important is the social
value o f L o n d o n — t h e weight
London carries in the direction of
opinion and, what is equally impor-
tant, in the general mass of opinion.
It used to be said that Paris was
France. It is much more true that Lon-
don is Great Britain. Public informa-
tion derives f r o m and is concentrated
upon, London. T h e r e is not in theory
the same centralization of political
power in the capital as there is in most
continental countries, but we all know
that, in reality, London is the reser-
voir which r e c e i v e s all influence
whether of wealth or of office and
whence all influence flows.
London has f o r centuries been not
only the main port, but overwhelm-
ingly the largest port of the island:
which island lives by commerce. T o -
day London is the main port of entry
for a form of goods more vital now
than any other, food. Even more im-
portant than being the main gateway
through which our sustenance passes,
it is the main market wherein the ex-
change of that sustenance is decided.
In other countries, where agriculture
plays a larger part, the urban areas
are usually the masters, but here they
are everything; and there is no urban
area amid all our dense mass of town-
land comparable to London. T h e en-
emy, in concentrating upon London, in
attempting to throw London into dis-
array, is certainly aiming at the heart.
But to aim is not to attain; and the
effect he has so f a r achieved is not
[310]
comparable to the magnitude of his
intention. H e has destroyed buildings,
but not upon a scale which interrupts
the general life of London. H e has
n o t come within any appreciable dis-
tance pf his ultimate goal, even in this
limited field. As to the price he has
paid f o r this second effort at victory we
cannot judge that until the present ac-
tion is completed. But it is already an
exceedingly high price. H i s first effort
at a final decision was the air battle
T H E effort against L o n d o n still
of August and ended on August 18,
with his d e f e a t .
I t is because the results of that
battle disappointed him that he now
turns to another scheme. H i s first plan
was to establish mastery in the air by
his superiority in numbers and to do
so in one m a j o r charge. T h a t charge
was b r o k e n ; and meanwhile there h a s
been f u r t h e r p r e p a r a t i o n and f u r t h e r
increase in w h a t must become, short
of a very proximate decision, the
manifest superiority of this country
in air p o w e r and, with t h a t superior-
ity, a decision at last against our
enemies. .
proceeds. It is t o o early as yet to
define at all exactly the limits of its
failure. But we note the steady stream
of the enemy's losses in trained pilots
and crews and their very high p r o p o r -
tion to the total possible number of
such experts at his disposal. T h e
whole world is noting this as well as
we, and that is why its j u d g m e n t of
the struggle is changing.

T H E UNDERGROUND OPPOSITION
P r o p a g a n d a is a remarkable f e a t u r e of anti-Nazi
activity. Printers work secretly at night at opposi-
tion leaflets. T h e y go f r o m hand to h a n d ; they are
placed in letter-boxes; they are found on the streets
and in parks.
D u r i n g the interval of a recent p e r f o r m a n c e held
by the Nazis in Berlin's biggest theater, the " T h e a t e r
des Volkes," while the audience was in the foyer,
some thousands of copies of a p a m p h l e t h e a d e d
Adolf Hitler, Our Leader, were b r o u g h t in and l e f t
on a table together with a poster announcing t h a t
they were obtainable f r e e of charge.
T h o s e who had brought them in disappeared, and
by the time it was found that the contents of the
pamphlet were really anti-Nazi there w e r e very few
l e f t f o r the officials to collect. A n a t t e m p t to re-
cover the missing copies m e t with little success.
W h i l e strict black-out regulations were being ob-
served in Germany and the occupied territories, new
anti-Nazi slogans were found every m o r n i n g on the
walls in the large towns.
—Reynolds News, London

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 Between the Axis and Soviet Russia,
the nation may be driven from Europe

Turkey Again
in the Middle
By CHARLES M . MEISTER

F EAR of her geographically

closest and greatest friend

gripped T u r k e y in mid-Novem-
promising continued independence and

territorial integrity to Turkey. But

ber at. a time when spectacular sue-
cesses of two other friends, Greece in
the snowy mountains and G r e a t
Britain in the blue waters of the
Eastern Mediterranean, had thrust
back the grasping claws of Italy's
land and naval forces. Behind the
ominous silence regarding Turkey
which characterized the communique
issued in Berlin at the conclusion there
of the visit of Soviet Commissar
Molotov, leaders in A n k a r a saw the
possibility of a German-Soviet agree-
ment to take control of the D a r d a -
nelles.
Once more Russia appeared as a
great bear whose arms could crush
in embrace even when its claws were
not in use. Each success of the
British and the Greeks revived the
slow-dying hope that the poorly or-
ganized but massive strength of the
Soviet Union might in the end be
brought to the aid of the alliance
each sign of German-Russian collab-
oration, however vague, made the sit-
uation seem more bleak,
Now for the first time the Turkish
people face a definite possibility of be-
ing driven literally and individually
out of Europe. During the century
when their then empire, decaying and
being broken off bit by bit, was called
"the sick man of E u r o p e , " they were
protected by a balanced rivalry of
powers. W h e n alliance with Germany
brought them defeat in the first World
W a r , they knew that proposals to am-
putate their last remaining bit of ter-
ritory in Europe, r e f e r r e d only to po-
litical control. But a Germany, vic-
torious in the present war, would not
hesitate to force the last T u r k over
into Anatolia.
And if the occasion arose the So-
viet Union might do the same,
Explanation f o r the hesitant atti-
tude adopted by the Turkish Govern-
ment when Italy attacked Greece may

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