Wanted: More Aggression

Queasiest of Europe's quaking neutrals last week were the Swiss. In their two largest cities, Basle and Zurich, both within easy striking distance of the Reich, ominous instructions from the Swiss General Staff were distributed from house to house. These ordered the two cantons' 864,000 citizens to get ready to flee to the countryside in case Switzerland is attacked, warned them to hold themselves in permanent readiness for an evacuation call which may come at any moment.

The Swiss notice was only the most overt indication of the fact that half of Europe wants and the other half fears that the long quiescent war may soon spread like prairie fire. Most hard-pressed neutral of Europe last week was undoubtedly Rumania. German newspapers hinted that unless Rumania forked over more oil. Nazi troops would come and get it. To this Turkish Premier Refik Saydam replied that Turkey would go to war with any country that started invading the Balkans. "While Turkey is doing all she can to prevent the war from spreading, no one can be sure that this can be avoided," he added. The Premier's point of view was underlined by a visit to Ankara of General Maxime Weygand, chief of the big French and Arab Army assembled in nearby Syria.

While heretofore the Allies have been left to wonder where the Nazis would strike next, last week the shoe was on the other foot. French papers have been toying with the notion of using General Weygand's Army--plus a Turkish Army--on a "Caucasian front"--i. e., in a campaign directed at Russia's rich oil fields. Krasnaya Zvezda, newsorgan of the Soviet Union's Commissariat of Defense, observed: "The scale of war preparations of the Anglo-French bloc in the Near East . . . leads us to think that we are not faced there by a mere diversion limited in scope and character, but by far-reaching strategic plans." Fortnight ago First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill invited Scandinavia (among others) to pitch in and help defeat the Nazi-Bolshevik combination. British public opinion was last week discernibly dissatisfied with the present "defensive" course of the war and more voices than ever demanded action. Most forcible expression came from the onetime First Lord of the Admiralty, Leopold S. Amery, in a London speech:

"Britain's air policy should be to force the Germans to fight and use up their petrol. By raiding German bases and factories we can destroy the Nazi legend that the Fuehrer can protect his people against bombs. Right from the beginning of the war, the Nazis have conserved their fuel. ... I frankly do not understand why we have hitherto refrained from raiding the enemy territory."

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