Widening Out?

Upon the unfolding panorama of World War II last week appeared new trouble spots, new stirrings of warlike activity which seemed to foretell a vast widening of the conflict as grand strategy was deliberately evolved and brought into play.

While fighting reached a new pitch of intensity on all the established fronts of land, sea and air between the Allies and Germany, while Finland continued to give ground slowly and bloodily before the Russian avalanche, events at the top and bottom of Europe tended to embrace and at the same time expand the conflict.

Northern Blockade. Basic point made by the Allies in last fortnight's Altmark affair, when the British destroyer Cossack raided a fjord of neutral Norway to liberate 299 British seamen taken from the late raider Admiral Graf Spec's, victims, was that German use and abuse of Norwegian waters to elude the Allied blockade must stop. While the grounded Altmark was refloated last week and Norway pondered whether to hand her back to Germany before getting Great Britain to agree to arbitrate the case, the Allies acted. East of the North Cape in the Arctic Ocean, off Finland's lost port of Petsamo and off Murmansk in Red Russia, an undetermined number of Allied warships let their presence be known. Ostensibly they were an extension of the North Atlantic blockade, which stretches to Iceland. They were there to prevent Germany from getting seaborne supplies from northern Russia. Perhaps also they would interfere with future shipments of Swedish and Norwegian iron ore to Germany through Norway's coastal waters, and prevent German submarines from using Murmansk as a base, or Russian submarines from going to help the Germans. Perhaps--though this was not yet demonstrable--they were the advance guard for Allied supplies or even an Allied expeditionary force for beleaguered Finland. The Papal daily Osservatore Romano in Vatican City credited this view, at least so far as supplies went. In England, erstwhile War Minister Leslie Hore-Belisha added color to the world's conjectures with a fighting (and uncensored) speech calling for instant Allied aid to Finland by land, air and sea. Admiral Nikolai Kuznetsov, handsome young top commissar of the Red Navy, was reported speeding to Murmansk, main base for Russia's northern Fleet. White Russians in the U. S. talked excitedly about a counter-revolutionary regime, to be set up in northern Russia if the Allies strike there.

Southern Stirrings. While the Soviet Fleet maneuvered in the Black Sea, a British cruiser halted and searched the Soviet freighter Svanetia just outside the Dardanelles. The Turkish Cabinet invoked its new powers, set up a committee to coordinate war effort.

But alarums in Turkey and the Caucasus were not so loud as events in Rumania. There the Government of King Carol, bowing before Allied pressure which took the form of shutting off supplies of cotton, wool, jute, aluminum and iron from Rumanian factories, not only assured the British Government that Rumania's exports of oil to Germany would not exceed 130,000 tons per month, but embargoed all aviation fuel and lubricants from leaving the country. With Dr. Karl Clodius, economic field marshal for Adolf Hitler, due back in Bucharest this week for a final showdown on Rumanian oil, this step was a daring one indeed. And Rumania backed it up by ordering to their regiments at once 200,000 reservists who had been called for March 1. Troops, ammunition, tanks, trucks and cannon rolled toward Rumania's northern frontiers in greater volume than ever and the Rumanian man power now mobilized was put at 1,600,000.

That Rumania, pushed and backed by the Allies, had decided on a resolute stand against Germany and Russia was further evidenced -- and explained -- by a scene last week in Sofia, capital of Rumania's southern and (until lately) cool neighbor Bulgaria. Rumania's Finance Minister Mitita Constantinescu, after a two-day visit talking politics and economics with the Bulgarians, bade them farewell by crying: "Long live Bulgaria!" and joining his hosts in throwing top hats into the air.

This might well mean that Bulgaria, in return for a promise that Rumania will some day give her back at least part of the Dobruja region which she lost after World War I, will not offer obstacles to the Allies or the Turks if they want to go up and help Rumania fight Hitler-Stalin.

A Turkish newspaper, Yeni Sabah of Istanbul, last week put into plain words the Turkish attitude toward Rumania: "Turkey will enter the war the day a foreign power marches into the Balkans. . . . Our country will not await her turn with folded arms while the Balkans are crushed. That is one mistake we shall not make."

Meantime, some 800,000 soldiers stood to arms and got readier every day just south of Turkey, under French General Maxime Weygand and British Lieut. General Sir Archibald Percival Wavell. These two commanders also keynoted last week.

Said Sir Archibald (to some newly arrived Anzacs): ". . . Don't be disappointed if you have to wait some time for action. Your arrival here has discouraged our enemies and made war less probable."

Said General Weygand: "I am a fireman, ready to put out the fire anywhere it breaks out."

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