Blitzkrieg or Sitzkrieg?

GREAT BRITAIN Blitzkrieg or Sitzkrieg?

Acclaimed for its explanation of its policy toward the Russo-Finnish war (see col. 3), the British Government (and Parliament) prepared to go home for Easter. One question still weighed on Parliament's collective mind (and on the minds of lots of other people), so the Chamberlain Government briskly addressed itself to relieving the pressure. The question: Were the Allies wise to pursue their seven-month "Sitzkrieg?"

Because Britons have taken quite a pummeling from the Germans on sea and from the air, and because they have given the Germans quite a punching around in the Sylt, Altmark and Spee affairs. Britons are not so prone as the restless French (see p. 20) to regard the war and their Government as passive. Nevertheless, War Secretary Oliver Stanley felt constrained to admonish domestic and foreign spectators who want more gore in World War II. "We intend to fight in our own way and not in their way," he snorted. "How easy it is, from the ringside, after a comfortable dinner, to urge other people to hit and go on hitting each other."

Day before Prime Minister Chamberlain had told the House: "I know that there are some who would urge a more vigorous policy, who say that by some unexplained, imaginative stroke of daring we ought, as they say, to wrest to ourselves the initiative. With the responsibility that rests upon the shoulders of this Government we cannot be hustled into adventures which appear to us to present little chance of success and much chance of danger and perhaps disaster."

Sheep and Dogs. In a letter to the London Times last week an irate female reader urged Europe's small neutral States to act not like sheep but like tiger-hunting dogs, accused sheep of waiting when attacked to be eaten up one by one, praised the dogs for sticking together in a pack and making a "combined rush" at their attacker. The P.M. did not use such picturesque imagery, but he did remark across the ropes to neutrals like Norway and Sweden that they had better adopt a policy that "corresponds to realities," instead of acting as if "it was a matter of indifference to those small neutral States whether the war ended in victory for Germany or for the Allies."

Shift? "A surprising number" of London Daily Express readers last week returned at their own expense answers to a questionnaire intended to sound British war sentiment. As to the war's outcome, 69.4% "feel confident of an Allied victory"; 27.6% do not; and 1.5% expect a stalemate. Of those who replied, 49.5% called "insecurity for the future" their "greatest wartime discomfort," but 46% are "determined to win at all costs"; 38.7% voted themselves "bewildered."

Any Cabinet shifts prompted by the near-scandal in the Supply Ministry or a public desire for more or less war action were scheduled for consideration by the Government during the Easter recess. Indications were that they would not be nearly so drastic as those in France. If a more intensified Sitzkrieg were on the books, an inner War Cabinet under pat-standing Foreign Secretary Viscount Halifax was in the cards. If blitzkrieging were in order, the Admiralty's pugnacious Winston Churchill was the man for the job. Otherwise, the Government would just rock along under the direct leadership of Hardware Man Chamberlain.

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