Anti-Blitzkrieg

The War Office officially claimed to have nothing to do with the nationwide campaign sweeping British golf clubs last week to have all golfers carry rifles in their bags, shoot Nazi parachuteers on sight. "Many of our readers, particularly those living in the shires," said the London Times, "have already written to ask what is the correct method of dealing with these missionaries of Hitlerism dropping from the sky. . . . It would not be correct for country gentlemen to carry their guns with them on their walks and take flying or running shots as opportunity is offered. . . . Such action would put them into the position of francs-tireurs and should therefore be avoided."

Whitsuntide, when the dead Christ's Apostles began work in earnest, had been chosen by Adolf Hitler to get his total war under way. Whitsunday is a big British holiday but the holiday was canceled and the Government called on every Briton to keep a sharp eye aloft for Nazi invaders. King George called 2,500,000 more conscripts to the colors, and the War Office announced that soon there will be in the British Isles some 4,500,000 prospective soldiers in various stages of training.

Stern Home Secretary Sir John Anderson announced that seven years of penal servitude or a fine of $1,750 or both is now the penalty for any Briton caught "systematically" fomenting opposition to the war, but still permitted were mere "expressions of opinion." This week Sir John will ask the House of Commons to enact "A Bill To Make Further Provision and Punishment For Treachery," imposing death as the penalty for serious cases of spying. Detectives this week were busy trying to catch up with quislings who plastered northeast London with stickers urging everyone to listen to "the new British broadcasting station" on a wave length which turned out to be Hamburg. The Churchill Cabinet, predicted leading British Communists, will shortly suppress the Communist Party. The Government decreed a $1,750 penalty for the new crime of exporting from the United Kingdom copies of either Action, the British Fascist weekly, or the Communist London Daily Worker.

Everywhere Britons again carried their gas masks and the whole Air Raid Precautions system was pepped up afresh. "If you are caught in the open and cannot reach shelter," advised the Home Office, "lie down and cover your head with your arms." Newspapers urged the people to keep cool if & when death dropped out of the skies; told them that the one you hear doesn't get you, that Britain has plenty of fighter planes and anti-aircraft guns to drive off aerial Blitzkriegers.

Army sentries were rapidly posted at every conceivably vulnerable point with orders to challenge and open fire if the challengee should not stand perfectly still and cry, "Friend!" That these orders were in lethal earnest the War Office emphasized by announcing: "Those suffering from deafness are advised to avoid any point occupied by troops at which a sentry is known to be posted."

Austrian and German refugees, hitherto permitted their freedom, were rounded up and interned just in case some of them might turn out to be quislers. Outside London, curfew for all aliens, friendly or not, rang at 8 p.m. Motorized troops and police roved everywhere, stopping cars and examining credentials.

London's always truculent weekly The Aeroplane flatly predicted Britain would be bombed soon, implored the Prime Minister instantly to open "swift, methodical attacks by the Royal Air Force on Germany's communications, munitions factories, aircraft works and flying fields."

"We must not be forestalled again," cried The Aeroplane. "We must hit the enemy hard and often in his tenderest spots."

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