Blockade in the Balance

Blockade and famine remained last week the only weapons with which Great Britain remotely threatened her overwhelming enemy, Germany. An official British statement surveyed the famine possibilities, found the chances good if the war and blockade could be made to last until winter. Meantime, blockade was in the balance. Its continuance and extension off Germany's long new Atlantic coastline depended primarily on the fate of the French Navy.

This week that fate was sealed, so far as France's new Government was concerned (see p. 20). But how many officers would obey orders issued under Axis duress and surrender their ships remained a major question. Bulk of the French Navy was believed to be in the Eastern Mediterranean. When the commandant of the naval base at Toulon announced that he and his men would fight on regardless of the armistices, that seemed a clue to the temper of French naval forces in the West. The French had been operating since September under direction of the British Admiralty. Presumably most of their ships were within Britain's power to hold and reman, if the personnel withdrew to save their relatives at home from punishment. If the ships were only kept out of Axis hands, even though not used by Britain, a slim balance of sea power would still remain with Britain, especially since the Royal Navy claimed to have again damaged the Scharnhorst at Trondheim. Stories conflicted about what ships the Germans had been able, to seize at Brest and St. Nazaire.

"We are ... told that the Italian Navy is coming to gain sea superiority in these waters. If that is seriously intended, I can only say we shall be delighted to offer Mussolini free, safeguarded passage through the Strait of Gibraltar. . . . There is general curiosity in the British Fleet to find out whether the Italians are up to the level they were in the last war or whether they have fallen off. . . ."

Thus, sarcastically, did Prime Minister Winston Churchill last week touch on the second decisive issue in Great Britain's war of blockade: keeping the Italian Navy bottled in the Mediterranean. Like a rude punctuation mark after Mr. Churchill's speech came a mine explosion 12,700 miles from Gibraltar, in the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand. Down went the Canadian-Australasian liner Niagara (13,415 tons) a few hours out of Auckland for Vancouver. All 203 crew and 146 passengers were rescued. This week an Italian submarine was reported sunk by British fire off the East Indies.

Counter-Blockade. Even with the French Navy still at its side, the Royal British Navy would be hard pressed to fight off counter-blockade (and starvation) by the Axis. For apart from any surface raiders it may be able to turn loose, the Italian Navy contains not less than 130 submarines, many of them minelayers. With new construction, plus a dozen seized in Denmark and several more last week in France, Germany may now have enough submarines to bring the Axis total up to 200. The total of Allied destroyers, including French, was not much more than 250, or a destroyer-submarine ratio of 1 1/4-to-1. The air arm now supplements destroyers and the convoy system makes their work easier, but during World War I a grand total of 781 Allied destroyers (in ratio more than 3-to-1) was none too many to ride herd on a total of 221 Austro-German submarines.

Last week Spanish fishermen quit working off the Irish coast because they saw too many U-boats to suit them. One torpedoed the 13,950-ton British merchant-cruiser Andania.

North Anchor of the British blockade in the Atlantic is the volcanic tableland called Iceland, which, until April 10, shared Christian X with Denmark as her King. British warships took Iceland under patrol, British troops were sent there "protectively" while the Nazis rampaged through Norway. Last week, following reports of a German expedition about to sail to seize Iceland, Prime Minister Mackenzie King of Canada announced that a Canadian force had landed at Reykjavik, home of the world's oldest parliament (930 A.D.). Should the Germans arrive and fight, the Battle for Iceland would bring World War II within 2,100 miles of U. S. soil.

South Anchor of the British blockade is that towering prong of limestone, Hades-hot in summer, 2 1/2 miles long and 1,396 ft. high, which points like a torpedo from the Spanish mainland southward across the 15-mile Strait of Gibraltar separating Europe and Africa (see map, p. 29).

Its name is corrupted from Jebel Tarig (Mountain of Tarig), which the Moors called it in honor of their chieftain who seized it from the Visigoths in 711 A.D.

Before the Visigoths, Rome held it. The Spanish took it from the Moors in 1462 and in 1704 Sir George Rooke, who felt he must have something to show for an unsuccessful expedition which he had led against Barcelona, wrested it from Spain.

All through the 18th Century, the Spanish tried to get the Rock back. In 1779-83 they and the French besieged it continuously, finally gave up when their fleet of ships reinforced with green timber, cork and rawhide was set afire by red-hot British cannonballs. In that long siege, British General Sir George Elliot lost in action only 333 out of 7,000 men in the face of attackers totaling 40,000. Britain offered to trade Gibraltar for Florida or for Minorca, but the Spanish refused. Spain offered to buy it for $10,000,000 and the British refused. By the 19th Century its value to British naval supremacy was recognized as beyond price and it became a world symbol for permanent security.

Shaped like a lion couchant, it harbored a colony of Barbary apes--the only wild monkeys in Europe--on its rugged back.

Superstition says that so long as the apes survive, the British will retain Gibraltar.

Last week, a few Barbary apes--meat for air bombs--still squeaked and picked their fleas on Gibraltar, but the British garrison under Lieut. General Sir Clive Gerard ("Jock") Liddell, 57, knew that terrible tests lay not far in the future.

They were as ready as British ingenuity and foresight could make them. Their cisterns, filled with rain water from great catchments on the Rock's steep eastern side, held 140,000,000 gallons of water.

Huge caves and shafts held mountains of food and ammunition, furnished air-raid protection. The town of 21,000 on the western slope was evacuated of noncombatants. Debarkation of all non-Allies was stopped last week and a Spanish ship plying across the bay from Algeciras was not allowed even to dock.

To the north the Rock's sheerest face rises above a flat sandy neck, where the British troops drill and play rugby in peacetime. This bit of ground is too small for an airfield and is separated by heavy barbed wire and land mines from the border town of La Linea de la Concepcion alive with Spanish artillery, troops and prostitutes. From this quarter even a horde of German shock troops would have difficulty storming the British guns trained from camouflaged, cement-lined galleries that are cut deep enough (by General Sir Edmund Ironside, the Rock's former commandant) to defy overhead bomb attacks.

The Rock bristles with Europe's most concentrated anti-aircraft installation.

On its east, west and south exposures, mortars and rifles up to 16 inches, capable of hurling metal 20 miles, guard the Rock and deny the Strait of Gibraltar to surface ships. The naval base on the west is protected by chain booms and a minefield.

The Royal Navy's job at Gibraltar, besides keeping the soldiery provisioned, munitioned and reinforced with men and new parts for damaged guns, is to prevent Axis submarines from passing through the Strait. This it would do with depth charges from patrol boats and with steel barrage nets.

The bottom of the Strait drops off to 3,000 ft., but Axis submarines cannot stand water pressures below 400 ft. (190 Ib. per sq. in.). The Strait is too wide for a continuous barrage 400 ft. deep, but "sporadic" netting--here tonight, there tomorrow night--might discourage the most daring Italian or German submarine crews.

The Spanish three-mile limit offers wide loopholes unless boldly plugged.

Despite Britain's array of power in the Rock, British Military Expert Captain Liddell Hart believes it untenable as a naval base and the German High Command believes it crackable as a fortress.

Both these beliefs are based on the fact that during the Spanish Civil War, Germany took occasion to install, ostensibly for Dictator Franco, an untold number of huge coastal guns not only at Algeciras and Tarifa on the European side but also at Fort Hacho (Ceuta), Punta Blanca, and other points on the African side.

Gibraltar's security now depends primarily on Spain's friendship, and Spain's occupation of Tangier last fortnight was no friendly omen. The pounding which Franco's guns could give warships inside Gibraltar's moles and booms would certainly be disastrous and perhaps, over a period of weeks, big shells could smash away the Rock's friable limestone--of which every splinter becomes a missile when a shell explodes--to expose the defenders' guns to ultimate destruction. If that should happen, Benito Mussolini would escape his Mediterranean cage.

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