Pointers

"Right now, say in October, we might storm the Continent and lose a couple of corps in doing it, but we would be there and we would push ahead. It might be a good idea to lose thousands and thousands, to martyr a per cent of our forces in order to chop a couple of years off the war. The casualties would be large but they would have to be suffered. . . . The martyr idea and the reduction of the war by two years might be a good plan, but remember I said it might."

Last week the conservative New York Sun splashed these words across its front page. They were part of a dispatch from the Sun's roving Correspondent-Columnist Ward Morehouse, who attributed them to Major General Russell P. ("Scrappy") Hartle, commander of the A.E.F. in northern Ireland. They were remarkable words because, on their faces, they were the nearest thing yet to a direct statement on the Second Front issue from a responsible U.S. military figure. Noteworthy also was the fact that the dispatch had been passed by the U.S. Army censorship. According to Reuters (British) News Service, "Scrappy" Hartle later denied that he made such a statement. But by then the Sun's dispatch had made its impression--an impression which reflected the feelings of millions of U.S. citizens.

By one interpretation, the Sun's story could be taken as a direct hint that the Allies might launch a sacrificial Second Front in time to help Russia. Yet the same dispatch, quoting other military men in the British Isles, also reported the same old conclusion that a Second Front in Western Europe would be impossible before next spring.

Other hints last week of Allied potentialities and plans:

> Canada announced that the Dieppe raid, Mr. Churchill's "indispensable preliminary" to a Second Front, had cost 3,350 Canadian casualties (170 dead, 633 wounded, 2,547 missing) among the 5,000 Canadians who landed at Dieppe.

Said Canadian Defense Minister J. L. Ralston: "For the lessons learned and the advantages gained, the forces engaged . . . paid a very heavy price." Though losses of an initial landing or raiding force are likely to be much higher in proportion than those of a major expeditionary army, the price of Dieppe was an indication of the blood bath which a real Second Front would become.

> Cairo correspondents, studying British communiques, concluded that a British raid on Tobruk Sept. 13 was yet another indication that the British Army had not mastered the technique of invasion. As at Dieppe, losses were high and results were indefinite. And, as at Dieppe, the Germans at Tobruk had formidable defense forces ready to meet Allied attack.

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