South Yorkshire Times, September 11th 1943
Four Years of War
Looking back across four years of war, as we do to-day, we cannot help but see reasons not only for thankfulness but confidence. How different is the present position of the Allies compared with the parlous state of our own country after Dunkirk, and conversely how bleak the outlook for the once irresistible totalitarian powers. The balance has been slowly and painfully adjusted, but there is no longer any question which way it swings.
This fourth year of the war has brought a definite transference of the initiative. The United Nations have gone over to the attack, and only colossal blunders can now deprive them of this pre-requisite of victory.
When France threw in the towel in June, 1940, the whole world thought that the continued existence of Great Britain and her vast Empire was at best a matter of weeks. In that moment of history so pregnant with fateful suspense the important thing was that the people of Great Britain did not consider themselves beaten. They were down but not out. Indomitable leadership, greater than public morale because it was aware of the almost complete nakedness of the country’s defences, produced the audacious decision to deplete virtually bankrupt arsenals to save Africa and Suez.
Field Marshal Wavell’s brilliant campaign won vital time, while the Battle of Britain left Germany with the reminder that her arms, victorious in so many battles, rarely managed to win the last. After that it was a question of hanging on while losses were laboriously made good, the Air Force, Navy and Army built up, a process wonderfully speeded by the entry of America hastened by Japan’s dastardly attack. That event, of course, had been preceded by Hitler’s rash assault on Russia in the summer of 1941. In this campaign the failure to take Moscow in the first year and the costly and unsuccessful attack against the Caucasus were fatal miscalculations. Germany’s powers were on the wane,
The fourth year of the war has brought the logical results of British staunchness and Nazi blunders. Starting at El Alamein the British and Dominion forces, later energetically supported by their American allies, cleared the Axis out of Africa in little over six months and are now lodged firmly on Italian soil. The hunting U-boat packs found themselves hunted, decimated, and driven from haunts no longer safe let alone profitable. The Red Army, doggedly kept in being under the unflinching leadership of Marshal Stalin, first checked and then began to drive back the German hordes, and in the Far East America gathered strength to give the Japanese an earnest of what impends when the full might of the United Nations is thrown against her. As we enter the fifth year of the war we look back on an encouraging picture. But ahead lie stiff tasks, The highest successes do not make war enjoyable and our will is to make an end as speedily as may be.
We have not won yet, but we have the advantage of our foe and must press him the more fiercely until he breaks and yields,