Today besides being St. Andrew's Day; observed by all Scots wherever they may be, is also an anniversary of which Herr Hitler and his accomplices may care to take note but not celebrate, It is the sixty-fifth birthday of Mr. Winston Churchill, the man who, for some reason or other, they so greatly hate, and hating fear, Long before the war started Mr, Churchill was singled out by Herr Hitler as one of the alleged warmongers whom he so bitterly attacked, It was when it was realized that Germany had made war inevitable that Mr, Churchill was offered the position of First Lord of the Admiralty, a post in which he so distinguished himself a quarter of a century ago, and in which he is likely to cover himself with further glory, Since the war broke out he has been the object of considerable vilification on the part of German publicists and broadcasters, who have realized that by this appointment the British Prime Minister made it quite clear to them that he meant business, and that the war was to be prosecuted with all that vigour of which Mr, Churchill is the very personification, From murder on the high seas he has been accused of running the whole gamut of crime according to the Nazi view, That this worries Mr, Churchill not one whit may be taken for granted, It may even be assumed that it is not without gratification that he notices these outbreaks, for it is quite clear that the more vehement the German commentators become the more certain is it that Mr, Churchill, and those like him are getting under the Nazi skin, for few bellow unless they are hurt, The First Lord has seen a very active life in the service of his country, Of his personal gallantry the world has had ample proof, of his farsightedness his prognostications of what Herr Hitler would most likely do, have amazed people by their accuracy, and of his energy the Admiralty has already had experience, His occupation of his present post is the best possible augury for the Allies' success in this present struggle, and the wish is expressed,—though quite obviously not endorsed by the enemy,—that he will be spared many years to secure victory and enjoy its peace, *Duration of the War"
Application of the time element as a yardstick for the duration of a war has long been a subject of interesting speculation. It is a measurement of capacity for victory which cannot easily be defined. Agamemnon, according to Homer, besieged Troy for ten years in order to-recover the beautiful Helen. William the Conqueror captured England almost overnight in comparison, History since then records the Thirty Years' War and the Hundred Years' War in Europe, a sort of attenuated and revived squabble linked politically with causes the purpose of which is not readily understood but they definitely represented a conflict of forces deriving resources from one country or another, Thereafter, warfare was transformed and there was a century or two of struggles which depended on a decisive victory, such as Waterloo, where everything was staked on a single operation. At the beginning of the last war—cynically referred to as world War No. 1 in one American news magazine—the brevity of operations based on the concentration of forces was still a popular fallacy. It was a war "over by Christmas" or, at the most, within six months, It was left to Lord Kitchener, who spent years in suppressing the Mahdi and built a railway through the desert in order to accomplish this victory, to burst the bubble. He enlisted his army "for three years or the duration of the war," He was not a prophet: he was a soldier who realized that whatever may be the initial effort in a war between powerful nations the challenge would be so great that there would be a developing ratio as the war progressed, resources and determination to resist defeat increasing in proportion to the challenge. Modern ideas are smothered in confusion because the military specialist estimating enemy strength vies with the economist plumbing industrial and financial capacity and the accountant, who reckons up the cost. The British people have been warned of a ten or fifteen years' war. Herr Hitler recently announced that he had given orders for a five years' war. British economists believe that the appliance of the new blockade measures will mean utter exhaustion to Germany in eighteen months. This uncertainty applies even to the Sino-Japanese conflict General Nobuyuki Abe, the Japanese Prime Minster, declaring it will require five or ten years to settle the China affair, These are all distressing statements but the primary and ultimate factor is the will of the nation to continue to a successful conclusion Mr. Neville Chamberlain, the Prime Minister, made this indubitably clear in his broadcast speech on Sunday.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.