It THE SPREADING CRACK HE situation on what has come
to be known as the southern front is changing almost hourly, but it is changing con- te sistently in one direction, and there is little risk in predicting that within a week at most, possibly enough before this calendar week is out, the Allied forces will be in possession of all Sicily, and .d perhaps already established on Italian soil. Whether when they il er do set foot on the mainland it will be as invaders, to fight Italian troops, or as an occupying army, to use a no longer belligerent Italy as base, only events can show. There is no advantage, and much disadvantage, in gaining by force what can be secured with-. out force, but there can for the Allies be no slackening now. Marshal Badoglio has had his chance of " honourable capitula- tion," and he has not taken it. The violence of the air-attack on Italian soil was abated for a week to give him, and whoever else determines policy in Italy today, time to come to a decision. That amount of respite was justified, for there were signs that al Italy's new rulers would realise both what the military situation d was and what millions of Italian citizens were demanding. They have not realised it, and Italy must bear the consequences. It is necessary not merely to achieve victory in Sicily, but to ploit it. Momentum must not die down. The day Catania and Messina fall, or sooner, Allied troops should, if possible, be triking at Italy itself, and forcing on Badoglio that unconditional surrender to which the Italians must inevitably reconcile them- elves, whether before more slaughter of their sons and devasta- d on of their country or after. The industrial north may yet etermine policy at Rome. If not, General Eisenhower will.
One thing is certain. For Italy, and for Germany, there can be o alternative to unconditional surrender. That principle was laid own at Casablanca, and there will be no departure from it. mewhere in one of the propaganda-factories a set of alleged it merican peace-terms has been fabricated. There have been o such terms.. There can be none. When the time comes for prescribing the method of surrender and the conditions under hich life in an occupied Italy is to be conducted, decisions ill have to be taken by the three great United Powers in concert or it is laid down specifically in the Anglo-Soviet Agreement of July, 1941, that Britain and Russia " will neither negotiate nor e conclude an armistice or treaty of peace except by mutual agree- e ment." On the " unconditional surrender " principle agreement is complete and unreserved ; on what is to follow the surrender there will have to be discussions. There are no signs that Russia feels any uneasiness on that point, and Mr. Eden's statement in the House of Commons on Tuesday leaves no excuse for anyone else to feel it. The Prime Minister observed on the same day, in reply to a question regarding peace negotiations, that " His lajesty's Government will be prepared, in consultation with their flies, to deal with all situations as they arise." If the Govern- ent is not thought capable of that it should not be kept in office.
It is impossible to foresee all eventualities in Italy, but the most rigidly doctrinaire democrats should mix a little realism with their wine. The worst development from the Allies point of view would be the relapse of Italy into anarchy. To handle that situation' might be a more formidable task than to meet the Italian army in battle. As the country is occupied, whether mile by mile r through a general surrender, day-to-day administration must be carried on, food supplies must be maintained, order must be reserved, trains must be kept running, the civil population must be enabled so far as possible to continue its normal work. All that cannot be improvised by a body of Anglo-Americans working under the orders of the Allied Commander-in-Chief. For the moment numbers of Italian officials will have to be told to stick e.
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to their jobs, whether they were once members of the Fascist Party or not. The idea that the first thing the occupying force must do when it captures a city is to conduct a political purge of the municipal officials, no matter what chaos may result, can only emanate from brains that have never comprehended the problems that the occupation of enemy territory creates. To subject the new organisation known as Amgot (the Allied Military Govern- ment of Occupied Territory) to reasonable scrutiny is legitimate enough, still more to ask (as Mr. Walter Lippmann has been doing in the United States) whether the organisation is being developed on a scale commensurate with the vast responsibilities that may soon confront it.. But that the existence of some such organisa- tion is essential is beyond dispute. Occuprei territories, it must be remembered, include not only the enemy countries themselves, but all the European States which today they hold enslaved. To administer these till their own Governments are re-established is no soldiers' job. Amgot is probably well qualified to ad- minister Sicily temporarily. Is it equal to a swift assumption of the administration of Italy as a whole, to say nothing of Greece and Rumania and Bulgaria and other States which the Allies are about to liberate from their own or alien masters? That is a question which Members of Parliament may well press on the Government when they return from their possibly abbreviated recess. Mr. Churchill's assurance about " meeting all situations as they arise " had in its context a limited application. There are situations here that must be met before they arise.
This, it may be said, is looking far ahead ; there will be time and to spare before there is question of administering any country but Italy. That, of course, is possible. Nothing is to be gained by fostering an unreasoning optimism. But the fact is incon- testable that never was confidence in the outcome of the war in Europe more justified—and an earlier outcome than there seemed any ground for counting on a year ago. The best way to be convinced of that is to look for a moment at the situation as it must be seen by any instructed German, particularly Hitler and his generals. What are its main elements? One is the complete and final failure of the 1943 offensive. in Russia. Hitherto, whatever may have happened to Germany in a winter campaign in Russia, she has always made substantial gains in the summer. This year her offensive was checked in a fortnight, a Russian offensive took its place, and the fall of the key-city of Orel has preceded, though probably not by much, the fall of Catania and Messina. And after Orel Germany has nothing,but loss and defeat to look for in the east. Another element is the failure of the U-boat campaign. The monthly statement on that is due next week, and there is ground for predicting that under both the material heads—loss of Allied shipping and destruction of U-boats—it will be satisfactory beyond all expectation. The Allies dominate the Atlantic.
That theme could be elaborated at length. One major factor is, of course, the Allied air-offensive. It has created undisguised panic in Germany, and it is hard to imagine that Goebbels' fevered ex- hortations are calculated to generate tranquillity or fortitude. For what has happened to Diisseldorf and Hamburg and Cologne cannot be hidden. No attempt, indeed, is being made to hide it. And every German knows that as the nights lengthen the destroying host will move eastward city by city as inexorably as the calendar that determines its activities. Germans would, indeed, be the master-race that Hitler has assured them they are if they could face that unprecedented and unimagined menace without a terror that may soon become intolerable. And last month 7,000 new aircraft left American factories alone. But it is not of human lives alone, or mainly, that the Allied Air Forces, the British by night and the American by day, are taking in- creasing toll. The Allied output of munitions of all kinds is still growing_ The German, dependent on pressed labour, would probably in any case have passed its peak. As things are, the complete disorganisation of production of all kinds in Germany as the result of the blasting of factories and communications is an established fact ; all that is ,doubtful is its full extent. Add to this the effect on a vital commodity like petrol of this week's attack on the Ploesti oilfields and the destruction of many of the synthetic oil plants in Germany itself, add the strain imposed on Germany's thinning man-power by the necessity of replacing Italian garrisons in the Balkans, and perhaps fighting on a new front in Italy itself, and the picture of the future as it presents itself to an instructed German takes decisive shape. If there were anything left for Germany to hope for hope might still stimulate resistance. Hitler has still great military strength at his com- mand, but in every department the Allies' is vastly greater. The only question about the spread of the crack from south to north is a question of time.
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