The Waterbury Democrat., 1940-05-03

SclHo 0lfI una kuDnlhEulc UaoCo " launch q big scale air and submarine offensive, aimed at smashing Brit ish mastery in the North sea-and to use in a possible future blitzkrieg airplane attack upon England itself.
 Holds All Positions
 The Germans held all central Nor- wegian positions of real strategic value and the allies were forced to fight them, if at all, on the coastal edge.
 By thelr forced withdrawal from Andalsnes the allies at best had lost their chance of a quick seizure of their most vital objective, Trond- helm.
 Not much was said openly here about the factors of German air and submarine bases on the Norway coast, or the possibility of air raids on Britain. But they bulked large in the minds of strategists who saw the war as one great picture.
 Not only Chamberlain but Winston Churchill, his senior defense minis ter, had called Hitler's Scandinavian invasion blunder. Now they had been forced to revise their opinions as the difficulties of putting an over seas expeditionary force in the field without air fields or adequate wharves for landing heavy guns re- vealed themselves.
 Cause of Setbacks
 The serious setbacks the allies had suffered were due primarily to two raasons-the impossibility of secur- ing air fields from which fast fighter craft could operate to drive of Ger man bombers, and the inadequacy of the docks of the little towns avail able to the allies for landing artil- lery, anti-aircraft guns, ammunition and motor trucks.
 An authoritative informant, em- phasizing that the allied evacuation of Andalsnes "dose not mean any intention of abandoning Norway" said that the Norwegian government still existed in Norway and that 1t was believed King Haakon was there also.
 A reliable military informant sup plemented this by saying that Brit ish troops in the Arctic Narvik zone continued to close in, though the operation was necessarily "slow business"
 Then asked about Namsos, the spokesman declined to comment be- yond recalling that Chamberlain had said yesterday that operations were progressing there so that nothing must be divulged which might jeop- ardize the lives of the allied forces
 Brit0ns Take News Calmly
 Britons took calmly the news that their troops had been forced to ban don their base at Andalsnes. Hope was expressed that Chamberlain and his cabinet colleagues were looking forward to some big development which might give a complete new turn to the Norwegian debate which Chamberlain had promised com mons.
 Hut 1t was forecast that unless there were favorable developments by Tuesday, Chamberlain would need all his political ingenuity to meet his critics in parliament-not only those of the opposition parties but of his own.
 It was not so much the retreat oi a small. lightly armed British land ing rarty before strong, well-arm' ed German force that caused anx- iety in Britain but the effect of the retreat on Norwegians. Swedes, and people all over southeastern Eu- rope, particularly Italians.
 Further there was the most im- portant question of the effect on Premier Paul Reynaud of France and his government Of an Allied reverse, in view of the highly crit teal attitude of French political parties toward him. The French parliament was in recess until May l6.
 Could Be Overcome
 It was agreed that the Norweg- ian reverse could be overcome and that 1t might some time develop that the Allies really held the bal- ance in Norway. But the political situation here, as opposed to the military situation, was becoming critical.
 As the Independent Conservative Daily Mail put It.: "There remains one fundamental question: Are we conducting the war In the right way?"
 Implicit in that question was the question whether the right men were conducting 1t from Whitehall and Downing street.
 A big development in some other theater would be calculated to re- lieve pressure on the governmnt for the moment, but for the moment only.
 Tn his speech yesterday Chamber lain had said of Germany" An attack can be launched with light ming rapidity in any one of many fields. We know that they are pre- pared and would not scruple to in-