The Ely miner. [volume] (Ely, Minn.) 1895-1986, 1940-09-05
THE WAR:
Long Range

Long-range German guns, posted
in France along the channel shore,
banged away at England, not so
many miles away. These were the
famous Big Berthas of song and
story, but they failed at first to prove
much. They shot at ship conveys,
but their bore wore out quickly, and
they were clumsy and expensive.
In the last war, the famous German
"Paris gun" was a waste of time,
and these promised to be the same.
Their objective, of course, was to
cut across the channel, and close it
tight as a drum. This maneuver
failed to worry the increasingly
cheerful British.
In their first air attack on Berlin,
British bombers swooped out of a
night sky directly over the heart of
the city, were driven off by anti
air craft fire and dropped their ex-
plosives on the city's outskirts.
The German aerial losses had
been terrific, well over 1000 planes,
and maybe many more Of them.
The land invasion threat appeared
to be "out"-for dictators cannot
risk the chance of bloody setback
or repulse, especially one of SO spec
tacular a nature. It seemed that
the SO quick-acting Germans were
just bit puzzled about what to do
next. They continued to tighten
their blockade of the British Isles
by land and sea and air.
The British banged back, by
bombing the Heinkel, Messer-
schmitt, Junkers and Dornier air.
plane works, and the Zeppelin works
on Lake Constance, where the ia
NOUS Mercedes-Benz air motors are
manufactured. Other big industrial
plants, in the Germanies, "got" it
too, and German nerves Qike those
of the Americans) are nowhere near
as good as stolid Britannia neurol-
ogy. It began to look like much
longer war, which did not help Will
kie's chances for the presidency
any.
Italics
The Italians continued to bully the
Greeks, in quest of Greek naval
bases to use against England in
the Eastern Mediterranean. Greece
was tied to Turkey, Russia, and
England in one way or another, and
all three of them expressed inter-
est and sympathy. Would the war
spread still further, the critics won
dered? Would Greece turn into an
Italic Finland? Meanwhile, the Ital-
ians took British Somaliland on the
Red sea, in an effort to cut the ocean
route between England and her
treasure-house of India. The Brit
ish garrison got away, by flight and
skill, as it had done already at Mar
vik, Dunkirk, and elsewhere. They
said it was another moral victory"
for the Bullmen. All England had
had in Somaliland was some South
Africans, the local camel corps
(partly mechanical, partly cam
elled, partly horseO, and section
of the ubiquitous royal air force.
The r. A. F., as usual, gave good
account of itself. Not so, the cam
ellaries. The Italians-in-Africa
didn't look so good either, although
they were in there fighting and max
ing the usual big noise $50 the crit
les declared, en- masse).
Chamberlain
Old Chamberlain was on the way
out, in politics, and so were Duff
Cooper, the stylish propaganda ex-
pert, Sir Kingsley Wood, the budget
maker, and Cockney Herbert Nor
rison, the economic bigshot. (Lloyd
George, who won the last war, was
on his way in, they said.) Lord
Halifax, Chamberlain partner, the
one-armed foreign minister, was
fading away, and the Laborite Hugh
Dalton was scheduled for his
ticklish job.
Gesture
The British got out of Shanghai,
in North China, lock, stock and bar
rel. 1t was great triumph for the
Japanese, and hard blow to John
Q. Bull. British stockholders felt a
lot worse about the international set
Element in faraway Cathay than
about the lost channel islands of
Jersey and Guernsey and the Italian
capture of Somaliland on the near
eastern Red sea.
What was left of the British army
garrison in Shanghai, about 1900
men, was moved down to Hongkong.