The Waterbury Democrat., 1940-07-16

Gen. Edmund Ironside, when ( staff, once said deprecatingly:
 we know those German gem erals. They were captains and mas jors in the last war, while ours were colonels and generals"
 He was wrong about those gem erals just as the world was all wrong about Hitler. Ironside and the rest of the world-outside Ger many-did not realize how great was Hitler,s organizing power.
 British phlegn1 and inertia in cri- tical months before the war started and even after it began gave great help to Hitler's plans.
 When the world became cognizant of the war machine Germany was building, the dead hand of Prime Ministers Ramsay Macdonald, Stanley Baldwin and Neville Cham berlain slowed up Britains rearina- ment.
 A couple of years ago an alarmed Parliament voted $7,500, 100000 for arms, but the government went about converting it into materials as though it had all the time in the world. PUBLIC DUPED
 INTO PLACIDITY
 The British public dope ditself in- to state of placidity even after the war started. Papers, during the lull on the Western Front. jibed at the blitzkrieg that was "sitzkrieg." Peo- pie sang and danced to Hang Out Your Washing on the Siegfried Line."
 When Hitler started through the Low Countries, dynamic Winston Churchill was called as prime minister, but he could not accom- plish in a few weeks what the Ger mans had done in years of intensive labor.
 As the blitzkrieg started, here was the lineup of the British war ma chine:
 NAVY: The fleet was the strong est in Europe and probably in the world, with many new vessels build- ing and nearing completion.
 ARMY: The army was a bit larger than the American army better equipped, with greater mech- anization, and gun power superior to anything in Britain"s history But 1t was pitifully small compared to Hitler's legion, and much equip ment was lost when the British fled Dunkirk.
 AIR FORGE: The R. A. F. was man for man and machine for ma chine superior to the Germans, but vastly outnumbered in trained men and perfected machines. Churchill named hustling Lord Beaverbrook to get planes for the air force, but here again the too late" bell was tolling. INDIVIDUAL BRETON
 NOT WEAKENED
 The amazing thing is how slowly the British trained men for the army. In the World War, when Kitchener was war minister, thou sands of men were trained and sent to France in nine months time. That was not true in the present conflict. 2
 It was not all due to inertia. Prob ably the government lacked officers, equipment, and barracks.
 All this does not mean that the fibre of the individual Briton is weakefined. Smashing of the Graf Spec, attacks upon German war ships in Norwegian Fjords and evacuation of Dunkirk all belle this.
 I know one clerk who owned a cheap little motor boat. He sent it across the English Channel in the teeth of Nazi fire to bring back eight or 10 soldiers at a clip. Some 800 other small boat owners did the same thing.
 The British are now awake to the fact that for the first time since 1066 their island is in danger of in- vasion. They are prepared to sell their freedom dearly.
 Before I left London I saw men and machines digging trenches in park gardens, and golf courses to keep German aircraft from landing More than 350,000 males under or over. military age are training tc combat parachutists. And the fam ous British weekend has been abandoned; work in munitions plants and plane factories goes on continuously.
 BLUM REGIME
 AIDED HITLER As things have turned out, one of the luckiest breaks coming Adolf