Word: attack
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Remembering from "last time" the futility of trying to charge against a machine gun, Captain Liddell Hart lays down the axiom that in modern warfare the defense has a great advantage over the attack: no attack succeeds unless the attackers secure surprise or have at least a 3-to-1 preponderance over the attacked. This does not mean merely in men (in the last war some attacks failed with a 16-to-1 preponderance in men), but in fire power. Says...
...Defense is a psychological attack. . . . If ... attack is met by attack, the aggressor government is enabled to consolidate its people by representing to them that they are fighting to defend their homes. Such misrepresentation becomes far more difficult to maintain if the attack is met by defense. This tends to weaken the will of the enemy people. . . . This state of mind, and loss of spirit, will develop all the sooner if the offensive cam paign produces no results comparable to its cost. There is nothing more demoralizing to troops than to see the corpses of their comrades piled...
...Liddell Hart doctrine thus inverts the saying that "attack is the best defense" into "defense is the best attack." To "strategic defense" he would add a "harassing offensive." frequent sharp, short blows delivered with surprise; artillery fire and air bombing to upset the enemy's supply lines and rest camps. The whole he calls "super-guerrilla warfare." Captain Liddell Hart comes to the conclusions which may startle those in the U. S. who assume that the U. S. will be drawn into the war and send another A. E. F. to Europe. He questions the wisdom for Britain herself...
This week, Germany replied with new menace to Britain's step of mounting guns on merchant vessels. "On the ground of self-preservation" and as a matter of "duty" all Nazi commanders were ordered to attack Allied ships without warning. First ship to feel such a stab was the neutral Danish freighter Vendia (bound for Scotland empty to get a cargo of coal which would have made a fine prize had the U-boat waited). Eleven men were killed, six taken ashore by another Danish ship after the submarine had rescued them. Danes were furious. Aside from the coldbloodedness...
Last week came a play of Pagan's own and with it the clue to how he wangled his cash. Pagan's To the End of Time proved to be a lashing attack on John L. Lewis. Called John Steele in the play and portrayed as a scoundrel, he dies in Act II, goes to Heaven only long enough to be lambasted, then is booted...