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The Belgians had 24 divisions, the Allies 19, to the 100 the Germans had in use and reserve. Surrounding Liege, the Germans pressed relentlessly ahead to threaten Brussels and Antwerp. In the Coblenz area they reserved five mechanized divisions for a drive on Arlon and Longwy alone. The Belgians and the Allies under General Gamelin began to fall back on their Namur-Antwerp positions.
Sunday night and Monday the situation grew even more critical. "Extremely serious," admitted a London military spokesman. In Berlin "greatest joy" prevailed among the German General Staff. Action on the 80-mile front from Liege through Namur to Sedan, said they, made the Polish campaign look like a "weak prelude." Then came the news that the whole of the Ardennes Forest was in German hands, and that the fighting in the Arlons-Longwy section had resulted in the
Germans penetrating ten miles into the Maginot Line.
Sedan is a fateful name to the French. There in 1870 their Second Empire fell to the Prussians. For four years the soldiers of the German Emperor held it after 1914, not to be ousted until five days before Armistice by the French and the U. S. Rainbow Division. On Tuesday afternoon the soldiers of the Third Reich entered Sedan. There was now very little hope of saving Belgium. It was a question of saving France. A further German breakthrough would imperil the whole of France's western defenses to the sea. The French rear areas were taking an awesome beating from the bombs and strafing of some 7,000 planes.
TOTAL The Western World realized at last that when Adolf Hitler threatened "total" war he really meant TOTAL. Timing his blow at a moment when the irresolute, unprepared Democracies were disturbed by their failure in Norway and politically disrupted within by that failure, he struck with singleness of purpose which ignored all morality but his own, utilized all the psychological and ideological weaknesses of bis enemy. Shortage of war materials, poor crop prospects next autumn, all helped spur him now to the quick war, risking all, which he knew favored him more than a war of any length. Only by stalling Blitzkrieg into a trench-digging war, until they grew stronger, did the Allies have much chance.
The time was coming, if it were not already at hand, for Benito Mussolini to nudge his titular partner's elbow with proffered aid (see p. 31). If the war continued at its last week's pace and direction, he might have to bestir himself in order to give his partnership any appearance of usefulness or sincerity.
Still far from the Allies' elbow was the one source of strength to which they could turn: the U. S. Even if they turned, and were answered as last time, this time it might be too late.
* Reference to Alfred Duff Cooper's toast to the Empire on St. George's Day, in which he named the German people, as well as the Nazi regime, as Great Britain's hated target.