1941: Great Britain

The story of 1941 in Great Britain is the story of a continuing year of warfare, war that has conditioned in constantly increasing measure the entire life and activity of the British people. This article deals chiefly with the national life under war conditions, and the course of the war during the past year, in so far as that is now possible and with attention only to those areas of action in which Great Britain has directly participated.

Area and Population.

The island of Great Britain, which includes England, Scotland, and Wales, comprises with some small adjacent islands an area of 89,041 sq. mi. The population at the last census, 1931, was 44,937,444 persons. It is estimated that the population of England and Wales is now about 41,460,000 and the population of Scotland about 5,080,000, a total of 46,540,000 persons. Wales was incorporated into England in the year 1284; Scotland and England were united into one kingdom in 1707. Northern Ireland, which is politically a part of the United Kingdom, consists of the six northern counties of that island, with an area of about 5,240 sq. mi., and a population, by the census taken on Feb. 28, 1937, of 1,279,745 persons. Northern Ireland has its own Parliament, a bicameral body made up of a Senate with two ex officio and 24 elected members, and a House of Commons with 52 elected members. The Cabinet, which is responsible to the Parliament, consists of the Prime Minister and seven other ministers. Northern Ireland is also represented in the British Parliament by 13 members.

It may be noted that the only bit of British soil that has been lost to the Nazis was not originally British. The Channel Islands—Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney, and Sark—with an area of 221 sq. mi. and a population (in 1931) of 931,205, were occupied by the Germans on June 30, 1940. These islands were a part of the ancient dukedom of Normandy. They were attached to the English Crown when William, Duke of Normandy, became King of England, and remained in the possession of the English kings after their loss of Normandy to the French in the thirteenth century.

Government.

Great Britain is a limited constitutional monarchy. The present king, George VI, was born on Dec. 14, 1895, the second son of George V, and succeeded to the throne Dec. 10, 1936, on the abdication of his older brother, Edward VIII, now Duke of Windsor. His consort, Queen Elizabeth, daughter of the late Earl of Strathmore, belongs to one of the oldest families in the Scottish aristocracy. They have two daughters, the older of whom, the Princess Elizabeth, is heir apparent to the throne. By the terms of his abdication the former King, Edward VIII, renounced all claim and title to the throne for himself and his issue, if any.

The powers of the Crown are not exercised by the sovereign himself, but by his ministers. It is they who form what is known as His Majesty's Government. The Cabinet, which is 'the Government,' is a committee of the law-making body; every Cabinet minister is a member of one or the other of the Houses of Parliament—the House of Lords and the House of Commons—and the Prime Minister is the executive head of the state. In normal circumstances the Cabinet is composed of members of the party having a majority in the House of Commons. In time of emergency, or in case no party has a majority, a coalition Cabinet may be necessary.

The present Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, took office on the resignation of the late Neville Chamberlain on May 10, 1940. Like the latter, he is a Conservative and the elected head of the Conservative Party. His Government is a coalition Government, and there is now in Great Britain a party truce in such matters as parliamentary by-elections. The rule of Cabinet unanimity, which means in practice that the ministers must agree with the Prime Minister, seems not to have been waived. Responsibility for the conduct of the war rests primarily on Mr. Churchill's shoulders, and ministers who in normal times might be members of His Majesty's Opposition recognize Mr. Churchill's primacy as fully as do ministers who belong to his own party.

The increase in the size of Cabinets in recent years, due to the broadening of the functions of government, has made it desirable to set up an inner Cabinet, the War Cabinet, composed of a part only of the entire body of Cabinet ministers. As reconstituted in February 1941, the War Cabinet had nine members: the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill; the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Kingsley Wood; the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Anthony Eden; the First Lord of the Admiralty, Albert V. Alexander; the Secretary for War, Captain David Margesson; the Secretary for Air, Sir Archibald Sinclair; the Lord Privy Seal, Clement R. Attlee; the Minister of Aircraft Production, Lord Beaverbrook; and a Minister without Portfolio, Arthur Greenwood. There are nineteen Cabinet Ministers who are not in the War Cabinet, and, excluding 'junior ministers,' there are six ministers not of Cabinet rank, one of whom holds an office that was established because of the war, the Minister of Economic Warfare, Hugh Dalton.

The British Parliament, to which the Government is responsible, is a bicameral body. The House of Lords contains peers who hold their seats by hereditary right, including the holders of newly-created peerages; elected peers: 16 Scottish peers chosen for the duration of each successive Parliament, and 28 holders of Irish peerages who are elected to the House for life; and those who are members because of their office—the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, the Bishops of London, Winchester, and Durham and 21 other English bishops, and four Law Lords. The voting strength of the House of Lords is about 720.

The House of Commons, which for many years had a membership of 670, has now 615 members, including 13 members from Northern Ireland who are elected by universal suffrage. The span of life of a Parliament is not fixed, except that since 1911 the maximum has been five years; but Parliament is competent to extend its own life. Such a step was taken during the World War in 1914 to avoid the turmoil and confusion of a general election; and in the present war a like step was taken to postpone the election which would otherwise have come in 1941.

Cabinet Changes.

A number of changes in the personnel of the British Government took place after the reorganization early in 1941. Only the more important of these need be mentioned. Early in May it was announced that the Minister of Aircraft Production, Lord Beaverbrook, was being relieved of his office at his own request. He kept his seat in the War Cabinet, with the title of Minister of State. The Minister of Transport, Colonel J. T. Moore-Brabazon, succeeded Lord Beaverbrook. R. R. Cross, Minister of Shipping, was appointed High Commissioner to Australia. The two portfolios that had been held by Moore-Brabazon and Cross were given to F. J. Leathers, adviser on coal shipments in the Ministry of Shipping, with the announcement that a reorganization would be effected and those two departments united as the Ministry of Wartime Communications. In a reshuffle of posts about a month later Alfred Duff-Cooper, Minister of Information, was made Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, in succession to Lord Hankey, who had been appointed Paymaster General. Brendan Bracken, private secretary to the Prime Minister, succeeded Duff-Cooper at the Ministry of Information. Later in the year it was announced that Duff-Cooper had been named Minister for the Far East. He retains Cabinet rank and is to have supervision of British relations in the Far East, except for the conduct of military operations. A similar position for the Near East was established earlier and is held by Oliver Lyttleton.

Employment.

If unemployment in Great Britain has not been entirely eradicated through war conditions, the year 1941 saw it come closer and closer to the irreducible minimum. By July the total number was down to 219,577 persons, of whom 113,662 were men and boys and 105,915 were women and girls. There was however an increase in unemployment in September (230,621), and October (270,289). For employment of children in the war crisis see the Child Labor article.

Trade.

The improvement in the matter of employment, which can be attributed chiefly to the war, was not paralleled in British foreign trade in terms of the value of imports and exports. This likewise was mainly due to the war, which has not only diverted manufacturing into special channels but has closed many markets in which British manufactured goods were previously sold. For the year 1940 the value of British exports, including some £26,000,000 re-exports, was £439,273,162, a decrease of £24,451,505 from the 1939 figure; while the imports totaled £1,099,868,877, an increase over the 1939 figure of £214,356,375. The excess of imports over exports was £660,595,715, or about $2,640,000,000. The rate of exchange was almost steadily $4.02 to the pound throughout the year.

During 1941 the monthly returns of overseas trade were no longer published. Inquiry among traders, however, has shown a good measure of agreement that British overseas commerce has been remarkably well maintained. At the end of July a government spokesman said that an average of 30,000,000 tons of British goods was being exported monthly. The fact that loss of markets, rather than seizure or destruction of goods by enemy action, accounts for the decline in exports was clearly implied in a statement made by the chairman of the Scottish Woollen Export Council. He declared that from the beginning of the war to the end of April 1941, out of 2,540 consignments of woollen goods to the United States only 56 failed to reach their destination through enemy action.

Education.

In England and Wales there are 20,916 public elementary schools maintained by local educational authorities, with a registration of 4,971,327 (of whom 3,632,211 are between the ages of five and twelve) and an average daily attendance of 4,526,701. There are also some 600 special elementary schools for the blind, the deaf, and the mentally defective. These figures are for the year 1939, but it is likely that they are approximately accurate now, except that the evacuation of certain areas has altered the distribution of schools and scholars. In 1941 there were about 4,500 'unofficial' evacuees in Canada, and another 4,000 in the United States, sent across the Atlantic privately but with the British Government's encouragement. This does not affect seriously the number of British school children.

Finance.

The budget introduced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir John Simon, in April 1940, for the fiscal year ending March 31, 1941, provided for expenditures estimated at £2,667,000,000. In July 1940 the Chancellor, Sir Kingsley Wood, figured the total cost of government at £3,476,000,000 for the year. An additional £1,000,000,000 was voted in October. Early in February 1941 the House of Commons gave the Chancellor of the Exchequer £600,000,000 credit to round out the fiscal year and another ·1,000,000,000 credit for the next year. When the year ended on March 31, 1941, Great Britain, with a revenue of £1,408,867,097, had spent £3,867,245,670 and incurred a deficit of £2,458,378,573. In October 1940 the war costs had been somewhat more than £9,000,000 a day, of which 7,500,000 was for the fighting services. At the beginning of February 1941 the war was costing £10,500,000 daily; and for the last three weeks of March the daily cost ran close to £13,000,000.

The budget introduced by the Chancellor on April 7 for the year ending March 31, 1942, estimated the expenditures at £4,206,957,000. This estimate did not include the cost of supplies from the United States. Even these greatly increased estimates proved to be too low. In October the Government was spending in all £13,000,000 daily, and the House of Commons agreed to a third vote of credit of £1,000,000,000. Another credit of the same amount was voted when Japan on Dec. 8 declared a state of war to exist with Great Britain and the United States. It may be noted that in July the American Reconstruction Finance Corporation announced that it had made a loan to the British Government of $425,000,000 at 3 per cent, for war materials purchased by the British before the enactment of the Lend-Lease Bill. In the first quarter of the fiscal year (March 31-June 30) the total ordinary British expenditures amounted to £1,074,281,000, about 30 per cent of which came from revenue. Three months later it was said that about 40 per cent of the cost of government from the beginning of the war had been met by taxation, as compared with 25 per cent so met in the first two years of World War I.

Income Tax.

A marked increase in the income tax rates accompanied the adoption of the new budget. The normal rate was raised from 8s. 6d. in the pound, (that is, from 43 to 50 per cent); the rate on the first £165 of taxable income was increased from 5s. to 6s. 6d. (from 25 per cent to 33 per cent); and the allowance of £170 for married men and of £100 for single men went down to £140 and £80 respectively. Perhaps this will be made clearer by saying that an unmarried Briton with an income of $400 a year will pay $26 to the state in income tax. A married man with two children, and an income of $1,400 a year, pays under the 1941 arrangement $76 more income tax than he paid under the terms of the 1940 tax. Part of that increase is considered to be a loan which will be credited to the payer in the Post Office Savings Bank. Of the extra $76 in the example given, $69.34 (£17. 6s. 8d. of £19) will be thus credited to the payer. At the upper end of the scale, in the top brackets, income tax with supertax reaches the devouring figure of 19s. 6d. in the pound, or 97 per cent. To all intents and purposes something like $12,000 is the maximum spendable income of anybody in Great Britain today.

Rationing.

The rise in taxation was not the only step that brought sharply home to the British people the fact that wartime brings constantly increasing restrictions. The rationing of clothing was introduced without warning at the beginning of June, 1941. Every person is permitted 66 coupons a year, which must be turned in in the following amounts when articles of clothing are purchased. A man's suit requires 26 coupons, an overcoat 16, a pair of boots or shoes 7, a woolen shirt 7, a cotton shirt 5, a pair of socks 3. For women's clothes, 14 coupons are taken for a coat, 11 for a dress, 5 for a blouse, 2 for stockings. Special provision is made for persons whose belongings are destroyed by enemy action: they may buy an outfit without the use of coupons. Persons receiving articles of clothing as gifts from abroad, from the United States or the Dominions, are required to surrender coupons for them, save in the case of evacuees.

Three months before clothes rationing was introduced, the regulations on food rationing were tightened. In hotels and restaurants after March 10 no meal could have more than one course of meat, fish, poultry, game, eggs, or cheese. On the other hand, food prices were fixed in September, to take effect from Oct. 6 with some staples at a price lower than the pre-war level. A four-pound loaf of bread is to cost 8d., a two-pound loaf 4d., a one-pound loaf 1d., while the price of hake was reduced from 1s. 7d. to 1s. 1d. a pound. The first consignment of food from the United States under the terms of the Lease-Lend Act reached a British port at the beginning of June. It included 4,000,000 eggs and 120,000 pounds of cheese.

Food Storage.

Great Britain is normally unable to produce enough food for its people. Government endeavors to increase the amount of foodstuffs grown and to lay up stores of food for use in case of emergency seem to have met with a good measure of success. Speaking in the House of Commons on Nov. 12, 1941, Winston Churchill said that stocks of the bulky articles of diet had been amassed in an amount double that which was on hand in September 1939, and that the area under tillage in England and Scotland had been increased by no less than 45 per cent. The amount of the grain harvest in 1941 did not come up to the hope of the authorities, yet it was 50 per cent greater than the 1939 crop. Within a few days of this speech one of the best-known British weekly journals contained a brief account of steps the Government had taken in establishing food-storage depots. The Ministry of Food has hundreds of 'cold stores' where large quantities of food are held in storage—at a temperature of 12 degrees above 0. One of these contains, among other things, 5,600 tons of meat, bacon, butter, eggs.

Liberty in Wartime.

Far more serious to the British than governmental regulation of food and clothing, more serious than the tremendous burden of taxation that results from the war, would be any actual threat against the liberties of the people. British democracy has no particular fear that powers granted to the Government during the emergency will result in the building up of a totalitarian state: freedom of speech and free criticism are still flourishing. None the less there are some grounds for concern that the bulwarks of liberty are being weakened. Trial by jury has for centuries been considered an Englishman's birthright, it is guaranteed also to Americans by the Bill of Rights in the Constitution. Today in Great Britain trial by jury is still the rule in criminal courts, but the Administration of Justice (Emergency Provisions) Act of 1939 now provides for trial by jury in civil cases, only when the judge so decides. This seems to furnish some reason for the belief that trial by jury is coming to be regarded as less important than in the past.

The privileges of the House of Commons in the matter of the arrest of its members still seem secure. It is frequently forgotten that in the past the freedom of the House of Commons and the freedom of the subject were not always identical, and the same may be true today. On July 31 the House received through the Secretary for War a message from the King saying that Sir Herbert Paul Latham, M.P. since 1931, had been arrested to be tried by court martial. The House passed a resolution thanking His Majesty 'for his tender regard for the privileges of the House' in telling them. Sir Paul resigned his seat late in August. He was tried by court martial on Sept. 4 and 5, cashiered, and imprisoned for two years without hard labor. Between the dates of his arrest and trial it was made known that another M.P., Captain Sir A. H. M. Ramsay, who had been detained since May 1940 under Defense Regulations, refused to resign his seat. A fact of no significance in itself, yet worth pointing out to those who feel that disloyalty is to be found only on the political left, is that both these M.P.'s were Conservatives.

Air Raids.

Deaths and injuries among the civilian population because of air raids have been numerous. The British take June 18, 1940, as the date of the beginning of air raids. During the year 1940, which had run nearly half its course before the air attacks commenced, London spent approximately 1,180 hours, the equivalent of 49 whole days, under alerts, and the sirens sounded more than 400 times. From the beginning of the bombardments to the end of the year 1940 there were 23,080 civilians killed and 32,283 injured in air raids. The word 'injured' means hurt severely enough to be detained in hospital. Air-raid deaths among the military were about two per cent of the number among the civilians.

The month of January 1941 showed a notable drop in the monthly average of casualties, with only 1,502 persons killed and 2,012 injured. In March the figures went up sharply to 4,259 killed and 5,557 injured. June was the best month, when only 399 civilians were reported killed and 416 injured. The whole number of civilian air-raid deaths for the first half of 1941 was 18,408. The number killed in air raids in Great Britain and Northern Ireland for the six months that ended on Sept. 30, was 13,381, with 13,182 persons injured. Night bombing accounts for the larger part of the casualties.

Shelters.

Of considerable importance to Londoners and the inhabitants of other cities that suffer bombardment from the air is the matter of air-raid shelters. In the winter of 1940-41 the tube (subway) stations were crowded nightly with some 200,000 shelterers. Now they are far less popular, and not more than a tenth of the number who formerly stayed in them are making use of them, although they have now been equipped with bunks and other facilities. In the London region, shelter has been provided for nearly 5,000,000 people, one-third in public or communal shelters and two-thirds in domestic shelters, which include surface cubicles and the specially built 'Andersons.' In these shelters (the number is exclusive of the tube stations) bunks have been installed for about 1,500,000 persons, and in the larger public shelters there are canteens and first-aid posts. Mobile canteens visit other shelters. Provision is made for 200,000 meals a night. Physicians to the number of 250 visit the public shelters night after night, there are 300 trained nurses in regular attendance, and about 300 physicians are in reserve to answer calls to the shelters if their services are needed. In September 1941 it was estimated that 9 per cent of the population of the London area was spending the night in air-raid shelters. It took some time to decide upon, and to satisfy, the physical necessities of the sheltered; that attended to, it became evident that something should be done to fill other wants and to bolster morale. Concert parties were organized, actors and singers visited and entertained the shelterers, public libraries established underground branches, and classes of all kinds were encouraged.

Property Damage.

It would be impossible to attempt to estimate the amount of damage done to property by aerial bombardments; a few of the more serious and destructive raids may be mentioned. Close upon the end of 1940, on Sunday, Dec. 9. London was bombed with great intensity and many buildings within the City were set on fire by incendiary bombs. Among the buildings destroyed then were the Guildhall, the halls of several of the ancient Liveried Companies, and no fewer than eight Christopher Wren churches. Just two weeks later a second large-scale fire raid was made on London. In an attack made on April 16, 1941, eight London hospitals were destroyed or seriously damaged, and several churches. On Saturday night, May 10, the debating chamber of the House of Commons was completely wrecked by explosives and fire, the roof over the lantern of Westminster Abbey fell in and the Abbey itself was saved only through the strenuous work of fire fighters; the medieval deanery was entirely destroyed. On the same date the oldest house in the City of London, No. 10 Nevill's Court, caught fire from smouldering wreckage and went up in flames. The British Museum was also damaged on that occasion.

British authorities do not at once release news of damage done. About a fortnight after the May 10 raid it was officially announced that among notable structures 'recently damaged' in air raids were Lambeth Palace (the residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury), St. James's Palace, The Old Bailey, and the National Central Library opened in 1933. At the same time it was said that since September damage to the amount of £135,000 had been done to Westminster Abbey, including much shattered glass. After the war new buildings will probably arise on the sites now made desolate; but it is self-evident that buildings about which have clustered the lives and memories of many generations, once lost are gone forever. It is estimated also that at least 6,000,000 books were destroyed in these attacks, and how great that loss may be will never be known in full.

Plymouth and Portsmouth are seaport towns that have been the target of severe attacks from the air. In mid-January 1941 much of Plymouth was destroyed by thousands of incendiary bombs and tons of high explosive hurled from Nazi aircraft. A great raid on Portsmouth started 29 big fires, innumerable small ones, and destroyed, among other buildings two hospitals and six churches. In April Plymouth was bombed heavily for two nights in succession. Coventry and Bristol again suffered severely. Air raiders visited Dublin at the end of May, when 20 buildings were demolished and 35 badly damaged; 27 persons were killed in that raid and 88 injured. Whether that raid was a warning to Eire not to abandon its neutrality, or was the result of a mistake, is not clear. Scotland, which as an integral part of Great Britain is not neutral, has been frequently visited by air raiders. Near the end of March it was stated that in a two nights' bombing of Clydeside, an important shipbuilding area in Scotland, approximately 500 persons were killed and 800 wounded.

Nazi Losses in Britain.

These raids were not made without cost to the Nazis; a steadily increasing number of their planes were reported shot down over Great Britain. The number rose from 15 in January 1941 to 90 in April; 74 were shot down the first week in May, and 33 during the great raid on London on the night of May 10. German casualties were reported in connection with every one of the larger raids.

Hess Affair.

This may be listed among German set-backs resulting from activity in the air. On the night of May 11, 1941, Rudolf Hess, known as the No. 3 Nazi, parachuted from a plane to a farm near Glasgow and was taken prisoner. German explanations of his dramatic arrival were strangely unconvincing—that he was mentally deranged, was a patron of fortune-tellers, had been forbidden to use a plane, and so on. These fumbling explanations seemed to give support to the theory that Hess had fled from Germany to escape being 'liquidated'—perhaps because he disagreed with the foreign policy of the Nazis. Another explanation was that he came, either with or without Hitler's consent, to attempt to make contact with some appeasement group in Britain in the hope of bringing about a British-German peace. Whatever was learned by the British authorities from their examination of Hess was not made public. He provided a fortnight's topic of conversation, made an opportunity for several questions to be asked in the House of Commons, and then faded out of the picture as a prisoner of war. (See also GERMANY.)

British Raids.

The British air offensive launched as a part of the war program for the defense of their land has of necessity spent much of its force on the continental Channel ports, on sites that were Dutch or French, or Belgian, but which are now German bases. Flight after flight has been made over Germany by the Royal Air Force. Details are given in a brochure, The Air Offensive Against Germany, which lists with maps and pictures German towns and cities that the British bombed from the air to the end of January 1941, the targets sought, and the number of flights. The claim is made that British bombers 'have struck at over 270 targets of military and strategic importance in Germany.' An additional list gives details of bombing attacks from Feb. 1 to April 15, with a note saying that weather conditions in February and March resulted in a reduction in the number of attacks, both British and German. On the night of May 8 the R.A.F. made mass raids of 300-400 planes on Bremen and Hamburg. On July 16 a daylight attack on Rotterdam put 17 ships out of action and damaged 5 more. Berlin has been bombed more than once, and so has Cologne. Nor has Germany's junior partner, Italy, been totally neglected by the Royal Air Force, which has attacked Naples and Sicilian cities. During the war in Greece the British announced that they would bomb Rome if the Nazi-Fascists bombed Athens.

At the beginning of September the British authorities claimed that apart from the planes lost in the Russian campaign, the Axis Powers had lost since the beginning of the war 8,020 aircraft as against 3,039 lost by the R.A.F. Over and around Great Britain, they said, the Axis lost 25 in 1939, a total of 3,038 in 1940, and 568 in eight months of 1941; while their losses over Germany and German-occupied territory for the same periods were 20, 45, and 625. The British claimed that while they themselves lost no planes over Great Britain in 1939, they did lose 847 in 1940, and 37 in the first eight months of 1941; over Germany and German-occupied territory they admitted the loss of 26 the first year, 349 the second, and 959 the third. Naturally, British and German statements disagree. The British admitted the heavy loss of 20 aircraft in one raid on Berlin, while the Germans claimed to have shot down 58.

Grievous as has been the damage wrought by Nazi air raids on Great Britain, they have succeeded neither in halting British war effort nor in breaking the morale of the people. If they were planned to serve as a prologue to invasion, only the prologue has been written. The Prime Minister voiced the feelings of the British when he said that 'we are waiting for the German invasion, and so are the fishes.'

Shipping Losses.

So far as the year 1941 is concerned, the destruction of British merchant shipping, and of such neutral and allied shipping as may have been included with this because such vessels were carrying goods to or from British ports, has been more serious a threat than the desolation of bombed streets, the wanton destruction of dwellings, or the shattering of great architectural monuments. During the year 1940, according to a British statement, the average weekly loss of British merchant shipping due to enemy action was 63,287 tons. This was exclusive of the heavy losses incurred in the evacuation at Dunkerque, after the collapse of France. For the 18 months ended March 1, 1941, Lloyd's listed the total loss as amounting to 4,962,257 tons; the next two months ran the figure up to 6,127,673 tons. The losses during 1941 have been very heavy. For the first three months of the year the authorities published a statement of weekly sinkings. Examples of these statements, with the date in each case being that of the end of the week, were: Feb. 2, 57,263 tons; Feb. 23, 53,834 tons; March 3, 148,038 tons; March 9, 98,382 tons. German claims and British admissions are at variance. For the four months January through April the British said that 1,617,359 tons of merchant shipping—a figure later corrected to 1,710,476 tons—had been sunk; the Germans claimed to have sunk 2,235,000 tons in those months. The largest monthly loss in the war was incurred in April, when the Germans sank 581,251 tons of shipping according to British statements; the previous high record had been 533,902 tons in June 1940, which included the losses at Dunkerque. For May 1941, the British gave a loss of 461,328 tons; the Germans claimed 746,000 tons.

For the whole war to the beginning of June 1941, the British figure for British, allied, and neutral shipping sunk was 6,589,001 tons; the German claim was for 11,664,000 tons. These in each case include some shipping sunk by Italians in the Mediterranean, but British naval vessels are not included. For the second quarter of the year 1941 the British issued monthly, instead of weekly, statements; then no figures were given out. At the beginning of October it was officially stated that for the third quarter of the year the losses were about one-third of those of the previous quarter, which would come to some 472,000 tons. On Nov. 12 the Prime Minister, speaking in the House of Commons, said that in the four months ended in June the loss was just over 2,000,000 tons of shipping, or an average of 500,000 tons a month; in the four months ending with October the loss was less than 750,000 tons, or an average of 180,000 tons a month. That is an amount considerably lower than the average for the year 1940.

U-Boat Activity.

The great increase in the number of sinkings in the early part of 1941 was attributed by the British to German U-boat activity; the decline later in the year must indicate that the improved technique of the convoy system is meeting with a considerable measure of success. For 38 days out of 53, from July 11th to 28th and from Aug. 1st to 22nd with the exception of Aug. 9, Berlin had nothing to say about the U-boat warfare—a fact that was not without significance. Late in August the British said that a convoy of 21 ships attacked by U-boats lost 7 small vessels with a tonnage of 10,000, and they admitted the loss of a corvette; the German account of the same attack claimed that 21 merchant ships were sunk with a tonnage of 122,000, together with a destroyer and two other warships. So far as the success of the convoy system is concerned, the British say that about 1 ship is lost out of every 240. That does not mean that some convoys have not suffered severe losses. On Sept. 13 the Admiralty announced the arrival of a convoy after a three-day clash in the Atlantic with submarines and bombers, in which 8 ships, and by implication scores of lives, were lost. The Germans claimed about the same time to have sunk 28 merchantmen and 3 escort craft; presumably this referred, because of the dates given, to some other convoy, of which the British Admiralty made no report.

Naval Losses.

British naval losses have been severe. The loss of naval personnel for the entire course of the war, to mid-February 1941, was given as 12,346; of this number 3,444 were listed as killed, 2,669 as wounded, 6,040 missing, 79 dead, and 114 prisoners. The remaining months of the war must have added greatly to the losses.

Near the end of January the loss of the destroyer Hyperion was made known, with the comment that she was the 35th vessel of her class to be lost in the war; five months later the destroyer Jersey was said to be the 39th destroyer lost. Of the destroyers turned over by the United States to Great Britain, the first to be lost was the Bath, which was manned by the Royal Norwegian Navy when she was sunk late in August. In November it was announced that the airplane carrier Ark Royal had gone to the bottom at last. Her destruction had been claimed more than once, by both Germans and Italians: in September 1939, in July 1940, and on other occasions. The evacuation of Crete on June 1 admittedly cost the British 4 cruisers and 6 destroyers. A great blow was struck by the Nazis when on May 24, 1941, the Bismarck sunk H.M.S. Hood between Iceland and Greenland. The Hood, a 42-100 ton battleship, carried a complement of 1,341 officers and men, of whom only three were rescued—a midshipman and two sailors. Three days later, after a 1,750 mile chase, the Bismarck was sunk within 400 miles of Brest and safety. This redressed the balance somewhat. Near the close of the year the greatest blow to the British Navy was delivered by the Japanese, when they sunk, in an air attack on Dec. 9, the 35,000 ton Prince of Wales, the newest British dreadnought, and the Repulse, a 32,000 ton battle cruiser, off the coast of Malaya. These ships had reached Singapore only some 10 days before. Their destruction, following hard upon the treacherous and all-too-successful Japanese attack on the American fleet at Pearl Harbor, on Dec. 7, added enormously to the difficulties confronting the Allies in the Far East.

Enemy Naval Losses.

The losses at sea have not been borne by the British alone. On March 28, 1941, the latter sank three 10,000 ton Italian cruisers, and two destroyers, and damaged other ships in an engagement in the Ionian sea. On May 30 the Italians admitted the loss of the Conte Rosso, 17,879 tons, sunk by a British torpedo south of Syracuse while carrying troops. Two weeks later the British claimed that seven Axis ships had been sunk by torpedoes in Axis-held harbors of the Mediterranean and Aegean. The British Admiralty announced near the close of August that 4,007,000 tons of enemy shipping had been sunk during the war, of which 616,000 tons had been sunk in the five weeks ended on August 16. Later the Admiralty claimed that more than 100,000 tons had been sunk in the first half of September, and 168,000 tons in the month of August. A daring and picturesque episode was added to the annals of the British Navy when on April 26 the submarine Regent entered the Italian-held Jugoslav port of Cattaro and remained there for nine hours while the first mate searched unsuccessfully for the British minister to Belgrade. Italian claims to dominate the Mediterranean, or, for that matter, even the Aegean, have not been justified during the year 1941; and the Germans, who have found it necessary or desirable to stiffen their allies' resistance to a common enemy, have joined the Italians in their naval operations in the Mediterranean.

Land Campaigns.

Near the close of the year 1940, British operations in North Africa were meeting with success, and Greek victories over the Italians in Albania (where the British air force was rendering useful assistance) were hailed in some quarters as a possible 'turning point in the war.' These hopes proved, in the event, to be without adequate foundation. The year 1941 brought reversals for Greece. On April 6, 1941, the Nazis invaded Jugoslavia and Greece; Salonika fell into German hands three days later; on the 14th the British admitted that their troops were in retreat in Greece; on the 27th Athens fell. Winston Churchill told the House of Commons on the last day of the month that of about 60,000 men of the British Expeditionary Force in Greece some 45,000 were evacuated. Later more detailed figures were given. The expeditionary force numbered 57,857 (24,100 British, 17,125 Australian, and 16,532 New Zealand troops), and 44,865 were evacuated (16,442 British, 14,157 Australian, 14,266 New Zealand), while about 5,000 were taken prisoners.

The British continued to hold the island of Crete till the Nazis landed on May 20 with gliders, parachutes, and transport planes. In 12 days the British admitted that the island was lost. They made no endeavor to minimize the importance of that defeat. They lost almost half the force stationed in Crete—12,970 out of a total of 27,550 men—and acknowledged that Crete in the enemy's hands was a direct threat to their sea route through the Mediterranean, to their warships going to attack the Sicily-Tripoli sea-lane, and to Tobruk, which lies only 250 miles away, in Libya.

In North Africa the British advance continued for the first three months of the year 1941. After a twenty-day siege they took Tobruk on Jan. 22nd; a week later they captured Derna, a Libyan port 175 miles west of the Egyptian border; Bengasi, the last Fascist stronghold in Eastern Libya, fell to the British on Feb. 6. Berbera, a port in British Somaliland lost to the Italians in August 1940, was retaken in March 1941. Before this, the capital of Italian Somaliland fell, and the British reported the capture of thousands of prisoners. Then the tide turned. The Axis counterattack, when Germans reinforced the luckless Italians, opened before the British high command had expected it. On April 3 Bengasi was evacuated; Derna was recaptured by Germans and Italians on the 8th; four days later Bardia was taken, and the Axis troops pushed on to Solum, 11 miles inside the Egyptian border.

To counterbalance these reverses the British won a series of steady though not speedy victories over the Italians in Ethiopia and in Eritrea. On May 6, the Negus, Haile Selassie, entered Addis Ababa after a five years' exile. At times broadcasts from Cairo seem to have been somewhat over-optimistic regarding British successes; yet, towards the end of the year 1941, it was almost certain that Italian pretensions in Africa had been thoroughly shattered. In November the British, under the leadership of General Auchinlick, who had succeeded General Wavell in that area, opened a new western desert campaign and again launched offensives in North Africa. These movements have met with such success that, though they have not been completed within the hoped-for time, the Axis forces are in strategic retreat. The long siege of Tobruk has been raised. In Syria also the British have carried on successful military operations, and in Iraq.

In the Far East the situation, late in 1941, might well be described as desperate though not hopeless. The entrance of Japan into the war demanded a new grand strategy. In the last week of the year Hong Kong fell after a gallant defense. Malaya was largely in the hands of the Japanese, who were moving steadily nearer Singapore. Singapore fell Feb. 15, 1942. The menace of Japan was being valiantly met by the Netherlands East Indies and the United States as well as by the British Empire; nor must the patient courage of the Chinese go unmentioned. Not only is the sudden Japanese attack pregnant with possibilities of peril, for it carries with it the danger of the loss of the Far East, but it must be fairly admitted that at the end of the year 1941 Japanese successes, even if purchased at a high price, had not been offset by comparable Japanese losses. On the other hand it is true that in time Great Britain and her Allies seem destined to emerge victorious; though the Far East now hangs in the balance there can be little doubt from the weight of Allied resources and resolution which way the scales will tip. The late December visit of Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister, to Washington, with a great staff of aides and experts, was made to plan for the defeat of Hitlerism throughout the world, and already there is evidence of more closely coordinated allied effort. Christmas 1941 did not bring peace on earth to Great Britain or to any other nation; yet, despite blunders and failures, the British record for 1941 gives reasoned hope for ultimate triumph. See also articles on UNITED STATES; WORLD ECONOMICS; WORLD WAR II.