Hit-and-Ruin Raids

In the Seven Years' War, William Pitt the Elder undertook, besides the great designs which built the British Empire, several extravagantly expensive miniature military exploits, for which his opponents hotly criticized him. They said he was "breaking windows with guineas." In the last three weeks Great Britain has pulled off three strange baby invasions apparently as pointless as Pitt's exercises seemed to those critics. And before them had gone a whole series of similar raids--none of which was officially announced. But the British contended that this time they were throwing brickbats around, not just money; this time they claimed there was method in trivialities.

Last month a small British naval force appeared off the barren, waterless, craggy, four-square-mile Italian rock of Castellorizo, near the Dodecanese Islands--two miles off the Turkish coast and 60 miles from Rhodes (where the Germans were this week reported to have sent Stuka dive-bombers). After brief opposition, the British forced a landing and took the islet.

About 48 hours later they withdrew. The British said the island had been fitted as a seaplane base. Wiping the base out was object enough for the raid. It was, furthermore, excellent practice in landing troops.

Shortly after the Castellorizo raid, another force was said to have turned the same stunt on little Caso Island, in the Dodecanese near Crete.

Last week, far to the north, the British did it again--this time, on a slightly bigger scale. In foggy weather naval units attacked the port of Svolvoer, in the Lofoten Islands, off Narvik, Norway, and then withdrew. "No military importance whatever," the Germans said; "a propaganda maneuver ... a mere bagatelle ... a typical Don Quixote stroke, which could only be carried out by a country sunk as low as England."

And yet the British were able to announce the destruction of fish-and whale-oil plants; the sinking of eleven ships totaling 18,000 tons, including an armed trawler and a good-sized supply ship; the capture of 215 Germans and ten Quislingist Norwegians; the carrying off of 300 Norwegian patriots who wanted to fight for Britain; and--here was the propaganda--the distribution to Norwegians of food, cigarets, chocolates, wool yarn and high heart. From Stockholm it was reported that the Germans answered this bagatelle with considerable fury: by fining the Svolvoerans 100,000 crowns, burning the homes of the escaped patriots, arresting some who abetted the British.

In Britain the raid did much to offset the depression caused by Nazi successes in the Balkans. The raiders were greeted as heroes. They reached home laden with souvenirs: framed photographs of Hitler and Goring, swastikas, the flag of the supply ship. The proud possessor of the flag spread it across his chest and said: "The hardest fight I had was to get this flag, and the fellows who provided the competition were my comrades."

Castellorizo, Caso and Svolvoer were refinements of a technique of raids for sabotage, espionage and prisoners which the British have been developing ever since the fall of France. Last summer they trained French-speaking members of a Thames Estuary long-distance swimmers' club for raids on the French coast. These men rode most of the way across the Channel in torpedo boats, then swam ashore with bundles of French peasant clothing strapped to their heads, and car ried out destructive missions on railroads, telegraph lines, power plants. A private and a major landed in France with a Ford which they had carried across on the prow of a torpedo boat, drove to Paris, two nights later recrossed the Channel. Month ago parachutists landed in Italy, apparently caused a tie-up in South Italian communications. Most extraordinary raid for prisoners took place at the French resort town of Le Touquet early in November. The British landed a small force which entered a dance hall, arrested 40 German officers, marched them down the streets to the harbor, embarked and got away with out firing a single round.

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