Editor’s note: On June 6, 1944, the Daily Hampshire Gazette carried extensive coverage of the D-Day invasions. The Gazette’s first editorial on the subject appeared the next day, and a second was printed June 8, 1944. The two were reprinted in the Gazette in 1994 to mark D-Day’s 50th anniversary. They are again reprinted below, in that order.
This invasion of Europe is so gigantic an effort that it almost baffles description in its entirety. To call it a major operation is putting it mildly, for many campaigns in the past have been that, and they have been much smaller in extent, but highly important. This big drive might be described as an operation in a “medical” sense also, for its object is to “cut out the cancer” of Europe which has been found in Germany. The knife is going in deep and wide regardless of consequences. The object is to end the poisonous spread of Nazism.
This is a war for the free way of life, as chosen by each nation, as against oppression by a few. Europe is being liberated, and with it will come a new era of safety for all the United Nations, as well as those nations that are fortunate enough to be sitting on the sidelines in this great crusade. After Europe will come the smashing of the tyrants of the Pacific. And, after that will come the greatest task of all in the long run — laying of the foundations of a prolonged peace at least, if not a permanent one. The many who are forcing defeat upon two aggressor countries ought to be able to agree on a plan to keep them in their places once they are forced into unconditional surrender.
At the proper time, when this invasion is well under way, the people of Europe who have been enslaved for nearly five years ought to be able to come out of their underground in sufficient force to give the Allies great aid in driving the Nazis into the ground. With a new Russian push soon to get under way, the Nazis will be kept busy on two sides at least, and every bit of sabotage and assassination and wholesale slaughter that the French and Czechs, Yugos and Greeks and others can inflict upon the Hitlerites — so much more in the cause of freedom.
The job at hand is not so much the taking of cities as it is the job of wiping out or capturing as many of the Nazis as can possibly be reached. Perhaps Rommel and others can be included among them, now that they are fighting where hostile patriots abound. This is one war in which the annihilation of the enemy cannot be carried too far for the good of civilization, peace and progress.
War is probably the greatest evil in the world. But there are times when it takes war itself – in righteous hands – to destroy that evil. Surely if there ever was a time since the beginning of civilization that called for warfare in all legitimate forms, this is it.
At a time when civilization in general is at the highest level ever reached in human history, great nations have turned to a life of crime which, if successful, might turn back the clock of human progress for a hundred or a thousand years. Enlightened nations are fighting now not merely in present self-defense, but for their children’s future, their country’s future, and the future of the human race.
Make no mistake. This is no ordinary war, no border dispute, no casual flare-up inspired by momentary anger or grievance. It is a battle for the world, a fight for the continuance of decent life that Americans have known in this favored land of freedom, and for related nations and friends who are of the same mind and spirit. It is in this attitude that Americans can say reverently, “God bless our arms and the men who bear them!”