The first winter of the Second World War brought few remarkable military developments. There was no outburst of activity on the Western Front, no bombing of seaports or other CIties. Only on the seas, and in the subsidiary war in Finland, was action fierce and continuous-unless, indeed, we include the constant activity of the diplomats, an activity in which even the United States, as represented by the enigmatic Mr Sumner Welles, finally took a hand. Then, in the spring, came that intensification of the conflict which had been so widely prophesied. It began with a sudden German assault on Scandinavia, the details of which are still uncertain at the moment of writing.