Anxious Ending

The year sputtered out, and men in Great Britain made their reckonings and asked their questions: What will happen in 1941? Will invasion vomit suddenly from those scores of angry, bruised sea-mouths from Norway to Normandy? Will the shorthand of Balkan rumor eventually spell out a third front to the war? Will a dozen ex-countries have a future? Will the secrets and mysteries of Japan (see p. 28) be resolved? Above all, will the child of the West plunge his hand into the fire?

Outwardly, men in Great Britain were defiant; the questions were deep inside them. "Christmas," said a placard in downtown London, "is 1,940 years old and Hitler is only 51. He can't spoil our Christmas." If shops escaped bombings, they advertised: "Open As Usual." A tea shop which had been hit and lost its front wall announced "More Open than Usual."

But inwardly men were asking anxious questions. And leaders in Britain sensed this. In their various ways they answered the questions. Winston Churchill's great prose and withering scorn calmed and delighted his people. Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir Kingsley Wood, announcing two new war loans, made the people proud by telling how they had subscribed $5,076,000,000 for the war effort in a year. Lord Horder allayed the people's concern about epidemics with announcement of steps to rid underground shelters of infectious pests.

Most heartening of all were the words of the King. Haltingly but firmly, sitting all alone "somewhere in the country,'' he broadcast a year's-end message of hope: "Time and time again during these last few months I have seen for myself the battered towns and cities of England and I have seen the British people facing this ordeal. I can say to them all that they may be justly proud of their race and nation. . . .

"The future will be hard. But our feet are planted on the path of victory, and with the help of God we shall make our way to justice and to peace."

Ex-countries. If they had any doubt of the extent of their responsibilities. Britons had only to hear the anguished, prophetic words of Europe's relicts of dead authority:

Queen Wilhelmina of The Netherlands: "You can serve your country best by patient waiting and by refusing precipitate action. . . . Your determined passive resistance to the tyranny that has been imposed on you gives me great satisfaction and fills me with just pride."

King Haakon VII of Norway: "A proper Christmas cannot be celebrated by the Norwegians in Norway in chains or by Norwegians unable to spend Christmas in their own country with those they love dearest. . . . May peace, freedom and justice reign in Norway in the near future.

God bless our dear fatherland." Ex-President Dr. Eduard Benes of Czecho-Slovakia: "Germany is defeated.

The attempt to invade England and the Italian reverses in Greece and Libya mark the turning point of the war." Free Frenchman General Charles de Gaulle: "With the Hun in Paris, Bordeaux. Lille, Reims and Strasbourg, and with the Italians pretending to dictate their will to the French nation, there is nothing else to do but fight. ... To treat with the enemies, to accept their control, to cooperate with them, is to betray the fatherland."

If there was hope among the enemies of Adolf Hitler last week, it was a hope aimed audibly and obviously across the Atlantic. Most eloquent appeal to the U. S. was that of Eire's Prime Minister Eamon de Valera. Though Eire still preferred hunger or war to giving Britain bases from which to strengthen food convoys to Britain (and Eire),* though there was little chance that the U. S. could answer the appeal, it nevertheless summed up the disruptions even to neutral nations in a world at war: "Many Irish men and women reside in Britain, and the deaths there of relatives have brought grief to many an Irish home.

Many Irish sailors have lost their lives.

We have sustained heavy raw-material losses. A large percentage of our shipping has been sunk. . . .

"As this war began, the Irish State proclaimed its neutrality. . . . That neutrality would bring special problems and difficulties of its own was well recognized. It was understood also that it imposed upon us the duty of building up our defense forces, so as to effectively guard our territory and prevent its use by one belligerent power against another. . . . What I would like to say to our American friends ... is this: help us in the above interests to secure these weapons. We are, of course, ready to pay for what we get. And, in the second place, help us, should the blockade grow tighter, to secure the supply of foodstuffs which are essential to our people." Only the unfolding new year could answer the questions that were in men's hearts last week. But all the words of Kings and commoners, all the Happy-New-Year wishes, all the unspoken prayers of the dwindling year of 1940, expressed just one unanimous urgency: that men might live at peace soon again and be without suspicion.

* In Washington it was known that the request for bases, put through a neutral agency, had been turned down flat.

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