Preparations for Armageddon

Said the Tokyo newspaper Miyako last week: "It no longer is a crazy dream to expect a great war with Japan, Germany, Italy and Soviet Russia on one side and the United States, Great Britain and China on the other." Other newspapers echoed the thought. The war, they said, would begin before June.

This warning was based on sound reasoning from known facts. Everybody knew that Japan was beginning to act on its neutrality pact with Russia by intensifying its war against China, by preparing a force-supported diplomatic drive against U.S., British and Dutch interests throughout the Far East (see col. j). This week the drive began. The Osaka Maimchi accused the U.S., Britain, China, British India, Australia and The Netherlands East Indies of pooling their military and naval resources to maintain the status quo in the Far East. Australia's Minister for External Affairs Sir Frederick Stewart, the first to deny this, called it "a piece of deliberate propaganda." It was more. It was the start of a Hitlerian campaign against "encirclement." Its object: Singapore.

All the East stirred restlessly, like a monster aroused from an age-old sleep, as new conquerors threatened the age-old dominion of Britain. To an appeal from the London Times to end his civil-disobedience campaign in view of Britain's growing peril, Mohandas K. Gandhi replied curtly that the campaign "must continue at all costs." In Iran tension increased with the fear that Russia was preparing to drive toward the Persian Gulf. In Iraq Nazi plotters had already unsettled Britain's hold (see p. 37), and Nazi Schemester Franz von Papen appeared to have cowed Turkey into some sort of agreement with the Axis. Egypt awaited a fresh Nazi drive. Object: Suez.

In Western Europe, Germany marched toward bloodless victories. With no fear of British reprisals, Unoccupied France turned over a sizable part of its shipping to help get the Germans to North Africa (see p. 23). Adolf Hitler sent a note to Chief of State Marshal Henri Philippe Petain demanding the reinstatement of Pierre Laval in the Cabinet. Against U.S. Ambassador Alexander Wilbourne Weddell's warning that the U.S. would do its utmost for Britain, Spain's newspapers started an Axis-inspired campaign against Portugal, hinted that Spain would soon join the Axis. Object: Gibraltar.

In London Prime Minister Winston Churchill asked Australia's Prime Minister Robert Gordon Menzies to postpone his trip to the U.S. and remain for a conference of Dominion leaders: New Zealand's Prime Minister Peter Fraser, on his way to London, South Africa's Jan Christiaan Smuts and Canada's William Lyon Mackenzie King, if they could leave their problems at home. The long-awaited Axis drive against the bastions of British sea power, the drive to capture the subject countries of the British Empire and to isolate the English-speaking ones, had begun in earnest.

Democracy's Leaders had to cope with the bugaboo of all democratic leaders: the fear, disunity and unconfidence of their own peoples. Britons were critical of the failure in the Balkans and Australians resented the tardy release of news about the soldiers who have borne the brunt of Britain's war. At least one Canadian newspaper, the Toronto Globe and Mail, told Prime Minister Mackenzie King that he ought to go to London. The U.S. was increasingly outspoken in its criticism of its leaders' reluctance to lead (see p.13).

Whether this criticism was justified or not, the truth was that the U.S., at least, was woefully unprepared to make the decision it must make. Before the tide could turn, much of the world would probably be lost to Anglo-American dominance. The U.S. must decide, not whether to follow, but whether to lead, in a probably exhausting, possibly losing, certainly long and truly World War. And it must decide right now.

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