What To Do?

When Germany struck at Russia last week, the war's last major military enigma but one (Japan) was cleared up. Nevertheless most of the world wondered what the rest of the world would do about it.

In Britain, the timing of the Nazi attack--too late to make the Sunday morning papers--gave Winston Churchill the chance to scoop the entire British press. Over the radio he electrified the nation with an immediate and resonant declaration: "No one has been a more consistent opponent of Communism than I have for the last 25 years. I will unsay no words that I have spoken about it. But all this fades away before the spectacle which is now unfolding. . . .

"Any man or State who fights against Naziism will have our aid. . . We have offered to the Government of Soviet Russia any technical or economic assistance which is in our power and which is likely to be of service to them. We shall bomb Germany by day as well as by night in ever-increasing measure, casting upon them month by month a heavier discharge of bombs and making the German people taste and gulp each month a sharper dose of the miseries they have showered upon mankind. . . .

"It is not for me to speak of the action of the United States, but this I will say: If Hitler imagines that his attack on Soviet Russia will cause the slightest division of aims or slackening of effort in the great democracies, who are resolved upon his doom, he is woefully mistaken. . . . The Russian danger is ... our danger and the danger of the United States.

Spoken on Sunday evening, before weekending appeasers at home and isolationists in the U.S. could get their views in print, Mr. Churchill's swift pledge of London-Washington aid to Moscow was a shrewd play for his team.

> In anti-Communist Unoccupied France, Vichy officials hailed the Nazi attack as a timely move toward Russian raw materials necessary for the construction of the European "New Order."

> Broken and beaten Italy declared war on Russia.

> The Spanish Government declared that Germany was now fighting "Spain's hated enemy against whom she [Spain] fought for three years." Spain was ready to send troops to help.

> Swedish spokesmen declared that Sweden would stay neutral. But there were rumors that Sweden's forces, including her pocket battleships expressly designed for Baltic fighting, would soon be used against Russia.

> Despite reports that Finnish troops were marching with the Germans, that Russian planes had bombed Finnish shipping, Finland declared that she was not at war. A split in the Finnish Cabinet on the war question was rumored.

> In raped Lithuania and Estonia revolts broke out against Russia.

> In Koenigsberg, East Prussia, a Latvian "Government in Exile" declared its independence of Russia.

>The Slovak Government broke off relations with Russia.

>Hungarian spokesmen declared that Hungary would take only normal military precautions in times of nearby war, such as the strengthening of frontier guards.

>Turkey, which has non-aggression pacts with both Britain and Germany, declared herself neutral.

>Throughout the world 366,000,000 Roman Catholics wondered what stand the Vatican would take: the Vatican deplored the further spreading of carnage.

>Nonplussed Japan could not make up its mind (see p. 34).

>The U.S. condemned Germany's attack and indirectly approved Russia's stand (see p. 11).

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