Campaign in the Balance

The democracies last week stood in danger of a greater defeat than they had yet publicly recognized.

In the first week after war broke out in the Pacific they lost two battles, neither of which should have been lost: Pearl Harbor and the fight which cost them the Prince of Wales and Repulse.

In the second week they lost Guam. Its loss was expected, but it fell with grim speed.

Last week they lost Hong Kong and Wake. Brilliantly defended Wake was a Pyrrhic victory for the Japs, but none the less a loss to the democracies.

All these defeats were taken with anger, but relative complacency, by the U.S. Because of these cumulative defeats a U.S. Army was fighting a desperate battle in the Philippines and a British Army was in a tough spot in Malaya. If those two engagements end in defeat, the U.S. will not be able to shrug them off as two more battles lost--they will mark the loss of a major campaign, a defeat as serious to the democracies as the fall of western Europe in the spring of 1940.

Axis strategy is as plain as the democracies' danger. So far the only two Allies of the democracies who have been able to fight off the Axis are 1) Russia, which has held Germany at bay for six months, and 2) China, which has held Japan at bay for more than four years. But the ability of both to continue doing so depends on continued aid from the U.S.

Until a month ago the attacks on Russia and China were direct. Then Germany began trying to stabilize its Russian front and Japan turned from China to attack the Philippines and Singapore. Object: to effect a vast pincer movement aimed at choking the only adequate supply lines to Russia and China, the Persian Gulf route and the Burma Road.

If Japan takes Singapore and if Germany successfully makes the logical move against Suez and the Near East, that object will be all but accomplished. The pincers will close on Russia and China. Without supply they will almost inevitably succumb. The pincers will then be reversed to close in on Britain and the U.S. --both cut off by then from their war supplies of tin and rubber. The pincers would close first on the outposts of the Western Hemisphere (Britain and Australia), next on America itself. The Battle of the Hemispheres would be joined, with the U.S. on the short end.

Against this obvious strategy the U.$. and its Allies last week met to devise a counter strategy. In Washington, where President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill conferred (see p. 11), in Moscow, where Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden wound up his talks with Premier Joseph Stalin, in Chungking, where the strategists of three nations met (see p. 24), in many a military and naval chart room across the world the same grave decisions were faced: at what points on the worldwide battlefront could the Allies best throw their strength? And how much strength could they throw?

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