The War Will Not Wait

Last week an illusion died. It was the illusion that Britain and the U.S. could husband their might until 1943 or 1944, then win the war by retrieving what Germany and Japan had taken in the meantime. As Germany coiled for a spring offensive somewhere in Russia (see p. 24), as the Japanese locked the southwest Pacific (see p. 21), the United Nations absorbed the fact that their war can be lost in 1942.

Where and How? Throughout the anti-Axis world, the answering cry rose: Take the offensive; defense will lose the war. In military councils, in the press, among the plain people whose world was threatened, offensive ideas flowered:

> London reported that Soviet Russia, headlong in its winter offensive, had heightened its demands for a second front against the Nazis in Europe. Norway, rotten under conquest, strategically placed for sustained pressure on the Nazis, lay within naval and military reach of Britain. R.A.F. bombers, striking at Paris suburbs (see p. 23), raised the hope that perhaps in Germany's Occupied France the British might find an effective air front; Canada's No. 1 soldier hinted that they might even return in force to the French coast, feel for soft spots, press on toward another western front (an idea which the Germans encouraged by announcing that they were prepared for just that). When more U.S. troops landed in Northern Ireland and a few appeared in England, London censors passed the news that the Yanks were relieving British defense troops for duty elsewhere. Wrote a British (Reuters) observer:

"There are now American troops within easy striking distance of western occupied territory as well as Canadian divisions and fine British troops all itching to strike a blow at the Germans. Great as is the mobilized force of the Germans, they have lost the flower of their troops in Russia. . . . That is Hitler's dilemma and he will not be allowed to forget it."

> Canada's diamond-hard scientist and soldier, Lieut. General Andrew George Latta McNaughton, took straight to the President in Washington his theme for victory: brains, tanks and attack will win the war. Said General McNaughton, who commands Canada's overseas Army in Great Britain: "We are going to cross the Channel again. We are going to march through France and into Germany. . . ."

> When the U.S. Navy announced another task-force blow at Japanese outposts in the Pacific (see p. 22), the U.S. roused with hope that a Pacific offensive was about to begin, a hope encouraged by the Navy reorganization in Washington (see p. 58). Washington rang with demands for an all-out offensive-from Hawaii, from Australia, from Alaska, from India and China. The U.S. had the spirit. Did it have the means?

"We Must Wait!" The U.S. lacked ships. It lacked aircraft carriers. It lacked essential weapons for troop movements on a real expeditionary scale. It lacked many things which the U.S. would have three months, six months, a year from now. One school of thought pondered these lacks, pondered as well the heavy responsibility of committing men, planes, warships to battles in which losses would be great and chances uncertain. It took no basic lack of the offensive spirit for these burdened men to say (as many in high places did say last week): "We must wait."

The wait-a-while school proposed to build up great forces of men, planes, land arms and ships, then launch drives to fold back the Japanese.

"We Can't Wait!" But the Japanese, given six months' grace in the Indies, may be very strongly entrenched. India, Australia, or both may fall. The Japanese may move against Russia's Vladivostok and its bases in Kamchatka, between Alaska and Japan. They may even strike at the U.S. Aleutians, and then toward Alaska. Germany may strike at the great oil and supply centers of the Persian Gulf and the Caucasus, or at western Africa. The enemy was certain to attempt some of these stratagems very soon; in proper conjunction, they might win the war while the Allies prepared.

To many men, these possibilities outweighed the Allies' lacks, added up to a certainty: "We can't wait."

If the U.S. could not wait, it could risk its naval strength in sustained attacks on Japan's long sea lines from Yokohama to the Indies. The U.S. could choose its Pacific theater and commit the maximum of strength of planes, tanks and men to the chosen front. The U.S. might even have to choose between action against Germany in Europe and action against Japan in the Pacific, gambling that defeat of one would lead to defeat of the other.

These choices and decisions faced the Allies last week. The Axis would not wait. World War II would not wait.

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