Strength for Spring

The nation's war muscles toughened and grew. Surely and steadily, despite hindrances, bogglings, misunderstandings--despite the fact that the nation, even now, had no idea of its own strength.

Once a pampered U.S. had almost believed Hitler: that the democracies were soft, flabby, ineffectual. The poisoned idea had not yet been wholly proved a lie.

When Hitler's war machine crushed France in ten bone-shattering days, the U.S. looked at its own little Army, nervously debated Lend-Lease. Now a leaner U.S. had its own war machine. Hitler's juggernaut, poised for spring, would soon be only the second greatest. Guarded U.S. estimates placed Nazi war spending at $35,000,000,000 a year, close to the absolute German ceiling of manpower and materials. The U.S., said WPB, is spending at the rate of $30,000,000,000 a year-and just getting started. Soon the U.S. will pass Hitler; next year it will double him.

Bataan was gone; in the Pacific the Jap was everywhere; the U.S. faced its darkest spring. But the country was finding itself. If more defeats came, they would be endured. For those who had eyes to see, out of the dead, defeated days a new nation was rising.

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