"Peace and War"

U.S. citizens could read, last week, an official history of a ten-year frustration. In the 144 documented pages of its white paper, Peace and War, the State Department for the first time set forth the history of its dealings with the Imperial Government of Japan from the 1931 invasion of Manchuria down to the final hours that Cordell Hull spent with Ambassador Nomura and Emissary Kurusu while their countrymen made finally ready for Pearl Harbor.

There was little in the document that informed men did not know, yet the cumulative effect of its pages was to make the efforts of U.S. diplomacy seem much more real and wise in retrospect than they had often seemed in prospect. Whoever had been caught napping on December 7, 1941, it was not Cordell Hull or ex-Ambassador Joseph C. Grew. Said the measured New York Times: "It is hard to see how our government could have done more, in honor, than it did to stave off the worldwide war."

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