Victory or the Claws

Brazil has begun to feel that she is in the war but not of it. When Aviation Minister Joaquim Pedro Salgado Jr. announced last week that the Brazilian Air Force had sunk its seventh U-boat, he symbolized Brazil's feeling. He said, by way of explanation for not waiting the customary 30 days to announce the sinking: "It is a great satisfaction to get part of our revenge at the scene of the brutal attacks which provoked a bitter hatred of the Axis throughout Brazil."

Brazilians grow restive as they watch their ships being sunk and see their troops deployed for a coastal defense which, since the Allied invasion of North Africa, seems not very urgent. They want to send troops abroad. Recently General Manuel Rabello was permitted to say, and Brazilian papers were permitted to make much of his saying: "Soldiers, sailors and aviators of Brazil will have to kill and die for the flag of their country and for the United Nations' cause as English, Russians, Americans and Chinese have been dying."

The Rio de Janeiro newspaper O Globo next day headlined: "BRAZIL'S IMMEDIATE AND DIRECT PARTICIPATION IN THE WAR!" Last week O Globo asserted that Brazil actually would send an expeditionary force and that War Minister General Eurico Caspar Dutra had offered his services to President Getulio Vargas as commander of the force.

Brazil lacks arms, transport vehicles, food and above all shipping for an expeditionary force.

Brazil's desire for action poses a real problem to Brazil's allies, who lack the shipping to satisfy her yearning. But Brazilians have begun to feel strongly, and the U.S. cannot well ignore such expressions of passion as General Rabello's: "There must be no half measure: either defeat and the claws of the beast on our shoulders or victory and the unconditional surrender agreed upon in Casablanca and the possibility of reconstructing a just world for free men."

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