The Great Test is Ahead

The extraordinarily brilliant seizure of Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshalls came as great good news to Americans, brooding ever since Tarawa over the high casualties there.

But there was no exultant wave of optimism. The people were taking victories as they took defeat, soberly and doggedly. And the news from Europe was a hard checkrein on enthusiasm--the compressed beachhead below Rome, the slow inch-by-inch bitterness of Cassino.

With these things in mind, as a background to all discussion, all plans and hopes, the citizens plugged steadily away at the business of living, in the eighth week of their third year at war.

But even these 113 long weeks have not brought them to understand the realities of war, said the Army's Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall, speaking to the U.S. in a nationwide broadcast.

He said: "I speak with an emphasis that I believe is pardonable in one who has a terrible responsibility for the lives of many men, because I feel that here at home we are not yet facing the realities of war, the savage, desperate conditions of the battlefronts.

"Vehement protests I am receiving against our use of flame throwers do not indicate an understanding of the meaning of our dead on the beaches of Tarawa. . . .

"Our soldiers must be keenly conscious that the full strength of the nation is behind them; they must not go into battle puzzled or embittered over disputes at home which adversely affect the war effort. Our small sacrifices should be personal even more than financial. They should be proof positive that we never forget for a moment that the soldier has been compelled to leave his family, to give up his business, and to hazard his life. . . .

"What is now required is the ardent support of our forces by the people at home. I am not referring merely to the production of equipment or to the purchase of bonds, but rather to the need of a stern resolution on the part of the whole people of the United States to make every sacrifice that will contribute to the victory. The soldiers must feel that the home folk--East, West, on the plains and in the mountains--are completely united in their determination to see this thing through to an overwhelming victory in the shortest possible time."

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