For What Cause?

In a Norman cemetery last week a little French girl, smiling with the maternal pride and pleasure of a little girl doing a womanly job, placed a bouquet of fresh summer flowers atop a fresh mound of earth. The grave was quite new, and efficiently spaded; two shovels stood stiffly at its side. Beneath the fresh Normandy flowers and the earth lay an American, killed before he had so much as seen a German.

This was part of war, the simple fact of death, which everyone, including the little girl, could get used to, whether or not they understood it. This was the first fact of war, the potential fact that every American had steeled himself against; the fact which Americans, generally, had found that they had to accept, and were accepting. After it would come the other facts, and the questions: Why did he die? For what cause?

By last week, as the battles exploded on all fronts, as the number of casualties crept higher, as unmistakable victory seemed a week nearer, one not-so-simple fact of war seemed to be emerging: World War II is not yet a crusade. Indeed, the world over, week by week, signs came that there was less & less chance of its becoming a crusade. From Helsinki to Saipan Island, men were fighting with one real and common war aim: to win and go home. Many of them had hoped for higher aims; many still so hoped, all over the world, as in the U.S. But in the 249th week since Sept. 1, 1939, that hope seemed less sure than ever. The press made it plain that World War II was cruel, violent, and boring, like all wars; but it was like no other war, because it gripped the whole earth.

All that most Americans wanted now was to get the war finished--the war that kept too many Americans too far from home. All that most Americans hoped now was that by doing a thorough job of finishing this worldwide war they would get a real chance to work out a worldwide peace.

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