The U.S. at War

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D

Litvinoff's Problerm

Russia has her paws full fighting Germany. And since she is doing a good job of it, she had better not take on more than she can handle by trying also to fight Japan. Nobody knows it better than Maxim Litvinoff. This was the news that he last week conveyed by implication to the U.S. people.

Litvinoff was the Foreign Commissar who fell from power when Stalin, changing policy, was preparing to sign the German-Russian-Pact. (He was the spokesman for cooperation with the democracies who came back when Stalin needed democratic cooperation; the logical choice for Ambassador to Washington.) Ambassador Litvinoff's first appearance in Washington should have been the first great move toward reconciling a suspicious Russia with a suspicious U.S.

But when the Ambassador presented his credentials it was in a diplomatic situation as tangled as the plot of a Dostoevski novel. The U.S. was at war with Japan (but not then with Germany) and Russia was at war with Germany (but not with Japan). Japan (with Germany and Italy) had sworn never to make a separate peace with the U.S. and Great Britain (but no such pledge was made about Russia). The U.S. declaration of war against Germany and Italy eased the Ambassador's embarrassment somewhat. But in the first hours of the war, anxious U.S. citizens created another problem by asking: What will Russia do?

No U.S. official joined in the clamor. President Roosevelt said smoothly that supplies to Russia would continue. It came with bad grace for U.S. citizens — many of whom had opposed aid to Russia before — to censure Russia for not jumping on Japan, merely because Japan had jumped on the U.S.

But Ambassador Litvinoff had to say something. The Ambassador made his country's position clear. Diplomatically, it was a masterly job. Practically, it said that Russia would take no action against Japan now. Litvinoff's chief points:

* Hitler's advance in Russia was made at a stupendous cost to him. Russia, would have welcomed a second front then. "We never complained, however, we never made any demands on our ally, England."

* Stories that Hitler had decided to halt in Russia "need not be taken at all seriously. . . . We intend to beat back and smash up the hordes of Hitler till they are completely destroyed."

* The war is one war: "All that is going on is the result of a vast conspiracy by a handful of international gangsters calling themselves Axis powers. . . . We now have, in various parts of the world, separate sectors of one great battlefield. . . . We are proud and happy to count ourselves the allies of your great country."

Ambassador Litvinoff put the situation very neatly. And in making it plain that Russia would not open up an Eastern Front, he also gave a good reason: "Hitler is the chief culprit in all the present wars, the inspirer of the whole gang, and the destruction of Hitler would mean the end of them all." The U.S. and Britain, now fighting the whole gang, understood and agreed.

Chai-yo for Thailand

It was a dramatic moment. Thailand had surrendered to the Japanese. In the Thailand Legation in Washington the brisk, round-faced Minister, Mom Rajawongse Seni Pramoj, had to announce whether or not he surrendered, too.

Eight tan, faultlessly dressed, glossy-haired men arose and shouted in unison: Chai-yo! (Hurrah). They shouted it five times. For the Minister announced that, no matter what his Government said: "I have decided to work from now on for one thing and one thing only — the re-establishment of free and independent Thailand." The ornate, red-carpeted sitting room, dazzling with gold-silk furniture, pillars and goddesses, echoed with the Oriental cheers. When he finished his eloquent speech, the Minister selected a cigaret from the skull of a tiger whose open jaws were lined with gold, and ended solemnly, in English: "Gentlemen, we'll lick the hell out of 'em. That is the motto of the Thai people."*

PLANNING

Away With Butter!

The primary military strategy of the U.S. in World War II is to produce enough arms eventually to equip something like 7,500,000 American soldiers, 5,700,000 British, the almost innumerable Russians, 80,000 Dutch and uncountable Chinese.

In Washington the percussion cap of war dynamited the last tag end of the guns-v.-butter argument. In any case, that argument had long since become only a differing about degree. One group had been insisting on all-out expansion; the other group contended that the present plan was big enough — bigger, in fact, than the U.S. could take. This second group had encouraged all-out production, had discouraged all-out planning as "hysterical overexpansion." The second group's bearishness on the potential productiveness of the U.S. was given a final trample at a hurry-up session of SPAB, top defense board. This wasn't even necessary: the take-it-easy members had already hurried to "get right." Now they formally went along with the Victory Program, upping planned defense expenditures from $68,000,000,000 to $I56,000,000,000.

The Victory Program itself was at once the greatest mess of wishful thinking and the greatest production dream in U.S. history. It multiplied astronomically impossible figures by five and hoped that each figure would show up as something hard, tangible, useful or deadly: a tank, a gun, a ship, a plane, a truck, a tent, a uniform, a mess kit, a blanket, a parachute, a monkey wrench, a lathe, a screw.

The President gave the Victory Program its marching orders last week. Biggest problem: how to lick the process by which: 1) Congress appropriates billions of dollars; 2) the Army & Navy swish through paper slips of orders; 3) manufacturers hang the orders on a hook, unable to get the plants, tools, materials and manpower to make the stuff. Most immediate, most terrifying bottleneck, bobbing up like a cork released under water: machine tools. This was the bottleneck of 1940 and 1941, was still guaranteed to last through at least three months of 1942.