One Way to Win a War

Japan stood at the edge of the world gambling table last week and watched to see if her reckless bet would pay off.

Japan could remember her hoarding of little white chips for this desperate try. She could remember the hoarding of steel—the bathtubs and radiators salvaged from Shanghai houses which had been bombarded with Japanese steel; the hoarding of oil—the boatloads of it wheedled from the U.S. against the eventual drive for oil; the hoarding of young men—hardened to horror on the cold plains of Manchukuo and in the hot valley of the Yangtze. For the sake of the chips there had been abnegation: less rice, less fish, less charcoal, no taxi rides, a minimum of sake, stinting on geishas, wood-pulp clothes.

After Dec. 7 nearly the whole pile of savings had been spread, widely and with studied recklessness, on the table: 200 planes over Pearl Harbor, scores of transports off Malaya, 200,000 men thrown at Luzon, oil burned up in submarine raids off California, shells pumped onto Guam, Wake and Midway, artillery squandered at Hong Kong, shrapnel consumed in a new Chinese offensive, cruisers risked in an attack on Sarawak, precious bombs dropped on Sumatra and Burma—a total bet of nearly all Japan's power. At best Japan stood to lose far more than she could replace soon; at worst, everything.

The extent of the risk was so great as to be almost admirable.

Last week as the wheel ticked around to the tell-off it looked as if the bet had been placed not only riskily, but well. It looked as if Japan might win far more than she had staked and might win it the only way she could, quickly. Already she had achieved naval supremacy in the western Pacific, air supremacy in the Philippines and Malaya. She had taken Guam, Wake, Mindanao, Hong Kong, Sarawak, most of Luzon, nearly half of Malaya.

Japan was convinced by her apparent success-to-be that the only way to win is to risk.