GREAT BRITAIN: Fools' Paradise Lost

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With stubborn Russian resistance to the Nazis on the east and U.S. aid on the west, many an ebullient Briton has come to believe that World War II is as good as won. Such optimists, surprised and petulant when the Roosevelt-Churchill meeting did not hatch an outright U.S. declaration of war, have been inclined to complain about U.S. timidity both in private and public.

Against such complacency and the attendant dangers of disillusion, the British press last week unleashed a Blitz of editorials and articles, getting down to cases on the U.S. position in the war.

Opening gun was a long letter from an Americanophile, old Etonian and journalist, Philip Hewitt-Myring, which the august London Times played up on its editorial page. Said he: Roosevelt is no dictator, has plenty of opposition in the U.S. Under the circumstances Britain should regard any U.S. aid as a "bonus." "From this fools' paradise, however, in which we supposed that all we have to do is to keep Hitler at bay until American deliveries win the war for us, we must imperatively and immediately depart."

An editorial in the Sunday Express warned somberly that "the current of American thought has set lately against partnership in our war." Other papers told their readers that U.S. aircraft production was slow, that polls showed that only 20% of the U.S. favored a declaration of war. Some went on to caution their readers against believing that Russia would win the war.

Totally unreconstructed, however, was the Sunday Times (no relation to the Times). Its leading editorial said roundly that the U.S. should blush because the flow of war supplies to Britain is not a "river" but a "stream."