U.S. At War: Total War Postponed

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Total War Postponed (See Cover)

This week comes the hour that will try the integrity of Fourth of July orators.

Between the fourth day of July and the third day of November, it is perfectly possible that a series of major military defeats may befall the U.S. and its allies.

The enemy last week had obviously committed himself to campaigns—in Egypt, in Russia, in China, and against Allied shipping—to bring about at least four Allied disasters. Any one of those disasters would be serious, as serious perhaps as the fall of France, and if the enemy succeeds, those disasters will come in the four months that now lie ahead.

Yet in the Land of the Free, people were still disposed last week to postpone putting up a total fight for their freedom —to postpone it for four months, until after the elections on Nov. 3.

That state of mind was not to be found in the Army or Navy. At Wake, Bataan, the Coral Sea, Midway and in every other theater of war they have shown their eagerness to make an all-out effort now. Nor was that state of mind to be found in the factories. Last week President Roosevelt said that May war production was 4,000 planes, 1,500 tanks, 2,000 artillery pieces, more than 100,000 machine-and submachine guns.

But the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave was still not tough enough, frightened enough, or brave enough to make certain vital decisions now—to levy taxes that would prevent inflation, to stop waste of materials badly needed for war, to draft the best fighting men in the nation. The Land of the Free plainly did not yet understand the price of freedom today.

What Price Freedom? On only two occasions in the last century when the men & women came from the nation's green fields and white houses to celebrate Independence Day has the Union been in danger comparable to the danger it faces on July 4, 1942.

One such day was July 4, 1863. After three years of military bungling by Lincoln's generals, Robert E. Lee had invaded the North and came close to smashing the Union. Actually on that Fourth the war had already been won by the Union, for on that day Lee began to retreat from Gettysburg, and on that day Vicksburg fell. Fourth of July crowds were not aware of either battle's end or of what they meant.

The other such day was July 4, 1918, when after three spring drives the Germans had almost broken the Allied front in France. Again, although men generally did not yet know, the tide had turned.

Already the U.S. has raised an army nearly twice as great as the army that served the Union in the entire Civil War.

Already U.S. naval casualties have exceeded those in all the wars of U.S. history.

Already its spending is approaching the rate of $350 per capita (nearly half the national income) compared to $176 (31% of the national income) in 1919 and $37 in 1765. In one bill last week Congress authorized the spending of more money on the Army alone than the total U.S. cost of World War I—$43 billion against $40 billion. Already the nation as a whole is bending its efforts to win on a far wider scale than in any former war, none excepted. And still the nation is in jeopardy.