Grave New World

In Europe it was total war. In the U. S. it was shock--the grim event had finally arrived. For Franklin Roosevelt, who had the benefit of forewarning from the U. S. diplomatic corps--he returned to Washington three days before the Nazi thrust--the shock was measurably cushioned. He had an opportunity before most other men to consider in the cold light of reason an even more momentous event: a change in the visible shape of things to come.

What Franklin Roosevelt saw or thought he saw--as he faced perhaps the gravest responsibility which any U. S.

President can face--he did not choose to say in public. But as the psychological shock receded, all men had growing opportunity to see for themselves one new probability and many new possibilities--things which seemed fantastic a fortnight ago.

The first of these--a probability--was that, contrary to original U. S. assumption, the war was not likely to turn into a three-or-four-year endurance contest. So far at least as present operations in Europe are concerned, the war had become more likely than not to end within a year. Hitler had made his choice--whether out of shrewd calculation, melodramatic temperament, or the pressure of necessity within Germany--to stake all on an immediate decision of arms.

The war which he waged in The Netherlands and Belgium last week was not a kind of war which either side can long endure. It resembled the fateful drives which the Germans staged in 1918. Its almost certain end: 1) overwhelming victory for the attackers or 2) their inevitable collapse, from exhaustion of materiel as well as of morale. (Even Germany's great factories cannot, for example, turn out aircraft as fast as they were destroyed last week.) Only a prophet could foresee the outcome. But an examination of present facts made plain that an outcome had become imminent.

This probability raised for the U. S.

new and on the whole unfamiliar possibilities. Hitherto, when the U. S. has considered (and almost unanimously rejected) the possibility of itself going to war, it has thought in terms of fighting beside the Allies in Europe. But if an outcome of the war in Europe is imminent, the U. S.

will not be called on to consider that possibility--the war there will be over before armed intervention is possible.

The first and ugliest of the possibilities created last week is that the U. S. may, within a few months if not a few weeks, have to decide whether or not it will go to war in another theatre. If German victory begins to look probable, it is highly possible that Japan will move to seize The Netherlands East Indies. If Germany goes on to destroy the British Empire, Japan may seize British Malaya.

Those far-off lands mean little to the U. S.--except that thence come the major portion of the rubber and the tin on which the U. S. depends. There is no other present source from which the U. S. can get an adequate supply of these necessities, particularly rubber (see p. 73). With the prospect of victorious dictatorships in control of Europe, Asia and Africa, the U. S. would have to decide whether it could then afford to be cut off from its supply of these strategic materials. However the U. S. decision goes, it will be serious, and may well be made on short notice.

The other possibilities, still unconsidered, which confronted the U. S. because of last week's events, were the prospective consequences of a quick and overwhelming German victory. Fortnight ago these were largely fantastic speculations. In a short time they may become immediate, practical problems. If Britain, France and Holland should be conquered, what will become of their empires? Should the U. S. seize Greenland? Bermuda? Jamaica? Barbados? Trinidad? Curagao? Dutch, French and British Guiana? British Honduras? other colonies in the Western Hemisphere? What relationship should the U. S. try to establish with an independent Canada? If the British Fleet should be surrendered to Germany, how could the U. S. solve its naval problem with such a threatening force in the Atlantic and the Japanese Fleet in the Pacific? If the British Fleet should retire to Canada, would the U. S. undertake to share in the cost of its support (a far greater expense than Canada could bear)? With U. S. trade already shrinking because of Germany's invasions (see p. 78), what will be the economic future of the U. S.?

Last week these things were still only questions, but they were no longer fantastic questions. Franklin Roosevelt in the White House had to be ready with sound practical answers to them if they arose. There was a grim possibility that U. S. citizens may also have to consider them. Within the lifetime of men already old, such things may come to pass.

Wrote Walter Lippmann ominously: "If the offensive which Hitler has now launched succeeds, we shall know no peace in our lifetime . . . our duty is to begin acting at once on the basic assumption that the Allies may lose the war this summer, and that before the snow flies again we may stand alone and isolated, the last great Democracy on earth. . . . There is no more time left for conducting our affairs on the basis of Gallup polls and on the hunches of office-seekers as to what the voters of Nebraska or West Virginia are going to think next November. . . . The first thing that must be done only the President can do. He must tell the people the truth as he sees it, and trust to their patriotism and their good sense. . . . The disinterested people of this country are just about fed up with all this calculated insincerity . . . they are aware of the extreme peril of this hour and they will respond to the leadership of the President of the United States."

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