Last Call

The hottest week of the summer broke over Washington in a wave. Heat glazed the great white buildings, shimmered above the empty streets. President Roosevelt, sweating like the humblest Government employe, held his press conference in the stifling Executive office, worked in his shirt sleeves at his desk in the oval study. The historic summer of 1940--historic if historians of the future would be permitted to write as they have in the past--mounted to its climax, as hot as the summer when the aging Buchanan decided there was nothing he could do to prevent the South from seceding and the world he had known from coming to its terrible end.

One important step the President took. He asked Congress for authority to call out the National Guard. But that step had not the immediacy of another problem--a problem which his naval and military advisers had on their minds, a problem of which the public had heard little, a problem which events of the week kept shoving into the foreground.

The President's naval experts could not escape the fact that if Britain is beaten the problem of defending the U. S. will grow many times more serious. They had gradually come to the conclusion that one of the weakest links in Britain's defenses might prove to be a shortage of destroyers. Destroyers are vital in convoy service, a sufficient number of British destroyers might be the difference between success and failure in repelling a German invasion of Britain by sea. But next to trawlers, destroyers have also suffered most from air bombings. Up to last week Britain had lost 23 of her pre-war fleet of 192 destroyers. The question that Navy men pondered was whether the U. S. might therefore be safer if it sold 50 of its old World War I destroyers (out of a fleet of 230) to help save Britain.

The problem was first hinted to the public five weeks ago when the sale of torpedo boats to Britain was canceled (TIME, July 1). It was dismissed for a time by Congress' objections to that sale, perhaps dismissed forever because it would take at least three or four weeks to get the destroyers across to the English Channel and train British crews to operate them.

But last week events would not let the President and his aides forget the problem. A 24th, a 25th British destroyer were reported lost. How many more were damaged and out of action only the British Admiralty knew. The German censor released a picture of what happened to one British destroyer (see cut)--a reminder of Britain's need. A Republican paper, the New York Herald Tribune suggested that "the British are at once in a much stronger long-run position, yet in more urgent need of immediate assistance" than German invasion talk led the U. S. to believe. It urged the sale of U. S. war equipment to Britain and added "We believe the country will be behind a policy of boldness and vigor. . . ."

Last weekend the President, with Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox and Chairman Vinson of the House Naval Affairs Committee, visited the Norfolk Navy Yard. What they discussed as they sailed down the Potomac on the President's yacht only they knew, but it would have been strange had they not considered whether the question of selling destroyers should not be reopened.

No military expert could say that, with 50 or more destroyers, Britain could hold out, or, without them, would fall. No philosopher was wise enough to say wherein the inevitabilities of history yielded to the decisions of living men. But if the defense of Britain was connected with the fate of Western civilization, and if 50 destroyers could affect the outcome of that defense, then the decision that the U. S. made about their sale nar rowed down to an action that could be taken or an opportunity that would go by default.

But last week the U. S. as a whole had no public knowledge that the necessity for making the decision loomed over the President. No statesman arose to argue the case for the sale--that the U. S. did not now need the destroyers, that of all warships they can be replaced most rapid ly, they might provide the winning mar gin of seapower for Britain, that one destroyer sold to Britain now is worth more than a hundred airplanes, that the British and U. S. navies could defend the Western Hemisphere against any combination of powers. No opponent marshaled the arguments against it--that all U. S. destroyers are needed for U. S. de fense, that 50 destroyers cannot affect the outcome, that Britain will fight on with out U. S. aid.

If President Roosevelt had decided that the case against the sale outweighed the case in its favor, a decision that might be crucial had been taken without public debate, without a presentation of the alternatives, without a common awareness that the decision had been made.

If the argument for the sale had force last month, this week's events gave it the urgency of a last call. For the Battle of Britain had already begun (see p. 30).

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