Toward the Sad Extremity

Outspeeding journalistic rumor and far faster than truth, but not so fast as to outpace the bitterness and gloom which fanned out over the whole tired earth, Adolf Hitler's legions advanced last week on all fronts. They crushed Yugoslavia (see p. 29). They rushed upon the Greeks and British in Macedonia. They regained all of Cyrenaica in Libya (see p. 32}. On the high seas they continued to sink British supply ships at a rate which the British officially admitted now bordered upon 400,000 tons a month--a rate at which the British Isles could hold out not years, but months.

This was a bad week, a very bad week.

Winston Churchill, who often gives himself over to exultation but seldom to optimism, saw this grim week for what it was: one of Britain's last chances to roll the dice. But the quality which makes Britain's Prime Minister a hardy, resilient gambler, which made him take the chance in Greece after having taken the chance in Norway, was his ability to diagnose far ahead of time the enemy's next moves.

Last week, in the midst of the worst days Britain had sustained since September, Winston Churchill rose before Parliament and warned of yet worse explosions to come. It was a prognosis which the U.S., having opened the Red Sea (about a two-month voyage from New York) to its shipping, having committed itself a step further in the Battle of the Atlantic by turning over ten anti-rumrunning cutters, having attached Greenland to its sphere of defense (see p. 23), might digest well: "It is," said the Prime Minister, "of course very hazardous to try to forecast in what direction or directions Hitler will employ his military machine in the present year. ..." Winston Churchill paused. He was pale and tired-looking, and his delivery this day was strangely halting; but his words were measured as he held his head up and said to his British colleagues: "He may at any time attempt the invasion of this island. That is an ordeal from which we shall not shrink." He paused again. Then, for ears not in London but in Ankara, which last week suddenly became capital of the realm of anxiety, he said: "At the present moment he is driving fast through the Balkans and at any moment he may turn upon Turkey." Looking up into the distinguished visitors' gallery at the face of Soviet Ambassador Ivan Mikhailovich Maisky, he said grimly: "There are many signs which point to an attempt to secure the granary of the Ukraine and the oil fields of the Caucasus [both in Russia] as a German means of gaining the resources wherewith to wear down the English-speaking world." To another face in the gallery--the gaunt face of U.S. Ambassador John Gilbert Winant--the Prime Minister addressed his most urgent words: "But, after all, everything turns on the Battle of the Atlantic, which is proceeding with growing intensity . . . the Battle . . . must be won not only in the factories and shipyards but upon the blue water. ... It will indeed be disastrous if the great masses of weapons, munitions and instruments of war of all kinds made with the toil and skill of American hands at the cost of the United States and loans to us under the Aid-to-Britain Bill were to sink into the depths of the ocean and never reach the hard-pressed fighting line. That would be lamentable to us, and I cannot believe it would be found acceptable to the proud and resolute people of the United States." Winston Churchill's words added up to a desperate warning: unless there is a turn for the better or unless aid from friendly nations comes soon and hugely, Britain cannot survive.

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