175,000,000 Faces

The faces of Russians were drawn last week. Not only high cheekbones, not only the Slavic nose, not only whiskers identified 175,000,000 Russian faces. Anxiety lined all those faces. It was not terror that made their lips tight, their eyes tired; not despair, not resignation. It was the awful waiting.

There was so much of importance in abeyance that waiting for the little things --for the factory whistle, for the streetcar, for Pravda with its reassurances--had be come almost intolerable.

When would the glorious Red Armies win? For years one had watched tanks clanking through the streets, and outside the villages one had seen the parachutes pouring down like crazy cotton snowflakes; one had accumulated tremendous faith in this power. But this power had been pushed back, now, deep into Russia, had been cut at Smolensk, cupped at Leningrad, driven even beyond the ancient Golden Gate of Kiev.

When would the generals make use of clever strategies? When would the marshals, who wear gold stars studded with diamonds, show their worth to the men who have never had any badge but mud? Certainly the leaders would not capitulate --there were still many soldiers and much land to fall back upon. One heard that there were 4,000,000 fresh soldiers near Moscow; it would take weeks, perhaps months, to engage them.

If the Red Armies were losing, perhaps everyone would be given a chance to fight. But when? Comrade Stalin had just decreed that every able-bodied man between the ages of 16 and 50 years should go out each day after working hours to learn how to handle a rifle and throw a grenade. It would take many days before one man could learn the little killing tricks which must be learned, many weeks before 25,000,000 men could be turned into anything like an effective reserve.

And now there was a new kind of waiting. In the steel mills one had to wait for pig iron, and for manganese to make iron into steel. Machine shops waited for springs, needles, essential minutiae. At some of the stores one had to wait days for electric-light bulbs. During the lunch hour speakers from the intellectuals explained, but did not end, these waits. "One must remember," they said with their statistics, "that we lost 60% of our iron production when the Fascists took Krivoi Rog. We lost 45% of our manganese at Nikopol. At Leningrad 49% of our tire industry is cut off. . . ."

When would the Allies send help? Where were the relentless rows of Allied tanks, where was the "Niagara of aid" they talked of? A handful of R.A.F. fighters had come over. The British had nobly sacrificed a few obsolescent Tomahawks, a few ancient Mohawks. The U.S. had sent some tankers of gasoline.

When would winter come? The weather was so likely to vary from year to year that the snows up north, the mud down south might be a whole month early for the sake of the Soviet Union. Or they might be late. It would make a big difference.

Now, in the 14th week of the war against the Fascists, the nation was in great peril. Even if the Red defenses could by sheer will power hurl back the enemy, Russia would have to start building all over again. And if the defenses failed, then there was nothing to look forward to but a world beyond imagining, in which a face was not even a face unless it was German.

Behind each Russian face, thought, there was something more than these anxieties: there was determination. Whatever each man was ordered to do, he would do, remembering his hopes and Russia's hopes for a better Russia. Just as his nation's civilian man power was still scarcely touched, its vast area scarcely scratched, his own resources of courage were still immense. With all his guts he would help demonstrate to the Germans that an idea is harder to conquer than a nation, and that the Russian nation is harder to conquer than any other.

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