Battle Stations

Everything was ready. From Rangoon to Honolulu, every man was at battle stations. And Franklin Roosevelt had to return to his. This was the last act of the drama.

The U.S. position had the simple clarity of a stone wall. One nervous twitch of a Japanese trigger finger, one jump in any direction, one overt act, might be enough. A vast array of armies, of navies, of air fleets were stretched now in the position of track runners, in the tension of the moment before the starter's gun.

A bare chance of peace remained--of a kind of peace very close to war but not quite war. This bare chance was that the Japanese would remain immobile on all fronts but the Chinese. Very few men who were in a position to know thought much of this chance.

To Out-Hitler Hitler. President Roosevelt, whether he knew it or not, was using two Hitler-perfected techniques: 1) the war of nerves; 2) the undeclared war. Against Japan he was conducting a war of nerves so realistic as to scare even his own home-folks.

Was he getting ready to extend the principles of convoys to land--to the Burma Road? Just as German attacks on sea convoys were "piracy," would Japanese attacks on land convoys become "banditry"? This would be a very tough gambit, but the Axis had taught the democracies a thing or two about how to play world chess.

Japan's great war industry was creaking. Its shipbuilding industry is crippled for lack of steel. Every gallon of aviation fuel burned by Japanese planes is irreplaceable. The bulk of the 5,000,000-ton Japanese merchant fleet is tied up. Economic strangulation is on the way. And every day that passes means that China is stronger, that the Dutch, the British, U.S. possessions are more nearly impregnable.

But war to Japan would mean worse than economic strangulation. Japan is a land of paper houses and few anti-aircraft guns.

Roosevelt and Secretary Hull had left one narrow bridge over the dreadful gulf. The Japanese could have peace with honor if they would agree to peace without empire.

Southern Pines. The President's staging was expert. His train left Washington in midafternoon, arrived in warm, pine-fragrant Georgia the next morning. He motored 40 miles from Newnan to Warm Springs under a cobalt sky, talked happily for a half-hour with Marguerite ("Missy") LeHand, his secretary for 21 years, now slowly recovering from acute neuritis [at the Foundation]. He drank his favorite old-fashioneds at a cocktail party given by Warm Springs Trustee Leighton Goldie McCarthy, 71-year-old Canadian Minister to the U.S., and went to his annual Warm Springs turkey dinner, twice postponed by the crisis. He did well by the 4,300 calories (twice the volume of three ordinary meals) from gingered fresh fruit in cider through roast young torn turkey and oyster-corn stuffing to pumpkin pie.

Then he addressed the 116 victims of poliomyelitis informally, said one sharply significant thing:

"In days like these, our Thanksgiving next year may remind us of a peaceful past. It is possible that our boys in the military and naval academies may next year be fighting for the defense of these American institutions of ours." He shook hands with the patients, patting the backs of those boys & girls whose hands could not be shaken.

One hour later, Press Secretary Stephen T. Early told reporters that the President "might leave" for Washington the next afternoon. This timing caught the lead in all Sunday morning papers, was enough to shake Japanese nerves. After lunch, with only a half-hour's swim in the pool (his favorite single relaxation), the President drove back to Newnan, his face grave. He went without the usual gay hand-waving to the crowds of back-country farmers, out to see the caravan whoosh past.

Hourglass. To the public observer, nothing startlingly new had developed. Premier Hideki To jo had made a violent and militant speech. Japanese troop transports, supposedly 70 strong, were supposedly still pouring fresh Japanese divisions into French Indo-China, for a possible thrust into Thailand and at the Burma Road, last artery of aid to China (see p. 27). But the Dutch were mobilized to the spit-&-polish point in Batavia; not only Singapore but all of the Straits Settlements were in a state of emergency; at Hong Kong every British soldier was at war post; U.S. Marines arrived at Olongapo near Manila; the British had heavily reinforced Rangoon with British and Indian troops of all arms and services. In Bangkok, capital of little Thailand, tension was drumhead-tight in the place that might be the Belgium of a Far East war. The British attitude, as broadcast by Aberdeen Economist Lindley Macnaghten Fraser this week: "If the Japanese regard the present moment as appropriate for a tremendous act of national harakiri, we in the British Empire will cooperate without limit."

The President watched the clock and his timetable. But the stationmaster was still Adolf Hitler, whose Reichmarshal Hermann Goring was discussing the fate of France with ancient Marshal Petain. The President did not want a declared U.S.-Japan war. Hitler did. They had the same reason: diversion of the U.S. war effort away from Britain and Russia.

The battle was as big as the world. And the U.S. was in it--not as far as it might be--but almost as far as it could go with out a Dunkirk.

The President last week:

P: Decided to send a representative to Scranton, Pa. to survey possible defense-plant locations near the hard-coal source, after Pennsylvania's Senator Joseph F. Guffey told him: Even if anthracite mines were at peak production, "there would still be 60,000 too many miners in that area."

P: Approved Lend-Lease aid to the Free French. In a letter to LLAdministrator Edward Stettinius, he okayed transfer of materials from the British or Russians to General Charles de Gaulle's forces. The move was a gesture to raise the prestige of the Free French and warn Vichy, since the British were already able to pass U.S. arms along to the Free French.

P: Roundly denounced a TIME story (see P. 55).

P: Declined to accept the resignations from the National Defense Mediation Board of C.I.O. Chiefs Philip Murray and Thomas Kennedy.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.