Dissention among the Allies

Dissension Among the Allies

U.S. Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox got out his old blunderbuss last week and fired a shot heard round the world. He caused a lot of damage and hurt a lot of people.

He was just indulging the luxury, so dear to Frank Knox, of getting exercised about U.S. morale. He was afraid that the people were taking accounts of German failure in Russia and unrest at home a little too seriously. So he made a most unfortunately worded statement:

"We know who our great enemy is, the enemy who before all others must be defeated first. It is not Japan; it is not Italy. It is Hitler and Hitler's Nazis, Hitler's Germany. It is Hitler we must destroy. That done, the whole Axis fabric will collapse."

The strategy of concentrating on Hitler might or might not have been adopted, and may or may not be good. The British would naturally have been pleased by such a plan. They had, in speeches and editorials, been urging just that. Some believe that Winston Churchill came to Washington to sell just that bill of goods. And yet it began to be realized in London last week that the Churchill Government has mishandled affairs in the Orient. The Prime Minister himself knows little of the subject except what he learned as an enthusiastic poloist in a Punjab regiment in Kipling's India. A Cabinet shake-up was demanded.

To Russia the strategy of European priority would be both good news and bad. Stalin's greatest enemy is certainly Hitler, and anything that hurt Germany would help Russia. But Stalin's greatest fear is that Japan may strike at his rear--and therefore he wants continuing Allied resistance in the Far East.

But to two other Allies, the Chinese and the Dutch, the strategy would mean a grim alternative--surrender or death.

Fury. The Chinese and the Dutch were not too happy anyhow. They had been slighted in the formation of the Allied Supreme Far Eastern Command. Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek had not been taken into the joint counsels beforehand, had been tossed an unlikely bone-operations in Indo-China and Thailand. The Dutch had been left out altogether. And yet the Allied Supreme Command demanded Chinese troops, airmen and goods in Burma; then proceeded to Java and began to tell the Dutch what to do.

The Knox statement was the last straw. Two days after the Secretary made his statement, N.E.I. Lieut. Governor General Dr. Hubertus J. van Mook, one of the shrewdest horse traders in the world, arrived in Washington and put the Dutch case strongly and clearly: we will fight, but we need help. Out across the green islands of the Pacific the Dutch Army & Navy were writing his words in action.

The Knox statement made the Chinese blow their top with righteous anger. Said the Chinese military, through their Chung-king newspaper Sao Tang Jih Pao: "Signs of Anglo-American reinforcements are absent while British and American authorities continue to indulge in sidetracking remarks."

Sixteen leading Chinese organizations in New York were even more specific in a telegram to President Roosevelt: "If Singapore is lost and the Burma Road is threatened and the American Fleet still persists in doing nothing in the Pacific then we have the right to be disappointed with our Allies and will be forced to decide our own destiny."

This was followed by a really staggering warning from Anglophobe Dr. Sun Fo, President of Chungking's Legislative Yuan and son of China's George Washington, Sun Yatsen. Said Dr. Sun: "If the United States and Britain intend to allow Japan free rein in the Far East while they are finishing off Hitler, as seems to be indicated in recent speeches by [Britain's First Lord of the Admiralty A. V.] Alexander* and Knox, there is grave doubt in Chungking as to the wisdom of China's continuing to fight. . . ."

The Answer. It would have been easy for the U.S. and Britain, with the exercise of a pinch of tact, to dispel this serious anger. The Chinese wanted an explanation, but for at least a week they got none, and as they waited their anger mounted by the hour. Veteran correspondents began to experience an unprecedented coolness from the Chinese. In lieu of an explanation all they could go on was results, and the results--in Malaya, in the Philippines, in the Indies--continued bad, however gallant the local actions.

What made this all the more stupid on the part of the Allies was the fact that there was a good explanation. Naming Adolf Hitler as Enemy No. 1 did not necessarily mean giving offensives against him military priority. Hitler's, main enemies have always been Britain and Russia, but he gave priorities to Poland, Norway, the Lowlands, France, the Balkans.

Furthermore, there was every sign that in fact the U.S. considered its Far Eastern Front crucially and immediately important. Reinforcements were on their way.

The U.S. Fleet last week showed what it thought. One day it announced the sinking of a 16,500-ton liner of the Yawata class. The next day it announced the sinking of two supply vessels and three transports, presumably in the China Sea. The next day it announced the sinking of three more vessels off the mouth of Tokyo bay.

The U.S. Navy had set out to answer the question: Where is the Fleet? Incidentally it had given the best possible answer to its unhappily talkative Secretary.

*Who said, fortnight ago: "If we can knock [the Axis] out of the war, we can do what we like with Japan afterward."

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