Anniversary

It should be observed as a day of silence in remembrance of a day of great infamy.

Thus Franklin Roosevelt, President and Commander in Chief, approached the first anniversary of a Dec. 7 that will live long in American history. Restrained official voices warned the American people not to underestimate the difficulties of the job still ahead. The war was not won. But victory for the United Nations never looked more certain.

Clearly revealed at last were the inadequacies of Axis power. Not so clearly revealed, but beginning to emerge, was the possibility that the major leaders of the United Nations had had a global strategy from the beginning. Columnist Major George Fielding Eliot last week essayed to outline it, concluded that nothing happened by accident, that all had been planned and carried out with "magnificent precision." Reasoned Major Eliot: Last August when Russia was fighting off Germany's renewed attacks and it seemed certain that Japan would seize the chance to invade Russia's Far Eastern provinces, the U.S. went into the Solomons. Japan "fell into the trap" and diverted the troops she needed for a Siberian adventure.

Cause for Exuberance. "Stalingrad continued to hold, and the . . . Germans poured their resources into this bottomless pit. . . ." The Germans meanwhile were encouraged to believe that a Second Front attempt would be made in Western Europe. Then "like a bolt from the blue, Montgomery in Egypt fell on Rommel." Eisenhower landed in North Africa. The Germans turned their panic-stricken faces south, and "instantly destruction fell upon them at Stalingrad."

If Major Eliot's hindsight conclusions were three-quarters correct the people of the U.S., with those of Britain and Russia, had good cause to feel exuberant. Leaders Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin had not failed them. Especially, Franklin Roosevelt had not failed the people of the U.S.

It might or it might not have been as Major Eliot saw it, for all returns were not yet in. But the facts to date were good enough so that Major Eliot could advance as a plausible hypothesis the assertion that Roosevelt II was "one of the greatest war Presidents" of the U.S., a man with a "grasp of total and global strategy." Concluded Major Eliot: "We may likewise face the future under his leadership with a serene confidence in victory to come."

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