Challenge

Last week a U.S. Senator from Kentucky assured his name of a footnotelet in the pages of history. He challenged, at a moment of historic decision, the basic Allied strategy of the war, and received an unprecedented reply delivered in person by the Prime Minister of Great Brittain before a joint session of the U.S. Congress.

Senator Albert Benjamin ("Happy") Chandler was answered in such historic fashion because he was not speaking only for himself. The Prime Minister and the Senator both knew that Chandler was speaking for a substantial segment of American opinion when he rose in the Senate to argue that the U.S. should turn its chief present energies against the Jap.

Geography, old hates and fears, and honest military opinion unite the diverse groups who believe the defeat of Japan more urgent and more important than the defeat of Germany. The West Coast faces the Orient. Isolationists still nourish their conviction that the U.S. has no business in Europe's messes, still argue privately that anyway Japan is the only one who has yet attacked us. Anglophobes suspect Britain, Red haters fear Russia. The Hearst press has not forgotten the Yellow Peril. Further, a considerable number of sense-making military officers and civilian observers believe and can show that Japan is more dangerous than many Americans realize.

Happy Chandler voiced their collective sentiments. For three hours fellow Senators gave him close attention as he argued: 1) Japan may become unbeatable if given time to consolidate its vast territorial conquests; 2) China may soon be forced to drop out of the war unless given substantial help; 3) Britain and Russia are both likely to drop out of the war as soon as Germany is finished, leaving the U.S. to fight Japan alone; 4) in that case, the U.S. will be helpless to intervene as its former Allies divide up the world at the peace table; 5) the failure of Britain's 2,000,000-man army in India to oust 60,000 Japs from Burma already indicates Britain's lack of determination.

No one in the ensuing Senate debate was able to refute the arguments of Happy Chandler. But next day the Prime Minister of Great Britain took the rostrum and the task (see col. 2).

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