Senator Lodge and Realism

Four U.S. Senators came back to Washington last week after a 41,000-mile junket across five continents and around the fringes of World War II. The four gave new emphasis to the old saying that there is nothing like travel to broaden the mind.

The four whose minds were broadened were New York's James M. Mead, Georgia's Richard B. Russell, Maine's Ralph O. Brewster, Massachusetts' Henry Cabot Lodge. The fifth member of the Senatorial safari, Kentucky's backslapping "Happy" Chandler, had stopped off in Hollywood to visit his family, with no indication yet whether his mind had been broadened or not.

Magic Carpet. In a four-motor Liberator-type transport, the junketing Senators flew to the British Isles, to Casablanca, to Marrakech, Cairo, Basra and Calcutta, to Chungking (where they met China's Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek), to Australia, Guadalcanal (three days), and homeward via New Caledonia, the Fiji Islands, Honolulu and San Francisco.

Many a homebound U.S. citizen had pondered the Senatorial mission, wondering dubiously if it was worth all the expense and trouble. Last week came the answer: it was.

Report to the Nation. First to return to Washington were Senators Russell, Brewster and Mead, who held an immediate press conference, were interviewed over the radio. Said Maine's Brewster: "The trip proved to us that while we are going to win the war, we are not prepared to win the peace." Said Georgia's Russell: "It is up to Congress to get busy on evolving a policy. There are many problems which will come up immediately after the war ends that ought to be prepared for in advance. Otherwise we'll be sorry."

But Massachusetts' Henry Cabot Lodge, 41, gave the best and most integrated report. Speaking from the floor of the Senate to crowded galleries, the shrewdly observant Lodge dwelt on matters military, economic and political, leavening his report with some plain facts, bluntly put. Said he:

> On Airports. "Perhaps one of the most striking physical phenomena of the modern world are the huge airfields which have been constructed with American money and American labor at the farthest corners of the earth. Most of these have not been constructed in territory belonging to the United States, and military secrecy forbids my stating just where they are.

"Estimates of the amounts expended on these airfields run as high as $500,000,000. As far as I could learn, we had no postwar rights of access to any of them. We do not seek dominance; we abhor imperialistic domination over native peoples; what we want is an even break. But in the islands of the Pacific and in other places there are many points which are essential to the military security of our country in this new air age."

> A Single War Department? "Senior officers of both the Army and Navy are deeply impressed with the need for unity of the services. . . . There is a surprising amount of sentiment among these men for a single Department of War, with autonomous land, sea and air services coordinated at the top by a joint staff, with each branch free to pursue its own personnel and materiel policies."

> On Douglas MacArthur. "Perhaps the most telling statement that can be made about General MacArthur's theater is that although he was given the mission of holding Japan, he has actually cut off and pushed back the spreading tentacles of Japanese imperialism."

> On Foreign Opinion. "There seem to be two impressions. One is an expectation of gifts and favors from "the U.S. far beyond our capacity to confer. The other is a fear of the expansion of our foreign trade and of our worldwide aviation. I was again impressed with the dangers of overstatement and of making impossible promises. I submit that a clear, frank statement of national aims, based on national interest and guided by justice, would accomplish more good for the world and cause less hatred and disillusionment later on."

> On U.S. Fighting Men. "The apparent unwillingness to put out information which is not favorable and laudatory is completely out of tune with their realistic attitude toward this war. . . . Our boys know we are not perfect. They know that our Allies are not perfect either. . . . The dangerous results of sugary and overdrawn propaganda should be apparent to us all. . . . Our fighting men are mad because of the false optimism of our news. . . . When suffering intensely they will hear a bland radio announcement saying 'The enemy is routed. Our losses are negligible. There is little if any enemy resistance. . . .' Greater frankness in war news presentation will prevent cynicism and lack of confidence later."

> On Russia. "Certainly no one is more deeply interested than American parents in the success of Russian arms over Germany. But it is also true that the whole character of the Pacific war would change if the U.S. had access to the Pacific coastal area of Russia. . . . It is a major factor in the whole Pacific picture."

Henry Cabot Lodge's report to the Senate was rooted in an experience that Columnist Ray Clapper wished every Congressman could have. The Senators had not returned from beyond the three-mile limit as experts. They had been in the way of the war at times, had been a headache to the military. But they had come back with one lesson deeply engraved: World War II is a long way from being won. Said Maine's Brewster, summing up: "Our soldiers know how tough this war is. We ought to know how tough it is too."

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Two hundred and twenty-nine leaders of industry, labor and journalism met in Washington at the invitation of the War Department to attend an unusual conference. Its purpose: to emphasize the obstacles ahead in the war.

The top-flight 229 heard off-the-record talks by Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall and the Army Air Forces' General Henry H. Arnold. They heard Lieut. General Joseph T. McNarney warn that the fight ahead will be hard and bloody; Major General George V. Strong, Assistant Chief of Military Intelligence, report that German air strength was greater than in 1939, that continued bombings had not broken German morale, and that Hitler had almost three times as many field combat divisions as in the autumn of 1939. Undersecretary of War Robert P. Patterson keynoted:

"Victory is ahead, but it is the considered judgment of our military leaders that we still have a long hard fight. We must not relax our efforts until the last enemy has laid down his arms."

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"The American people are not being adequately informed about the war" concluded eleven top U.S. newspaper executives last week, after surveying naval and military censorship at the request of OWI.

They blamed not OWI, nor Army & Navy public relations officers, but "high naval and military authorities" who have failed "to evaluate what is information to which the public is entitled." The newsmen corroborated Nicholas Roosevelt, who resigned in frustration a month ago as Army-Navy liaison man for OWI, reporting he was regarded as an interloper. Worst offender: the Navy.

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