Cave of the Winds

U.S. investors have long taken a poor and antisocial view of the prospects of peace. Last week, once again, peace rumors sent the stockmarket into a four-day tailspin that left it three points lower than it was after the last big piece of good news--the "surrender" of Italy. Up & down Wall Street's cave of the winds went gusty rumors, each dizzier than the last. Gusts:

> When Lord Halifax said "anything may now happen," Wall Street stressed the now.

> The Whaley-Eaton Service prefaced its weekly foreign letter with: "An armistice has been requested by important but undisclosed German elements, or so it is widely reported. . . ."

> Rumor had it that U.S. newspapers and press associations were rushing reporters abroad to cover the armistice; U.S. and British diplomatic successes in Moscow proved that the second front was around the corner and that, once the corner was turned, the Germans would be smashed in a matter of days; the German transportation system had already collapsed, and was, of course, the reason for Hitler's backing out of Russia; the German Army, particularly its Prussian core, was about to "pull a Badoglio," and throw Hitler to the wolves.

At week's end the rumors subsided: maybe the war would go on for a while after all. But this week opened with a new wave of selling: maybe, on the other hand, unprosperous peace would soon descend on the land.

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