Items from the Balance Sheet

THE WAR

Global war, the first in the history of the world, had walked with capricious tread. In China millions had died, millions were destitute after nearly seven years of it. Russia, after 33 months of it, was fighting back to victory over thousands of devastated square miles; her casualties were enormous. Germany was in terrible pain, full of dead and maimed, pockmarked by the greatest bomb damage any nation had ever suffered. The conquered peoples of Europe still starved and died.

Oddly in contrast to all this was the case of the British Empire. The world would never forget the Battle of Britain nor the debt it owed for the lone fight when the battle looked hopeless to the frightened. But the Empire, 55 months a combatant, had lost comparatively few of its men.

Cost in Men. Last week there was startling testimony to this paradoxical fact. It was announced in London that since the invasion of Poland, more Britons had been killed or injured by highway accidents than the United Kingdom's total of killed, wounded, missing and prisoners in the fighting services.

The Empire's battle toll was 667,159 in the first four years of war. Englishmen, whom the world has sometimes accused of allowing colonials to fight their battles, took pride in the fact that well over half of them (387,996) were men from the United Kingdom. Yet the strange fact (announced by Philip J. Noel-Baker, for the Ministry of War Transport) was that in the same period 588,742 Britons had become highway victims.

Stranger still was the case of the U.S. The country which had been officially taught to hope to the last that it would not have to fight had gone into the war on a dollar basis. On the theory that it could buy its way out of trouble, the U.S. was throwing its wealth and production on the side of the Allies when the Jap struck at Pearl Harbor.

Cost in Money. Now after 28 months of war, its casualty list was still small (173,238 in 27 months). But its concept of the conflict as a dollar war was coming fantastically true. This week Manhattan's Tax Institute, Inc. estimated that by next year World War II will have cost the Axis and Allies a trillion dollars.* According to the Tax Institute, the war is currently costing the Allies $150 billion a year--$410 million a day. The Axis is now spending about $50 billion, but gets more for its money because of forced labor, currency manipulation and looting of occupied countries.

Now what lies ahead? For Britain and the U.S. there is the prospect of European invasion, for the U.S. the imminent possibility of greater action than ever before in the war area it dominates--the Pacific.

Now although many a statesman and soldier fears that the invasion of Europe may prove a holocaust, the senior U.S. ground forces commander in Britain promises that even this will produce only moderate casualties (see below). Even if

this prediction proves correct, a small percentage of casualties among the huge number of troops likely to be engaged may still give a big boost to U.S. casualty figures. But unless the war drags on long after invasion, the Anglo-Saxon nations may still go through to victory with relative economy of men.

*A thousand billions--$1,000,000,000,000.00.

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