World War II

What this country needs, said President Roosevelt at a press conference in April 1942, is a good name for the war. After getting thousands of suggestions, he picked one that barely lasted the day: the War for Survival. Australia's late Prime Minister John Curtin had even less success with his suggestion: the People's War.

Last week the New York Herald Tribune asked some handy historians what they were calling it. Said Englishman Denis W. Brogan, now lecturing at Yale: "Maybe after a time I shall call this the atomic war, or the world war, part two." But to him, World War I was no world war, since it had hardly involved Asia and the Pacific. Said Columbia University's Henry Steele Commager: "President Roosevelt tried to find a fancy name, but . . . these wars are too big for descriptive names."

Said Pulitzer Prize Biographer Allan Nevins (Graver Cleveland): "Names of wars are usually inaccurate. What do you say--the Civil War? Or the War between the States, as Southerners say; or the War of the Rebellion, which is the official and rather foolish and unjust name in our records? I prefer the War for Southern Independence. I would like to think this one would become known as the Last War."

While historians speculated, Washington acted. Retiring War Secretary Stimson and Navy Secretary Forrestal wrote a joint letter to President Truman, recalling that President Woodrow Wilson had personally chosen "the World War" as World War I's official name. To Harry Truman they recommended "as a matter of simplicity and to insure uniform terminology" the term "World War II." The phrase had been used, they said, "in at least seven public laws [and] has been accepted by common usage." Last week their letter, stamped "Approved" by President Truman, duly appeared in the official Federal Register, henceforth will set usage on all Government documents in the Archives.

TIME (as far as it knows) was the first publication to make regular use of the phrase, "World War II." TIME began so designating the war in September 1939, when the Associated Press, the New York Times and others were insistently and hopefully referring to it as the war in Europe.

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