Talk About What?

"It looks like I have two battleships on my hands," said Presidential Secretary Stephen Early to members of the press one day last week. "And you know the rule against any mention of ship movements."

Steve Early's figurative reference to battleships, while well and humorously meant, was figuratively unfortunate. The battleship has thus far proved to be the booby of this war, and Mr. Early was alluding to Winston Spencer Churchill, 67, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 60, flagships respectively of the vastest Empire and the mightiest Republic in all history. At the moment when Flagman Churchill crossed the Atlantic (not in a battleship but in an airplane) to have a long visit with Flagman Roosevelt, both the majestic Empire and the fabulous Republic were taking a hell of a licking.

While the lovely June days and nights slipped over them in their undisturbed privacy, their fellow subjects and fellow citizens could only hope that they would be equal to the magnitude of the occasion. Guesses as to what they had talked about were silly. Second front? Egypt? Shipping? Alaska? Messrs. Roosevelt & Churchill had presumably talked about everything --that is, about how to win a war that, so far, they had been losing.

One thing was starkly apparent to newsmen in Washington. Optimism, much of which had emanated from the White House (whether or not it was intended), began to fade early in the week, as even dull minds began to suspect the phony reports from Cairo and London about the fighting in the desert. When Mr. Churchill arrived, people said: "We didn't think it was that bad."

On the fourth day of their conferences, the factual headlines read as follows:

JAPS TAKE KISKA

TOBRUK FALLS; ROMMEL TAKES 25,000 PRISONERS, SUPPLIES

PIERCE SEVASTOPOL LINES

VANCOUVER ISLAND SHELLED

ENEMY SHELLS OREGON COAST

That afternoon an official communique from the White House said: "Complete understanding and harmony exists between all concerned in facing the vast and grave tasks which lie ahead. A number of outstanding points of detail which it would have been difficult to settle by correspondence have been adjusted by technical officers after consultation with the President and the Prime Minister."

If complete harmony existed between Messrs. Roosevelt & Churchill, right outside the White House doors harmony was not so apparent. Said the New York World-Telegram: ". . . We hope they will be more successful than at their last conference in unifying the fighting commands."

On one question there had quite evidently been disagreement for weeks and months: the "second front" attack on Western Europe. Demanded by Stalin, propagandized by Lord Beaverbrook, it got the "H-H"* months ago, which presumably meant the backing of the President. But if Churchill is for it, it is something which he has evidently been forced to accept. No soldier man has the final yes or no on this momentous decision. But U.S. generals were evidently more eager than British, as evidenced by the activities of Lieut. General Brehon Somervell (TIME, June 15).

With him on this trip, Winston Churchill brought no Harry Hopkins (he has none) but his two top soldiers: Lieut. General Sir Alan Francis Brooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, and Major General Sir Hastings Lionel Ismay, with whom Mr. Churchill best likes to talk over the war in its broadest aspects.

Meanwhile, in terms of strict military parlance: "the initiative remained with the enemy."

The most cogent utterance of the week was made not in Washington or London but in Oregon, where the primeval peace of gaunt forests was last week disturbed by the shells of a Japanese submarine (see p. 24). Vacationing from his job on the U.S. Supreme Court, Justice William O. Douglas, 43, spoke to the Oregon press as follows:

"The cruel price which democracies have paid so often for their self-deception in this war is familiar to us all under the slogan of 'Too little and too late.' I am afraid that too many Americans are still deceiving themselves about the job ahead.

"The error of putting an early date on the collapse [of our enemies] is twofold: first, it creates a dangerous, Maginot Line psychology; second, it may prepare us for a 200-yard dash when a grueling mile race lies ahead.

"The press clearly has a fight on its hands. It must make war on our illusions and on our wishful thinking. The front on which it must fight is as vital as that on which the Air Corps, or the steel industry or our farmers are mobilized. . . . Our democracy cannot function effectively unless a free press helps the people to keep themselves mentally fit. Let us never forget that free, frank and bold discussion is the very life of this kind of government. Upon that rock the Founding Fathers built this society.

"We as a people know no substitute for a free press. . . . For the people cannot keep themselves mentally fit and alert in this unfamiliar, complicated, kaleidoscopically changing world without the aid and guidance of a free and masterfully competent press. And yet, the press is not free and effective simply by virtue of not being suppressed or bullied. It is free according to the spirit of our institutions only when it accepts the responsibility of its independence, and, of its own volition, helps the people advance toward the realization of their aspirations.

"Hitler never had any doubt that we would arm and that we would fight. But, with his cynical contempt for the intelligence of the common man and the integrity of democracy, he has been gambling against the ability of our millions of average families to understand our emergency, to respond to it with a singleness of purpose, and to cope with it realistically. When we have fought our way to victory, the Nazis will finally understand that the decisive secret weapon in our arsenal is the mind and the spirit of the average American, who wants the truth and who always wants to know how he can do his job better. This is the reason why the average American is counting on the ability of the press to keep him on the right course during these dark days."

*For Harry Hopkins, most powerful symbol of authority in Washington next to F.D.R.

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