Total War Postponed

Total War Postponed (See Cover)

This week comes the hour that will try the integrity of Fourth of July orators.

Between the fourth day of July and the third day of November, it is perfectly possible that a series of major military defeats may befall the U.S. and its allies.

The enemy last week had obviously committed himself to campaigns--in Egypt, in Russia, in China, and against Allied shipping--to bring about at least four Allied disasters. Any one of those disasters would be serious, as serious perhaps as the fall of France, and if the enemy succeeds, those disasters will come in the four months that now lie ahead.

Yet in the Land of the Free, people were still disposed last week to postpone putting up a total fight for their freedom --to postpone it for four months, until after the elections on Nov. 3.

That state of mind was not to be found in the Army or Navy. At Wake, Bataan, the Coral Sea, Midway and in every other theater of war they have shown their eagerness to make an all-out effort now. Nor was that state of mind to be found in the factories. Last week President Roosevelt said that May war production was 4,000 planes, 1,500 tanks, 2,000 artillery pieces, more than 100,000 machine-and submachine guns.

But the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave was still not tough enough, frightened enough, or brave enough to make certain vital decisions now--to levy taxes that would prevent inflation, to stop waste of materials badly needed for war, to draft the best fighting men in the nation. The Land of the Free plainly did not yet understand the price of freedom today.

What Price Freedom? On only two occasions in the last century when the men & women came from the nation's green fields and white houses to celebrate Independence Day has the Union been in danger comparable to the danger it faces on July 4, 1942.

One such day was July 4, 1863. After three years of military bungling by Lincoln's generals, Robert E. Lee had invaded the North and came close to smashing the Union. Actually on that Fourth the war had already been won by the Union, for on that day Lee began to retreat from Gettysburg, and on that day Vicksburg fell. Fourth of July crowds were not aware of either battle's end or of what they meant.

The other such day was July 4, 1918, when after three spring drives the Germans had almost broken the Allied front in France. Again, although men generally did not yet know, the tide had turned.

Already the U.S. has raised an army nearly twice as great as the army that served the Union in the entire Civil War.

Already U.S. naval casualties have exceeded those in all the wars of U.S. history.

Already its spending is approaching the rate of $350 per capita (nearly half the national income) compared to $176 (31% of the national income) in 1919 and $37 in 1765. In one bill last week Congress authorized the spending of more money on the Army alone than the total U.S. cost of World War I--$43 billion against $40 billion. Already the nation as a whole is bending its efforts to win on a far wider scale than in any former war, none excepted. And still the nation is in jeopardy.

Having put forth a greater national effort than in any previous war, people find it easy to believe that further efforts can be put off. A multitude of tough decisions are waiting--on unity of command, on coherent field strategy, on how much truth about the war should be told.

Black Markets? One war measure, postponed for four months when the House Ways & Means Committee last week completed its tax bill, was taxes that really would throttle inflation. Such taxes, for all practical purposes, mean sales taxes.

For although the new tax bill boosts income taxes to new heights to reach its $6 billion total, inflation cannot be prevented by making the "new poor" poorer. It can be prevented only by keeping the "new rich" from spending their new income.

The people were not responsible for this postponement. A recent Gallup poll reported that 54% of the people favor a 2% sales tax now. Neither was Congress responsible. Most Congressmen recognized that the argument against a sales tax in peacetime--that it restricts the living standards of the masses--is the strong argument for it now.

The postponement in this case lies at the door of Henry Morgenthau and Franklin Roosevelt. Were a sales tax imposed now, it might reduce Labor's support for the Administration in the election. But Humanitarians Morgenthau and Roosevelt are probably far more influenced by their peacetime thinking habits.

Off the Roads? Also postponed, although probably not for four months, is another urgent necessity: to conserve rubber by national gas rationing. Although rubber supplies necessary for the war are fast vanishing, three-quarters of the nation is still burning up rubber tires.

For this dangerous postponement the Administration was not responsible. The basic responsibility rested on the people, who did not want to give up the convenience of their cars.

Chances are that, after the scrap-rubber drive, conducted on a patriotic no-profit basis, fails to yield enough rubber to fight the war, the Administration may try to override the people's reluctance.

Fighting Youth? A third major postponement is the decision to draft 18- and 19-year-olds for war service. Both the sentimental and the humanitarian instincts of the nation are against sending such boys to the battlefields of World War II.

The realistic but ugly fact faced by the War Department--but by few other people in the nation--is that Hitler has some 300 divisions, plus innumerable non-divisional organizations, and that the U.S. cannot raise an army of comparable size without drafting boys of 18 and 19; that such boys make the best combat troops. They have the stamina to stand hardship. Drafting such boys produces the least possible dislocation of war production, because few have acquired skills or jobs.

Still it is repugnant to the U.S. to ask its children to fight. Neither the Administration nor Congress had the courage to ask the people--before the elections--to do anything so repugnant to peacetime thinking habits.

Cost of Delay. These decisions are not political issues. Realistic men in Washington believe that they are already decided by circumstances--that there will be a sales tax, that there will be national gas rationing, that boys of 18 and 19 will be drafted to fight. A great many of today's patriots who go to celebrate the Fourth in village greens and city parks know the same things in their hearts.

Some are already willing to face the ugly necessities of war. But others cannot yet believe in anything so ugly.

All will cheer when the orator recalls that John Paul Jones, standing on the quarterdeck of the Bonhomme Richard, with all but two of her guns destroyed, with several holes on her water line and fire smoldering near her magazine, shouted at the enemy: "We have not yet begun to fight." Honest orators will have to tell them that the U.S.--with Egypt tottering, Russia fighting in desperation, China already three-quarters gone, and American ships sinking everywhere--is now making a very different kind of answer, saying in effect: "We have not yet begun to fight--we want to wait until after the elections."

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