South Yorkshire Times – Saturday 10 January 1942.

Jam To-morrow

President Roosevelt’s impressive inventory of war material to be produced in the United States this year and next for the destruction of the Axis ought to be spreading alarm and despondency in Germany, Italy, and Japan, but doubtless this vision of the wrath to come is mercifully hid from them. The astronomical figures will do something to hearten the rest of the world, as they promise a total war effort almost inconceivable in its magnitude. America single-handed can out-weapon the Axis and feed the Forces which will out-fight it.

In this war, as in the last, Germany has to meet the “steam roller” East and West, but is unlikely this time to disable the one before turning to deal with the other. It is even less likely that the Nazis will wait to be crushed by either, but we have a long way to go before American power “in posse” becomes American power “in esse,” and meanwhile the land-power of the Germans and the Japanese will be exerted most formidably and dangerously. We hope the course of the war in Russia and in Libya during the next few months will put the Nazi war machine where it can be smashed and the vaunted New Order in Europe shattered.

But long before these mighty succours can arrive from the aroused United States we shall have taken and given many shrewd blows and braved the full final fury and frenzy of the foe. It may be that in the end not a tenth of the American war programme will be brought into the struggle. So much the better. A tenth of it now would perhaps be more efficacious than the whole of it a year hence. A little present success in the Far East would be worth many ‘planes, tanks, ships, and troops in gorgeous expectation.

The American war potential is awe-inspiring, but it will not scare the Germans or the Japanese until it is in the field. The Axis leader has known from the first that if ever he is caught up he is doomed. All his plans are laid on the assumption that he can win the war while his opponents are ponderously preparing.

From another point of view the American War Budget is a staggering statement of the cost of pacifism, of isolationism, and of democratic dithering in the face of a wicked but bold and single-minded enemy wielding a whole people as a welded weapon, making his will their law, keeping his counsel, effecting surprises at will, and teaching the doubtful battle where to rage. If by a miracle the democracies of Great Britain and the United States could have moved with the swift singleness of purpose of a Hitler, Hitlerism would not have been possible. The wolf cares not how many the sheep be—the more the merrier if their numbers lead to confused and divided counsels.

Hitler has been able to demonstrate how costly democracy can be for a world in which Hitlerism is allowed to breed and fester. The United States has been at war little more than a month, and is already spending at a higher daily rate than Great Britain, whose potential is almost fully realised; before the end of the present year the United States will be spending forty million pounds a day on war and devoting half its total production to war purposes. Hitler, the rat who started this avalanche, may well look on in complacent admiration that he should be the chosen atom to set in motion these titanic forces.

In the Far East the Japanese who struck in despair have been irradiated with hope. By bold, skilful, and resolute strokes they have come within reach of a strategic domination in the Pacific from which they will not soon or easily be evicted. They have built up with amazing speed a naval and air supremacy in vital areas, and it will cost much blood and treasure to restore the position. Of the British and American dispositions in that theatre it is bitterly true that a stitch in time would have saved nine; it is indeed ironical to reflect that a hundredth part of the mighty effort now preparing in the United States would have been sufficient, if immediately available and strategically deployed, to keep Japan in awe or to crush her.

Let us by all means take heart at the prospect of the irresistible force now gathering, but let us also ponder in our hearts the lessons the wolf has read the sheep.