THE WAR IN REVIEW
THE WAR IN REVIEW "VICTORY is everywhere." Those were the words with which Prime Minister Churchill this week greeted President Roosevelt as they met in Quebec for the beginning of new...
...There were large sections of the far-flung battle areas of this war where victory was as far away this week as it was when the two met on the same spot one year ago...
...There was widespread concern that the enemy would have time to entrench himself too strongly in the German defense line before the necessary equipment could be brought up for a smashing frontal assault...
...Victory was not everywhere...
...Those were the words with which Prime Minister Churchill this week greeted President Roosevelt as they met in Quebec for the beginning of new discussions concerning the war and the peace...
...The Allied high command was anxious about what might be the biggest test since the Atlantic Wall was breached...
...In the east the Russians were obviously concentrating their strength in the Balkans where they continued this week to roll ahead in all directions...
...He is sitting* on a powder keg and playing with fire...
...Douglas MacArthur...
...The newly-established coalition government of Gen...
...Meanwhile, the American people received a warning from Secretary of Navy Forrestal that the war in the Pacific would be a "long and a hard one...
...Bulgaria was forced to sign peace terms after Moscow issued a declaration of war against her that lasted only a few days...
...A little more than one month after he had launched an offensive aimed at the Philippines, Gen...
...Douglas MacArthur's headquarters in the South Pacific came cheering news of American progress, however...
...It was the eighth historic meeting of these two colorful political figures and was being hailed by the press as a "victory conference...
...In the Quebec conference of a year ago one of the most important decisions made by the conferees was the appointment of Lord Louis Mountbatten, a member of the British royal family, as supreme commander of all Allied forces in the Southeast Asian theater...
...Although the two leaders met against a background of swelling Allied victory, climaxed by actual American invasion of Germany, the breezy optimism of the Prime Minister's greeting was obviously too all-inclusive...
...Mac-Arthur was able to announce this week that the American air force controls the skies over the southern group of those islands...
...I think the Japanese are counting on the assumption we'll be bored with the war when the war in Europe is over," Forrestal declared...
...One of the most pressing reasons for the Burmese campaign was to open an overland supply route to China, so that war materials might be supplied to the desperate armies of Chiang Kai-shek...
...Charles de Gaulle was already showing signs of giving in the seams...
...American big guns were being pulled into position along the borders of the Reich itself and were beginning the first barrages into the famed German Siegfried Line...
...Belgium was liberated and the first British-Canadian spearheads had driven into Holland after a brief period of rough going against the enemy defenses along the King Albert Canal...
...At mid-week the Red Army was giving its greatest attention to battering its way through to Yugoslavia to connect with the forces of Communist Marshal Tito, Action In The Pacific Sweet though the reports of these continued victories were, they were followed as they will be on an ever increasing scale, by new reports of Europe's tangled political problems...
...At mid-week, the U. S. 1st Army made history by smashing its way into Adolf Hitler's inner fortress of Germany...
...Mountbatten's Defensive The strategy settled upon at that time was to launch a giant pincers movement against Japan with Mount-batten's forces in India joining with those of "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell in China to make up the western jaw of the pincers movement against the Japanese in Burma...
...Powder Keg In India To say that Mountbatten himself is solely responsible for the failure of his mission would be unfair...
...From Gen...
...While MacArthur and Nimitz executed a series of sensationally successful attacks in the Pacific and Stil-well's poorly equipped forces in China moved against Burma, Mountbatten found himself fighting a desperate defensive engagement to keep the Japanese out of India...
...But there was sound basis in the reports from other battlefronts for the Prime Minister's optimism...
...Reports from Paris told of rising dissensions among the many political factions in France, which de Gaulle had pulled into his governing body...
...The prospects for such a development seem as far away today as they did a year ago...
...It was only after months of bloody fighting that he was able to eliminate the serious menace of these invading enemy columns...
...The presence of right wing elements in the new cabinet is said to have aroused the disfavor of the Socialists and Communists, who are agitating for a return to the old United Front days that prevailed under Premier Leon Blum...
...America's special minister to India, William Phillips, has reported the vast restlessness of the Indian masses and the danger of explosive revolutionary developments once the Allied troops based in India turn their attention exclusively to the Japanese...
...Meanwhile, the Japanese on the Asiatic mainland are continuing an alarmingly successful campaign, overrunning vast sections of Chinese territory and capturing vital communication and transportation centers...
...The other jaw was to be comprised of U. S. naval forces in the Pacific and the jungle veterans of Gen...
...The location of the meeting and the British leader's bubbling, cheer served to focus attention on the one area of operations where the Allied campaign had bogged down...
...The battle in western Europe continued to show amazing progress...
Vol. 8 • September 1944 • No. 38
