A ROOM OF OUR OWN

...Stilwell at the apparent insistence of Gen...

...It is very understandable that, from those immense distances, the soldier cannot follow the details of public affairs and political campaigns here at home, and only the most politically conscious will make the effort to participate...

...Churchill well gauges we do, what must be the attitude of the Flying Tigers and the thousands of others who have lived and died where these conflicts are being fought out...

...Churchill trusts his Jong diplomatic experience at the conference table to look out for Britain's interest, but frankly, in this bitter period the thoughtful American suffered at the buck-passing of the recent ideal-sterile campaign on future American policy...

...That was very clear recently when we were told that the House of Commons, in the main quite naturally thinking of England, took the position that the war would be over with the defeat of Germany, while Mr...

...Here, too, I think is another example of the home folk being unable to grasp the psychology of the overseas soldiers...

...Apparently Gen...

...The number of mental and physical victims of global war should be a ghastly lesson in what we cannot afford...

...Two Phases To Watch Of course they want "peace" and "no more war...

...He is well aware that a large body of American opinion resents the apparent policy of regaining Britain's Far Eastern Empire with American men and resources...

...American officials responsible for cooperating with China found themselves in a maze of baffling political intrigue, in which some of our American experts on China took ideological sides, but in which others, thinking in terms of American lives involved, acted to meet military requirements...

...Stalin never wavers from his home base, Mr...

...If they could have heard the Republicans and Democrats trying to pin the responsibility on each other as each insisted that he himself is the one pure peace-lover, they would have doubtless been not a little ill...

...Stilwell as a thorn in the side of certain Chinese groups was "good for home consumption in China but bad for her foreign relations...

...What the internationalists berate as a "wave of isolationism at the end of the war" may result from the natural tendency to retire and lick one's wounds...

...Then when we've got that far, we'll take on the social order...

...A Ghostly Lesson "So far as I'm concerned, I want only one thing at the moment: to get this job done and get back to you and the kids...

...One exceptionally fine, idealistic, socially conscious young American wrote his wife recently from overseas, "Your letter telling of Bill Jackson's concern with the re-making of the social order came this afternoon...

...Chiang Kai-shek has brought into the open a situation long known to those at hand...

...We are liable to lose sight of the fact that shrewd leaders have to keep both phases constantly in mind, and Mr...

...With China as with other nations, we face a definite choice in foreign policy: are we to try to "straighten things out" in China or are we to stand four square on an American position so that the Chinese and everyone else know where we stand ? Mr...

...For years China has been not only in a state of war for survival, but in a state of internal political chaos as well...

...What the average "one-worlder" fails to grasp is that these Americans flung to the far corners of the earth are getting first-hand experience in "international cooperation" denied to their theoretical countrymen at home...

...One American commentator made the point that the removal of Gen...

...Churchill is a case in point...

...In terms of what has been asked of them, they have a sacred right to demand that we define America's policy toward other nations in terms of not only of what ought-to-be, but also of what-we-can-do-about-it consistent with our human resources...

...He has the intellectual detachment we so often find in intellectuals that in terms of every-day realities is a bit wearing, especially in critical times when the great mass must bear the weight of those burdens...

...their one concern is to finish the job and come home...

...When he makes a speech to the Empire, we must always keep in mind the fact that he has the difficult problem of talking both for home consumption and abroad...

...As one expert remarked to me, "I can change my mind and no one is the worse off, but if a general is wrong it means lives...

...Chiang...

...Churchill, never for a moment forgetting what American help to Britain has meant—past, present, and future—stressed the importance of the Pacific war once Germany has been defeated...

...Stilwell was among the latter, and for all the magnificent work of his forces, he became unwelcome to Gen...

...Thus far the absent soldier has been offered little to win his confidence politically in the future...

...We had better get on firm ground so that we shall not have to retrench...

...Ducking The Burdens If we here on the home front feel as Mr...

...The recall of Gen...

...A Room Of Our Own By Isabel B. La Follette SOON WE MAY have the official figures, but if what correspondents and letters conveyed was an acc-curate measure of the overseas soldier's interest in the recent election, all the speculation and argument of the politicos over the "soldier vote" was so much sh adow-boxi ng...

...And so many of the re-searchers insist on their right as a privileged class to be exempt from the burdens of ordinary mortals, yet always insist upon their supreme right to participate in all decisions which decide what the burdens shall be for others...

...What is difficult for us home folk to grasp is that this young man and millions like him have been through a personal revolution, and their values are, for the moment at least, stripped to the bare essen tials...

...They are indeed living in another world where the values are stripped down to essentials of life and death...