Evening star., 1944-12-31
The War in 1914

IN w VI ibu ~V
The military history of 1914 does
not lend itself to simple summary.
Almost every day of the year has
been a day of momentous action, a
day of fighting, dying and achieving,
day of ordeal and greatness, and of
that terrible mixture of exultation
and WEAKNESS, of dirt and blood, of
violence and monotony, of sorrow
and triumph that is war.
The ballad makers, the writer's of
epic poetry, the professional histori-
ans, the trained chroniclers with
well-ordered and cataloguing minds
perhaps they can look back over
the twelve months, the So weeks, the
365 days, and reduce the whole of it
to few clear and unfaltering words
holding it's essence. But for most of
us the march of events has been too
swift and Kaleidoscope for that, and
at best we can remember only pieces
Of it, just as we might remember
parts Of dream of terror and glory
We can remember how the year
began rich in promise, with Ameri-
can and Allied forces holding the
initiative almost everywhere - on
land, at sea and under the sea, and
in the air. There was the Anzio
beachhead in Italy. and thousands
OF miles distant, on the other side of
the earth, there was the invasion of
the Marshalls. There was the Red
Army driving the Nazis out of the
Crlmea and out of all of Russia.
There was the gigantic aerial offen-
sive against Germany. an avenging
fury far more fearSome than any
thing of its kind ever seen before.
And there were, of course, those
unforgettably taut days of nervous
expectancy when the whole world
held its breath waiting for the in
vasion of Western Europe.
And we can remember how it came
at last-hoW almost as soon as Rome
had been liberated, Canadian, Brit
ish and American troops landed by
the scores of thousands on the
beaches of Normandy. Then, sud-
denly, while Hitler's vaunted At
lantic Wall was thus being smashed,
the armed power of the United
States struck like lightning in the
opposite direction over 10000 miles
away. Now it was the Marianas that
held our attention, and the great
ness our Navy was displaying there,
and the greatness of the marines
and infantrymen on bloody Saipan.
And hardly had this happened when
our eyes were pulled back again to
France by the break through that
sent our armies on virtually unin-
terrupted drive clear to the borders
Of Germany. And then the dramatic
emphasis was on the Pacific once
more, with our unparalleled naval
air victory in the Philippine Sea,
and the landing on Leyte. And as
Christmas came there was Won
Rundstedts savage offensive calling
us back to Europe, and now we see
that offensive being beaten down
and there is high hope that it may
yet be converted into a decisive
defeat for the NaziS.
But the story of the war in 1914
eludeS summary. A thousand or
more other elements belong in it's
outline-the B-29s raiding Tokyo,
for instance, and the ominous ad-
vent of the rocket bomb and the
surrender of Romania, Finland and
Bulgaria, and the achievements of
our submarines in the Pacific, and
the list of the great Allied COM
manders from General Eisenhower
on down, and the problem in China,
and the millions of brave men who
are fighting for freedom in every
cline, varying from the cold, white
wasteland of the Arctic to some
green hell in tropic isle
Yet, even though it thus seems
almost limitless in scope and inf
mite in detail-in some particulars
revolving to the senses and in others
eloquently demonstrating the gran
deur of the human spirit-the mill
tary history of the last IL months is
simple in at least one all-important
respect, in that it makes clear be-
yond argument that 1914 has been
time of immense victory for
American and Allied arms and that
in 1945 those arms - given Gods
continued blessing-will move on to
even greater triumphs Not since
the war began, surely, has any new
year been so full of promise as the
one Immediately ahead.