Evening star., 1944-05-12
The Tout Doys

1nougn no more terrible thunder
has ever been heard in the world,
our never-ending Allied bombing of
the enemy in Europe has ceased to
be extraordinary news. 1t is i'm
mense, unprecedented, we-inspir-
ing, but we have come to regard it
as the usual thing. There is an
indeciSive monotony in it. a same
ness, an old familiar pattern, and
although it is flaming drama of
death and heroism that will be told
and retold a thousand times over in
the generations to come, it does not
offset the somber feeling that his
tory is standing still now and that
at any moment-tonight, tomorrow,
the day after tomorrow. next week,
two, three or four months hence,
who knows?-there will almost Ger
tainly be a sudden earth-rocking
eruption exceeding in violence all
that has gone before and affecting,
with that violence, the fortunes and
the long future of men and nations
everywhere.
So the whole world holds its
breath, waiting expectantly and
finding that it is not an easy thing
to wait. The bombings, the news
from the eastern front and from
Italy, even the smashing successes
Of our forces in the Pacific, all such
matters - however important they
are-seem merely incidental to what
is to come, accentuating the lull, like
pale and distant lightning flashes
precursing the storm in the lower
ing sky Time hangs heavy; it
"creeps in this petty pace from day
to day; it is oppressive, tantalizing,
wearying, rumor-laden, exasperat-
ing, and suspenseful all at once. We
pick up our daily paper, we turn on
the radio. but the reports we read
and hear do not yet add up to what
we are looking for. Our nerves are
not unaffected by it; the period is
one Of anxious speculation and taut-
ness. and individual and collective
irritability seem to grow as the
waiting goes on and still nothing
decisive happens.
But If by this waiting our Ameri-
can and Allied nerves have been put
on edge, how much more agitated
must be the nerves of the enemy.
For We are the ones who are to pre-
cipitate the climax and unleash the
storm, and he is the one who must
be prepared to counter or absorb the
main shock and violence. The thing
that we have in the making is, of
course, not without great peril for us
but far greater is the threat it poses
for him, encompassing nothing less
than his obliteration. Nor can he
tell just where the full weight of this
threat will fall. All he can know
is that in the east the mighty Red
Army is readying itself for a heavy
new blow; that in the south, our
forces are moving to smash at
him from Italy and elsewhere, and
that In the west, in the British Isles,
vast numbers of troops are poised
TO. descend upon him at one or
dozen different places along the
long shore from Norway southwark
to the Iberian Peninsula. Mean
while, on every side of him, from
one end of the European continent
to the other, millions of the op-
pressed are keyed to strike in their
own way when the day Of liberation
dawns.
Sooner or later, the waiting will be
at an end, but until then it will con-
tlnue to take some toll of our
tempers and nerves, the more so
because we recognize it as the prel-
uoe to decision in Europe. When
the eruption comes, when the fate
ful storm breaks, when our invading
armies smash across the waters and
hammer their way into the heart of
Hitler's Fortress" many of the
domestic issues which so exercise us
at present, and which we tend to
exaggerate, will be reduced to their
right size. Then. the final battle
having at last been launched against
Nazi Germany, the taut days will be
over and we shall be able to settle
down to the grim business of de-
livering the knockout. And once
that Is done. once the European VIC
tory Is won, the doom of our Pacific
enemy will be sealed, and it will be
up to the victors thereafter to re-
order the world in a way that will
make peace decent and lasting. This
ultimately, is what we are waiting
for now; the coming invasion is but
the means to the end.