The Wilmington morning star. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1909-1990, 1945-08-19
Mistaken judgments
BY ARTHUR KROCK

WASHINGTON,-The Second World War and
many of its military events confounded num-
Der of students of such matters, including the
best-trained experts and made hash of their
predictions. Yet, from certain of these conf
dent anticipations of what would happen there
flowed and swelled the Allied power which
overthrow the pinchbeck Napoleon in Italy,
sentenced the Nazi master race to hard
labor on bread-andwater and will soon reduce
the Japanese nation to territory occupied
before it began its imperial adventures with
the successful war against China in 1895.
| Of the signers of the Anti-Comintern Pact
of 1937-the armed combination that was to
dominate the world and make of the great
democracies fascist initators or minor states
-Mussolini is dead with his regime; Hitler is
dead or is leading the life of the hunted;
and the japanese Emperor-unless he abdi-
Gates commits hara-kiri or is sacrificed by
some fanatic-must soon take orders from the
American general who, above all others, in
carnates the force that shattered Japan's i'm
perial dream of owning hemisphere and be-
striding the planet. The Japanese militarists
have taught the masses that Hirhito is god
But, if he lives and governs this god, revealed
as an ordinary human being, must publicly
and often disprove the myth of fivinity that
was used by or for him to make aggressive
war.
Most of the expert pro- hets were sure al
ways of victory over the Axis, but there were
Few who expected the end to come thus soon
and in a way it happened. This correspon-
dent recalls none in power here who, after
the collpase of France in June 1910, foresaw
either that Hitler would fail to invade Britain
or that the United Kingdom could stand to its
arms whether or not he did. This pessimism
gloriously refuted, was greatly responsible
however, for the drive adequately to prepare
the United States that began to ascend to
essential production levels only after the third
term campaign was over.
1t is we'll known how, in the summer of
1941, many American military men and ex-
perts in that field were confident of the rapid
conquest of European Russia by the Nazis.
But this mistaken belief led also, and directly
to the feverish acceleration of United States
rearmament, which, had the viewpoint been
to the contrary, might have influenced political
leaders to relax the demands on the Ameri
can people for the war effort from which these
leaders shrank for long time after the peril
was clear to them.
Pearl Harbor illustrates wholly different
situation. Here the calamity was unexpected
as was the japanese attack by all but few
military men and statesmen. But the largely
unforeseen disaster was sharper spur than
any other to defensive rearmament and SUBJ
sequent attack on a scale unparalleled in mill
tary history. In this instance confuted opti-
mism produced more value in the terms Of
eventual victory than disproved pessimism had
ever done.
Japan has been conquered without land in
vasion and without a major battle with the
huge, undefeated Japanese Army which would
have cast over the homes of the United States
the blacklist and widest shadow of death in
all our history. For years the MANNED and
the senseless would have been encountered in
agonizing numbers in every town of this coun-
try. The battle was not required Yet no so
long ago this correspondent was informed by
one of our principal commanders that Japan
could not possibly be brought to the terms of
the Cairo Declaration without this major en-
gagement, either In Manchuria or on home
island Of Japan.
Firmly believing this however and being
in position where the civil authorities fol-
lowed his counsel and millions of armed men
went where he sent them, this commander
prepared for the conquest of Japan on a gi-
gantic scale Had the atomic bomb not come
into use when it did, or, failing that, had
Russia not completed the death circle around
the Japanese, the scope of his plans and those
of his associates in the other services would
have produced the same victory later. There
fore, his error-if it may be called that-in
charting the final course of the war was of
great benefit and might easily have been in
diSpensable.
Inere nave been many more OF these Tor
tunate mistakes of judgment by Allied military
men, and they perfectly willing to concede
them Statesmen have made them in their own
field also. The fact is that the only prophets
in the period since the Axis was formed who
have been fully sustained are those whose
views were expressed by this newspaper,
among others, in 1887. When the Nne-Power
Conference at Brussels broke down, an edi-
torial headed 'America's Aloofness" asserted
that the United States had lost it's world lead
ership because 'treaty-breaking governments
and distators have become convinced that for
cause short of actual invasion (of this con-
tinent) will the United States initiate or join in
any effort to assure world peace" 1t urged
that leaders put the enemies of peace on
notice that the great democracies are aware
of what is planned and will stand together
against it,
The counsel was assailed by the Axis press
and by isolationists in this country with equal
bitterness and vigor. But, though adopted too
late to avert the war, it became the formula
of victory.-New York Times.
Editorial Comment