Word: rearmaments
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...grey-paneled calm of the office of the U. S. Army's Chief of Staff, the confusion of war, the hurly-burly of U. S. rearmament seemed far away. Beyond the Venetian blinds the rain fell, streaking the stuccoed walls of the War Department's shoddy Munitions Building, glazing the black asphalt of Washington's Constitution Avenue. Seated before old Phil Sheridan's ornately carved desk, spare, grey General George Catlett Marshall, in summer mufti, talked to 25 newsmen at his weekly press conference...
Across Sheridan's desk last week had flowed plenty of evidence of the slowness of U. S. rearmament-Congressional delay on the conscription bill, inadequate voluntary recruiting rate, the molasses flow of turning peacetime industrial production into production for war. George Marshall, fluent, unhurried, talked frankly...
...humidly antiwar. Britons did not want war. Britons did not believe there was going to be any war. They put their faith in the League of Nations and collective security. Labor was in no mood to forgo any of its privileges for the sake of national rearmament. Big business was in no mood to foot the rearmament bill. Winston Churchill might rave and rumble about the Nazi danger. But the Labor Party's Major Clement Attlee and Herbert Morrison (now Minister of Supply) struck more popular poses as humanitarians, League of Nations advocates, good Europeans. Meanwhile the Conservative Party...
...critical year was 1934. In 1934 England was still ahead of Germany in planes. In 1934 England by an effort might have kept its air lead over the Nazis. But butter was king, not guns. The League of Nations, said the Liberal and Labor Parties, made rearmament superfluous. England did not rearm in 1935 either. For this, Author Kennedy thought no one leader or party was to blame. Said he: "The blame . . . must be put largely on the British public. For 1935 was the year of the General Election." British voters postponed armament...
There is nothing new in Author Kennedy's facts. Every newsreader can remember them. But put together for the first time, they make up a terrifying record of wishful thinking about peace when peace was impossible, of shillyshallying about rearmament when war was inevitable. To Americans who believe that democracy always triumphs because of its moral superiority over fascism, Why England Slept is a warning and challenge...