Friday, September 15, 1922. Foreign Affairs

The USGS was at it again, taking photos on the Colorado.

I have to say, as somebody who started off in geology, this is leaving me envious.

Turkish forces on this day, fresh from defeating Greece, and followed by the murder of Armenians, approached Çanakkale and advanced on the Allied positions there.

The British government reacted with backbone, issuing an ultimatum. But the British commander on the location did not deliver it.  British Conservatives, moreover, did not support going to war against Turkey over the issue, contrary to British Liberals Lloyd George and Winston Churchill (yes, at this point in time Churchill was a Liberal).  The French did not a war either, nor did the Canadians, whose significant Dominion status mattered given that the British felt that they needed Dominion support.  Having defeated the Greeks, the Turks quickly backed down, defusing the crisis, but contributing to  one for Lloyd George.

In another Dominion, the Lord Chief Justice of Ireland and two associates suspended habeus corpus in Ireland due to the Irish Civil War.

Firestone commenced production of rubber tires in Canada.  Oddly enough, on the same day William and Alfred Billes combined their savings to purchase the Hamilton Tire and Garage Ltd. which would be multiple retail lines company Canadian Tire.

Back to Turkey, the Turkish Orthodox Church was formed.  The church is not recognized by the Eastern Orthodox.  Pavlos Karahisarithis was the first Patriarch of what was termed the Autocephalous Turkish Orthodox Patriarchate, which he presided over until 1962.   The church principally consistgs of Orthodox Karaman Turks and numbers 47,000 adherants today.

The Council of Foreign Relations commenced publication of Foreign Affairs.

Monday, August 24, 1942. The Battle of the Eastern Solomons.

Stricken Japanese aircraft descending on the USS Enterprise.

The Battle of the Eastern Solomons commenced between the U.S. Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy. 

This day saw the sort of action that the naval war in the Pacific is recalled for.  Even though the battle for the Solomons had already featured a lot of surface action, this was a carrier battle, although, like at Midway, bombers of the United States Army Air Force participated as well.

Japanese aircraft exploding on the deck of the USS Enterprise.

Most of the action was on this day.  The Japanese lost the light carrier Ryūjō, a destroyer and a transport.  The USS Enterprise was heavily damaged, with a stricken Japanese aircraft hit her deck.

USS Enterprise under attack.

The battle was an American victory. 

Ryūjō under attack from B-17s.

Today in World War II History—August 24, 1942: Italians successfully charge Soviets at Izbushensky, Russia.

So notes Sarah Sundin.

Unit creast of the Savoia Cavallerria

The Italian cavalry charge by the Savoia Cavallerria was dramatic in the extreme, against heavy odds, and deployed the time tested cavalry tactic of charging into an ambushing enemy.  It worked, moreover, although the charging Italian elements took heavy losses.  Soviet losses, however, were in fact much higher.

The unit still exist, although dismounted, today.  It was saved as an Italian unit to some degree by the actions of Count Col. Pietro de Vito Piscicelli who, after the Italian surrender, found his unit in a position in which it could not surrender to the Western Allies.  Instead, he took the unit into Switzerland, where they were interned.  Interestingly, officers were allowed to keep their horses and sidearms while under Swiss authority until the end of the war.

Churchill arrived back in the UK after his trip to Moscow.

War information sheet put out by the United States.

In Peru, an earthquake killed 30 people.

The Idle Rich and Noblesse obligee.

Territorial seal of Wyoming, depicting rich people from other areas moving in to control the state's politics. . . oh, wait. . . it mostly depicts work.

And I'm gonna tell you workers,

'fore you cash in your checks 

They say "America First," 

but they mean "America Next!"

Woody Guthrie, Lindbergh.

This was originally going to be a post in the election thread, as it comes up in that context.

Here's how.

Recently former Wyoming Secretary of State Max Maxfield filed an election complaint against Chuck Gray which in essence stated that Mr. Gray only reports $11,000 in income per year, but loaned his abandoned campaign against Liz Cheney over $200,000.  The math, Mr. Maxfield maintains, doesn't add up for a guy whose only been in the state for a decade and who must be in his early 30s.  In other words, how can a guy with no visible means of support earning money at the poverty level loan himself that kind of dough.

Well, the answer is pretty obvious.  Gray has external funding sources.

In the recent debate with his opponent Tara Nethercott he accused her of being behind the Maxfield effort, for which there is no evidence at all.  Nethercott surely didn't start it, but she has made use of it, noting that his connection with work is pretty thin.  Gray has attempted to defend himself by accusing Nethercott of being a "lawyer/politician".

That's ironic for Gray, as he's also a politician. They both have been in the legislature the same length of time.  Moreover, while I can't find it now, while Gray was at Wharton he gave an interview to some sort of school journal in which he said his ambition was to become a lawyer.  So his disdain of lawyers apparently comes more recently.

Gray said in the debate that he had inherited the money that he loaned to his campaign, which in some ways, although he probably doesn't realize it, makes this story worse.  As does this:

August 11, 2022

The Trib ran an article on this date on campaign donations and the various candidates.

Perhaps the most remarkable figures where for Secretary of State, where Chuch Gray has raised $528,000 to Nethercott's $333,000.  Of that, $500,000 of Gray's money was donated by his father and $10,000 from himself, meaning he's really raised $18,000.  Nethercott loaned her campaign $95,000.

Gray has seemingly been able to get by in the state for a decade with a light attraction to what most people would regard as substantial work, assuming that his role at his family's radio station isn't accounted for in some other fashion that's allowable under the IRS code but which isn't regarded as income.  I have no idea.  That may be the case.  At any rate, however, most people's parents aren't in a situation to give them $500,000 in their early 30s in order to mount a bid for office.

Which raises a number of topics.

The first is, in regard to Gray, does this matter?

I'd think so.

What a person does with their own money is their own business, to an extent. But when it comes to spending money in order to obtain a public office, that's everyone's business.  One of Gray's recent television advertisements complains that Nethercott voted for a bill to raise the Secretary of State's wages to $125,000, for instance.

This would suggest that Gray thinks $125,000 for that office is a lot, but it's not.  The median income for Wyoming is $33,000, which is very low, so for a lot of people that would be a lot, but Nethercott will probably be taking a pay cut if she wins.  Gray will be getting a big pay raise, but apparently his situation is such that this doesn't really matter.

Of course, it's a four-year position, which also means that Nethercott will have to work the better part of a year to pay back the load to herself.  Gray won't have to, but the $500,000 investment on the part of his father?  Well, I guess that's also like spending your inheritance.  That somebody is willing to spend a half million dollars to obtain a job that will take several years in pay in order to recoup the loss raises, yet again, more questions.

All of which gets to this.

Very few people are in the category of "idle rich". Even most of the rich aren't in the category of idle rich, where they have so much surplus cash they really don't have to do anything.

If a person is in that category, what they do with their cash is their own business, as long as they are honest about it, and their employment of their resources doesn't work to the detriment of other people.

And that's the problem with what Gray is doing.

Wyoming has experienced an influx of money in recent years, with there being some really spectacular examples.  Susan Gore, who has funded far right political movements, is one such example.  She's not from here, but more than that, she's not of here either.  Her efforts are funding attempts to make the state into something it's never been, under the banner of "liberty".  Gray is part of that same effort.  

Gore is one example, but Gray's quite another.  The resources presumably are nowhere equal, but the thought of a young man seemingly employing his efforts at doing little else other than to try to advance in politics in a state he has virtually no connection with is, well, disturbing.  I can't really imagine it myself.  That is, if I had surplus money, I don't think I'd go, let's say, to Alaska and try to influence their politics.

But that's what Gray has being doing from day one here, and that's what people like Susan Gore and Foster Friess have been attempting as well.  To make it worse, the Wyoming they're trying to recreate is an imaginary one that they don't really know.  The state they moved to isn't the one they think it was, and what they're attempting to make it into isn't where most of us would have wanted to go.

At one time, having vast idle wealth in the country bound a person to obligation.  We only recently mentioned the two Roosevelts who were elected President in this blog, as they were rich men. They were both examples of this, however.

But they were also examples of noblesse oblige, the sense that "being nobility obligates".

This was particularly true in the case of Theodore Roosevelt.  His father was wealthy, but he'd also been dedicated to the cause of poor newsboys, something that was a real problem in his era.  Theodore Roosevelt senior also made it plain to Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. that their wealth would enable the younger man to choose a career of his liking that didn't have to pay well, but he'd have to choose one.  Originally, the later President had intended to be a scientist, and indeed was published and well regarded in natural history.

Indeed, while Theodore Roosevelt, following his father's death, turned to the then disreputable career of politician in years as tender as that of Gray's, he never really quit working.  He wrote, he published, he studied, and he ranched.  His finances were not always great by any means as he's overspend in his endeavors, but his capacity for work was literally manic.

Wealthy New Yorker Theodore Roosevelt, who resigned from his position as Assistant Secretary of the Navy to serve at great hazard in the Spanish American War.  We don't see too many wealthy Americans doing this sort of service anymore.

I know less about his cousin Franklin, but Franklin always admired Theodore.  He came to the nation's attention first as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, something Theodore Roosevelt had also been.  So he entered public service. . . as a type of bureaucrat. . . .  before he was a politician.

And other examples abound.  Winston Churchill, who was from a wealthy family (although he always overspent his resources, as did his mother) served as a British Army cavalryman in his early years, with that being his intended career in an era in which those born into British wealth were not expected to "work" but to go into public service in the military or the clergy, or perhaps engage in agriculture.  He took a break from that to act as a correspondent, and then later served in the Army again in the early part of World War One before entering politics.  T. E. Lawrence, from the same class, and burdened with the same cultural expectation not to "work", was first an archeologist before entering the British Army during the Great War.

John F. Kennedy in World War Two.

Turning back to our own shores, I'll be frank that I'm not a fan of the Kennedy family, including John F. Kennedy. But the President of the early 1960s had served, and heroically, in the U.S. Navy during the Second World War. That's definitely work.

Yet another interesting example would be George S. Patton, whose family was very wealthy.  Patton had a career as a soldier, quite obviously, as that was something people in his class did.

Patton in World War One.

We don't seem to see things like this much anymore.

Gray, according to what little we know of him, went right from Wharton to a Wyoming radio station.  A really blistering article in WyoFile notes his career and that he was reported as an executive at the station.  That article goes on to note that the radio entity in Wyoming seems to facially be out of compliance with registration requirements   The article is so extensive that about all you can do is quote from it, rather than try to summarize it, as it notes:

He has listed Mount Rushmore Broadcasting, Inc. as his sole employment — initially working as a program director, then later as an operations manager — on each of his requisite elected official financial disclosure forms.  

According to records from the secretary of state’s office — and later confirmed by a department spokesperson — Mount Rushmore Broadcasting was administratively dissolved by the state almost two decades ago for failing to file annual reports and pay its license fees to Wyoming. Gray’s father, Jan Charles Gray, is president of the Delaware-based entity, according to state records. The entity uses a registered agent in its Wyoming filings, but 2016 documents from the Federal Communications Commission indicate that the elder Gray is also owner of the corporation. 

Like all out-of-state entities, it was required to obtain a certificate of authority from the secretary of state’s office before transacting business in the state. It did so in 1993, according to state records, but failed to file requisite annual reports and pay yearly fees based on its assets located and employed in Wyoming. Mount Rushmore entered into a 24-month period during which it could have paid a reinstatement fee, as well as what was already owed. But the company did not comply within the two-year window, after which Wyoming statute does not allow entities to be brought back into good standing. 

Monique Meese with the Wyoming Secretary of State’s office confirmed that Mount Rushmore Broadcasting, Inc. was administratively dissolved on June 10, 2003 and thereby lost the ability to be reinstated. At press time, the entity was not under review by the office, Meese said, because no written complaints had been submitted. 

On his most recent state elected officials financial disclosure form dated Jan. 28, 2022, Gray listed operations manager of Mount Rushmore Broadcasting as his employment. According to his campaign website, he began his career there in 2013 “as a radio executive and hosted a conservative radio show,” until 2019.

During a July candidate forum in Casper, Gray said he became a permanent resident of Wyoming in 2012. He spent his childhood summers here with his father after his parents divorced, he said. 

Prior to going to work for his father, Gray graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with bachelor’s of science and bachelor’s of arts degrees, according to his lawmaker bio. 

When WyoFile approached Gray to clarify his professional experience immediately following the forum in Casper, he declined to answer questions, but said he would respond to written questions over email. WyoFile sent several written questions to the lawmaker, including a request for more details regarding his duties as an employee of Mount Rushmore Broadcasting and how his academic and professional resumes qualified him for the position. Gray responded with a statement about ballot drop boxes and ballot harvesting — he feels both are threats to election integrity — but no further information on his background. WyoFile sent a subsequent email asking about his employer conducting business in Wyoming without a certificate of authority. The lawmaker did not respond. 

Mount Rushmore Broadcasting is currently the licensee for two AM stations and five FM stations in Wyoming, according to Federal Communications Commission records. Most of those stations are in Casper, and all but one of those can currently be heard on the air.

In 2016, three years after Gray claims to have begun working there, Mount Rushmore entered into a consent decree with the FCC for failing to maintain a full-time management and staff presence at the main studio of two of its stations during regular business hours, among other things. One term of the settlement was a $25,000 civil penalty, which was less than the originally proposed penalty. Mount Rushmore Broadcasting submitted a sworn statement along with several years of tax returns indicating an inability to pay all forfeitures, according to the consent decree. The original amount was just under $160,000, according to the FCC. Part of the agreement required Mount Rushmore Broadcasting to pay the remainder of the originally proposed penalties if the FCC found it misled the commission regarding its financial status. The commission declined to say whether that occurred. 

In 2015, Mount Rushmore Broadcasting paid almost $5,000 in back wages to former employees, after the U.S. Department of Labor sued the entity for not properly paying its workers. 

Between April 2020 and March 2021, it received more than $28,000 in federal dollars through the Paycheck Protection Program in order to retain two jobs. Gray, a vocal opponent of federal subsidies, voted during the 2022 Legislative session against a bill authorizing the state to spend other pandemic relief funds. He declined to answer questions on the matter when WyoFile contacted him for previous reporting.

I'd note that there could be explanations for why it is seemingly out of compliance with filing requirements in Wyoming, and indeed for all of this, but it does raise questions.

Maybe the bigger question, however, is this.  Does simply graduating from school really mean that you are now qualified to legislate and govern?

I guess the voters can and will decide that. But quite frankly, those who were not born wealthy, and have had to work, have rounder experiences than those who simply benefitted from the circumstances of their births.  Those born wealthy, however, who have educated themselves in school and out in the world have different qualifications yet, and are often quite admirable.

The Roosevelts, we'd note, were champions of the poor.  Theodore Roosevelt wouldn't even be qualified to walk into a county Republican Party meeting today, in spite of still being admired as a Republican President.  John F. Kennedy, for all his faults, was concerned with the same class as well.  Churchill had to be restrained from directly entering into combat a couple of times during World War Two.

Noblesse Oblige.

Wednesday, August 12, 1942 The Second Moscow Conference commences.

The Second Moscow Conference opened on this day in 1942.  Averrell Harriman attended for the United States.  Churchill was there in person for the United Kingdom and, of course, Joseph Stalin was there, where he would have been anyway, for the USSR.

At least from an external view, the war was really not going well at this time for the Allies.  The Soviets were being pushed back inside their own borders every day, and it would have been rational to conclude that the latest big city to be entered, Stalingrad, would fall within days.  British Commonwealth forces had been pushed back to El Alamein, where they had however arrested the German advance.  The Japanese were advancing in New Guinea, and while the US had landed Marines on Guadalcanal, the Japanese Navy had driven the U.S. Navy from its coast.

Stalin's trip to the USSR would be regarded an ordeal by modern travelers.  He met with Stalin at 7:00 p.m. that night, having just arrived from Tehran, and informed Stalin immediately that there would not be a second front in 1942, although he then went on to inform Stalin about developing plans for Operation Torch, the landings in North Africa, which by any rational measure was a boosting of an existing second front.

Churchill promised landings in France in 1943.

On this day the Germans took Slavyansk and, in Operation Pedestal, the British ships Cairo and Foresight were sunk and the tanker Ohio badly damaged. The Ohio had to be taken under tow.  The convoy was constantly under attack from the air and sea by German and Italian forces.  

The Germans, however, transferred forces from Case Blue to the siege at Leningrad, which weakened the offensive which was already running into trouble.  Erich von Manstein was dispatched with those forces to Leningrad.

Actor Phillips Holmes died in a midair collision while serving in the Royal Canadian Air Force.  Actor and future aircrewman Clark Gable joined the U.S. Army as a private.  He was 41 years old.

Monday, August 10, 1942. Churchill takes lunch in Iran.

Today in World War II History—August 10, 1942: Germans cross the Don River and enter outskirts of Stalingrad. Kaiser Richmond Field Hospital opens for employees of Kaiser Shipyard in Richmond, CA.

From Sarah Sundin's blog.  The Germans also took Maikop unopposed due to a Brandenburger Commando unit posing as NKVD troops, who ordered the Red Army unit there to retreat.

Meanwhile, the Battle of the Atlantic was raging, with U-boats taking impressive tolls daily.

In that context, on a day full of shipping losses, a heavily escorted British convoy of thirteen freighters including the American oil tanker SS Ohio passed through the Straits of Gibraltar headed towards Malta.  The Germans and Italians deploy submarines to intercept.

Winston Churchill, on his way to Moscow, stopped in Iran and had lunch with the Shah.

Saturday, June 27, 1942 The White Rose.

Weiße Rose, or in English White Rose, began distributing its anti-Nazi pamphlets in Munich.

Comprised principally, but not exclusively of students, it was heavily inspired by Catholic thought, although not all of its members were Catholic.

Winston Churchill arrived back in the United Kingdom and a joint statement was issued on the results of the recent Washington Conference.

It was another day of much German submarine activity, but it also saw the USS Nautilus sink a Japanese minesweeper just 60 miles sought of Tokyo Bay.

USS Nautilus.

Monday, June 26, 1922. A British warning.

"Everything is radio on Marconi's yacht - a "personal dance" on board the palatial vessel while on the trip to Albany Showing Josephine Young of Riverside, Conn., and J.W. Elwood of New York, equipped with a portable radio outfit dancing to the tunes of a broadcasted fox trot while making the trip to Albany on Senator Guglielmo Marconi's yacht Elettra."  June 26, 1922.

 

Secretary of State for the Colonies Winston Church warned the Irish government that if it did not act to oust rebels in the Four Courts, the British would. This in a speech before parliament.

Sunday, February 15, 1942. The fall of Singapore

February 15, 1942: Fall of Singapore: British Lt. Gen. Arthur Percival surrenders to Japanese Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita, 64,000 POWs taken.

As that entry goes on to explain, this was the largest British surrender, ever. 

Churchill addressed the British on the same day:

Nearly six months have passed since, at the end of August, I made a broadcast directly to my fellow countrymen. It is therefore worthwhile looking back over this half year of struggle for life-for that is what it has been and what it is-to see what has happened to our fortunes and to our prospects.

At that time in August, I had the pleasure of meeting the President of the United States and drawing up with him the declaration of British and American policy which has become known to the world as the Atlantic Charter. We also settled a number of other things about the war, some of which have had an important influence upon its course.

In those days, we met on the terms of a hard-pressed combatant seeking assistance from a great friend who was, however, only a benevolent neutral. In those days, the Germans seemed to be tearing the Russian armies to pieces and striding on with growing momentum to Leningrad, to Moscow, to Rostov and even farther into the heart of Russia.

It was thought a very daring assertion when the President declared that the Russian armies would hold out until the winter. You may say that the military men of all countries-friend, foe and neutral alike-were very doubtful whether this would come true.

As for us, our British resources were stretched to the utmost. We had already been for more than a whole year absolutely alone in the struggle with Hitler and Mussolini. We had to be ready to meet a German invasion of our own island. We had to defend Egypt, the Nile Valley and the Suez Canal. Above all, we had to bring in the food, raw materials and finished munitions across the Atlantic in the teeth of the German and Italian U-boats and aircraft, without which we could not live, without which we could not wage war. We have to do all this still.

It seemed our duty in those August days to do everything in our power to help the Russian people to meet the prodigious onslaught which had been launched against them.

It is little enough we have done for Russia, considering all she has done to beat Hitler and for the common cause. In these circumstances, we British had no means whatever of providing effectively against the new war with Japan. Such was the outlook when I talked with President Roosevelt in the middle of August on board the good ship Prince of Wales, now, alas, sunk beneath the waves.

It is true that our position in August, 1941, seemed vastly better than it had been a year earlier, in 1940, when France had just been beaten into the awful prostration in which she now lies-when we were almost entirely unarmed in our own island and when it looked as if Egypt and all the Middle East would be conquered by the Italians, who still held Abyssinia and had newly driven us out of British Somaliland.

Compared with those days of 1940, when all the world except ourselves thought we were down and out forever, the situation the President and I surveyed in August, 1941, was an enormous improvement. Still, when you looked at it bluntly and squarely, with the United States neutral and fiercely divided, with the Russian armies falling back with grievous losses, with the German military power triumphant and unscathed, with the Japanese menace assuming an uglier shape each day, it certainly seemed a very bleak and anxious scene.

How do matters stand now? Taking it all in all, are our chances of survival better or worse than in August, 1941? How is it with the British Empire, or Commonwealth of Nations-are we up or down? What has happened to the principles of freedom and decent civilization for which we are fighting? Are they making headway or are they in greater peril?

Let us take the rough with the smooth, let us put the good and bad side by side and let us try to see exactly where we are.

The first and greatest of events is that the United States is now unitedly and wholeheartedly in the war with us. The other day, I crossed the Atlantic again to see President Roosevelt. This time we met not only as friends, but as comrades standing side by side and shoulder to shoulder in a battle for dear life and dearer honor in the common cause and against the common foe.

When I survey and compute the power of the United States, and its vast resources, and feel that they are now in it with us, with the British Commonwealth of Nations, all together, however long it lasts, till death or victory, I cannot believe there is any other fact in the whole world which can compare with that. That is what I have dreamed of, aimed at, and worked for, and now it has come to pass.

But there is another fact, in some ways more immediately effective. The Russian armies have not been defeated. They have not been torn to pieces. The Russian peoples have not been conquered or destroyed. Leningrad and Moscow have not been taken. The Russian armies are in the field-they are not holding the line of the Urals or the line of the Volga-they are advancing victoriously, driving the foul invader from the native soil they have guarded so bravely and loved so well.

More than that, for the first time they have broken the Hitler legend. Instead of the easy victories and abundant booty which he and his hordes had gathered in the west, he has found in Russia, so far, only disaster, failure, the shame of unspeakable crimes, the slaughter or loss of vast numbers of German soldiers and the icy wind that blows across the Russian snow.

Here, then, are two tremendous fundamental facts which will in the end dominate the world situation and make victory possible in a form never possible before.

But there is another heavy and terrible side to the account, and this must be set in the balance against these inestimable gains.

Japan has plunged into the war and is ravishing the beautiful, fertile, prosperous and densely populated lands of the Far East. It would never have been in the power of Great Britain, while fighting Germany and Italy, two nations long-hardened and prepared for war, while fighting in the North Sea, in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic-it would never have been in our power to defend the Pacific and the Far East single-handed against the onslaught of Japan.

We have only just been able to keep our heads above water at home. Only by a narrow margin have we brought in the food and the supplies; only by so little have we held our own in the Nile Valley and the Middle East.

The Mediterranean is closed and all our transports have to go round the Cape of Good Hope-each ship making only three voyages in the year. Not a ship, not an airplane, not a tank, not an anti-tank gun or an anti-aircraft gun has stood idle. Everything we have has been deployed either against the enemy or awaiting his attack.

We are struggling hard in the Libyan desert, where perhaps another serious battle will soon be fought. We have to provide for the safety and order of liberated Abyssinia, of conquered Eritrea, of Palestine, of liberated Syria and redeemed Iraq, and of our new ally, Persia.

A ceaseless stream of ships, men and materials has flowed from this country for a year and a half in order to build up and sustain our armies in the Middle East, which guard these vast regions on either side of the Nile Valley. We had to do our best to give substantial aid to Russia. We gave it to her in her darkest hour and we must not fail in our undertaking now.

How then in this posture, gripped and held and battered as we were, could we have provided for the safety of the Far East against such an avalanche of fire and steel as has been hurled upon us by Japan? Always, my friends, this thought overhung our minds.

There was, however, one hope and one hope only-namely, that if Japan entered the war with her allies, Germany and Italy, the United States would come in on our side-thus, far more than repairing the balance. For this reason, I have been most careful all these many months not to give any provocation to Japan and to put up with Japanese encroachments, dangerous though they were, so that, if possible, whatever happened, we should not find ourselves forced to face this new enemy alone.

I could not be sure that we should succeed in this policy, but it has come to pass. Japan has struck her felon blow, and a new, far greater, champion has drawn the sword of implacable vengeance against her and on our side.

I shall frankly say to you that I did not believe it was in the interests of Japan to burst into war both upon the British Empire and the United States. I thought it would be a very irrational act. Indeed, when you remember that they did not attack us after Dunkirk, when we were so much weaker, when our hopes of United States help were of the most slender character, and when we were all alone, I could hardly believe that they would commit what seemed to be a mad act.

Tonight, the Japanese are triumphant-they shout their exultation around the world. We suffer-we are taken aback-we are hard-pressed; but I am sure, even in this dark hour that criminal madness will be the verdict which history will pronounce upon the authors of Japanese aggression after the events of 1942 and 1943 have been inscribed upon its somber pages.

The immediate deterrent which the United States exercised upon Japan-apart, of course, from the measureless resources of the American union-is the dominant American battle fleet in the Pacific, which, with the naval forces we could spare, confronted Japanese aggression with the shield of superior seapower.

But, my friends, by an act of sudden violent surprise, long calculated, balanced and prepared, and delivered under the crafty cloak of negotiation, the shield of sea-power which protected the fair lands and islands of the Pacific Ocean was, for the time being, and only for the time being, dashed to the ground.

Into the gap thus opened rushed the invading armies of Japan. We were exposed to the assault of a warrior race of nearly eighty millions with a large outfit of modern weapons, whose war-lords had been planning and scheming for this day, and looking forward to it perhaps for twenty years-while all the time our good people on both sides of the Atlantic were prating about perpetual peace and cutting down each other's navies in order to set a good example.

The overthrow, for a while, of British and United States seapower in the Pacific was like the breaking of some mighty dam. The long-gathered pent-up waters rushed down the peaceful valley, carrying ruin and devastation forward on their foam and spreading their inundations far and wide.

No one must underrate any more the gravity and efficiency of the Japanese war machine-whether in the air or upon the sea, or man to man on land. They have already proved themselves to be formidable, deadly and, I am sorry to say, barbarous antagonists.

This proves a hundred times over that there never was the slightest chance, even though we had been much better prepared in many ways than we were, of our standing up to them alone while we had Nazi Germany at our throats and Fascist Italy at our belly.

This proves something else-and this should be a comfort and reassurance. We can now measure the wonderful strength of the Chinese people, who under Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek have, single-handed, fought the insidious Japanese aggressor for four and a half years and left him baffled and dismayed. This they have done, although they were a people whose whole philosophy for many ages was opposed to war and warlike arts, and who in their agony were caught, ill-armed, ill-supplied with munitions and hopelessly outmatched in the air.

We must not underrate the power and malice of our latest foe, but neither must we undervalue the gigantic, overwhelming forces which now stand in the line with us in this world struggle for freedom, and which, once they have developed their full natural, inherent power, whatever has happened in the meanwhile, will be found fully capable of squaring all accounts and setting all things right for a good long time to come.

You know I have never prophesied to you or promised smooth and easy things; and now all I have to offer is hard adverse war for many months ahead. I must warn you, as I warned the House of Commons before they gave me their generous vote of confidence a fortnight ago, that many misfortunes, severe, torturing losses, remorseless and gnawing anxieties lie before us.

To our British folk these may seem even harder to bear when they are at a great distance than when the savage Hun was shattering our cities and we all felt in the midst of the battle ourselves. But the same qualities which brought us through the awful jeopardy of the summer of 1940 and its long autumn and winter bombardments from the air will bring us through this other new ordeal, though it may be more costly and will certainly be longer.

One fault, one crime, and one crime only, can rob the United Nations and the British people, upon whose constancy this Grand Alliance came into being, of the victory upon which their lives and honor depend: a weakening in our purpose, and therefore in our unity. That is the mortal crime. Whoever is guilty of that crime, or of bringing it about in others, of him let it be said that it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck and he were cast into the sea.

Last autumn when Russia was in her most dire peril, when vast numbers of her soldiers had been killed or taken prisoner, when one third of her whole munitions capacity lay, as it still lies, in Nazi German hands, when Kiev fell and the foreign ambassadors were ordered out of Moscow, the Russian people did not fall to bickering among themselves. They just stood together and worked and fought all the harder. They did not lose trust in their leaders. They did not try to break up their government. Hitler had hoped to find Quislings and fifth columnists in the wide regions he overran and among the unhappy masses who fell into his power. He searched for them but he found none.

The system upon which the Soviet government is founded is very different from ours or from that of the United States. However that may be, the fact remains that Russia received blows which her friends feared, and her foes believed, were mortal; and through preserving national unity and persevering undaunted, Russia has had the marvelous come-back for which we thank God now.

In the English-speaking world we rejoice in free institutions. We have free parliaments and a free press. This is the way of life we have been used to. This is the way of life we are fighting to defend.

But it is the duty of all who take part in those free institutions to make sure, as the House of Commons and the House of Lords have done, and will, I doubt not, do, that the national executive government in time of war have a solid foundation on which to stand and on which to act; that the misfortunes and mistakes of war are not exploited against them; that while they are kept up to the mark by helpful and judicious criticism or advice, they are not deprived of the persisting power to run through a period of bad times and many cruel vexations and to come out on the other side and get to the top of the hill.

Tonight I speak to you at home. I speak to you in Australia and New Zealand, for whose safety we will strain every nerve, to our loyal friends in India and Burma, to our gallant allies, the Dutch and Chinese, and to our kith and kin in the United States. I speak to you all under the shadow of a heavy and far-reaching military defeat.

It is a British and Imperial defeat. Singapore has fallen. All the Malay Peninsula has been overrun. Other dangers gather about us afar and none of the dangers which we have hitherto successfully withstood at home and in the East are in any way diminished.

This, therefore, is one of those moments when the British race and nation can show their quality and their genius. This is one of those moments when they can draw from the heart of misfortune the vital impulses of victory.

Here is the moment to display that calm and poise, combined with grim determination, which not so long ago brought us out of the very jaws of death. Here is another occasion to show, as so often in our long history, that we can meet reverses with dignity and with renewed accession of strength.

We must remember that we are no longer alone. We are in the midst of a great company. Three quarters of the human race are now moving with us. The whole future of mankind may depend upon our actions and upon our conduct. So far we have not failed.

We shall not fail now. Let us move forward steadfastly together into the storm and through the storm.

President Roosevelt issued an address to the Canadians.

I am speaking to my neighbors of Canada this evening-in regard to something that is a Canadian matter-only because of a personal relationship, which goes back fifty-eight long years, when my family began taking me every Summer to spend several months on a delightful Island off the coast of New Brunswick. I hope that my privilege of free and intimate discourse across our border will always continue. I trust that it will always be appreciated as sincerely as I appreciate it tonight.

It is not merely as good neighbors that we speak to each other in these eventful days, but as partners in a great enterprise which concerns us equally and in which we are equally pledged to the uttermost sacrifice and effort.

In an atmosphere of peace, four years ago, I offered you the assurance that the people of this country would not stand idly by if domination of Canadian soil were ever threatened by an aggressor. Your Prime Minister responded with an intimation that Canada, whose vast territories flank our entire northern border, would man that border against any attack upon us. These mutual pledges are now being implemented. Instead of defending merely our shores and our territories we now are joined with the other free peoples of the world against an armed conspiracy to wipe out free institutions wherever they exist.

Freedom-our freedom and yours-is under attack on many fronts. You and we together are engaged to resist the attack on any front where our strength can best be brought to bear.

The part that Canada is playing in this fight for the liberty of man is worthy of your traditions and ours. We, your neighbors, have been profoundly impressed by reports that have come to us setting forth the magnitude and nature of your effort as well as the valiant spirit which supports it. If that effort is to be measured in dollars, then you already have paid out, in two years, more than twice as much as you spent in the whole four years of the last war.

Moreover, these reports show that one Canadian in every twenty-one of your entire population is now in the fighting forces and that one in every twenty-nine is a volunteer for service anywhere in the world. It should give us all new strength and new courage to learn that in the swift mobilization your Army has increased nearly ten-fold, your Navy fifteen-fold, your Air Force twenty-five-fold. We rejoice to know that the Air Training Plan which you commenced to organize two years ago is now the main source of reinforcements for Britain's air force and that its graduates are fighting on almost every front in the world. Other reports disclose in equally impressive terms an all-out effort which Canada is making in the common cause of liberty.

Yours are the achievements of a great nation. They require no praise from me-but they get that praise from me nevertheless. I understate the case when I say that we, in this country, contemplating what you have done, and the spirit in which you have done it, are proud to be your neighbors.

From the outset you have had our friendship and understanding, and our collaboration on an increasing scale. We have gone forward together with increasing understanding and mutual sympathy and good will.

More recent events have brought us into even closer alignment; and at Washington a few weeks ago, with the assistance of Britain's Prime Minister and your own, we arrived at understandings which mean that the United Nations will fight and work and endure together until our common purpose is accomplished and the sun shines down once more upon a world where the weak will be safe ; and the strong will be just.

There is peril ahead for us all, and sorrow for many. But our cause is right, our goal is worthy, our strength is great and growing. Let us then march forward together, facing danger, bearing sacrifice, competing only in the effort to share even more fully in the great task laid upon us all. Let us, remembering the price that some have paid for our survival, make our own contribution worthy to lie beside theirs upon the altar of man's faith.

Thursday, January 29, 1942. Iranian alliances, Integrated blood, Desert Island Discs.

Desert Island Discs premiered on the BBC. The show invited guests on to imagine that they were shipwrecked on a desert island, but could bring 8 records with them, then featuring the eight.

The show ran throughout the war, and has been revived from time to time.  The concept remains a popular one in the imagination.

Indeed, at least for the stressed, being shipwrecked on a desert island, as long as you have food and some comfort, starts to look like a pretty good thing. . . for a while.

As we learn from Sarah Sundin's blog; 

January 29, 1942: Iran signs treaty of alliance with Britain and USSR, which promise to depart Iran 6 months after Axis defeat.

Iran frankly didn't have much of a choice but to agree, and the Soviets would nearly have to be forced out after the war.

Persia had been long part of the "great game", along with Afghanistan, played between the United Kingdom and Russia.  As it was between the two, its position was untenable during the Second World War, and it was occupied, as we've previously discussed, by both powers.

The New York Times reported, on the previous days byline, that Prime Minister Churchill was standing for a vote of confidence:

LONDON, Jan. 28 -- Debate on conduct of the war raged in Parliament today with a political fury quite equal to the fighting on the fronts. At the end of one of the longest single day's sittings that Parliament has had since the war began, there was little doubt that Prime Minister Winston Churchill would get a big majority in a vote of confidence that will close the three-day debate.

He survived the vote.

African American enlisted men, white officer, 10th Cavalry, April 1942.

The NYT also reported that:

RED CROSS TO USE BLOOD OF NEGROES; New Policy, Formulated After Talks With Army and Navy, Is Hailed and Condemned WILL BE PROCESSED ALONE New York Delegation Criticizes Separation as 'Abhorrent' to Founding Principles

Hard to believe this was a concern with some people.

Blood is blood, but the "mixing of blood" to mean the mixing of "races" had been a long fear in a certain section of the United States, with no quarter of it being immune.  Laws existed nearly everywhere preventing mixed marriages, although the degree to which they were enforced varied enormously.

Scientifically, it was well known and had been for a very long time that there's no difference whatsoever between the blood of various humans, not matter what their ethnicity.  Indeed, the concept of "race" itself is a false one, although it's still widely believed.  The genetic variance between various human populations is slight, and to the extent it's real, it's real between various populations that are grouped into "races" as well.  I.e, there's a genetic variance, albeit slight, between, let's say, Irish men and Italians, and so on.

As we've discussed here before, it's widely stated, inaccurately, that World War Two brought about a phenomenal change in regard to women in the workplace, and hence society.  It'd be more accurate to say that about the status of African Americans in American society.

Their place, of course, had been fought over and struggled over since the end of the Civil War.  The Compromise of 1877 had caused a massive nationwide retreat in the cause of civil rights in the country, but the issue had not gone away.  The creation of the Lost Cause myth, its strong growth in the early 20th Century, and increased mobility, had brought about the Great Migration in the second decade of the 20th Century. World War One saw African Americans volunteer to fight in the belief that their performance in the war would bring about a final leap to full equality, but that not only did not occur, the end of the war brought a racist reaction with the Red Summer of 1919.

Still, things were slowly changing, and the liberal administration of Frankly Roosevelt at least held the promise of the advancement of civil rights for African Americans.

African Americans had served in some numbers in the U.S. military since the Revolution.  Interestingly, the Navy had been originally integrated, as we've also discussed here previously, but the Army had been segregated since large-scale recruiting of blacks first occurred during the Civil War.  The Marine Corps had not admitted blacks its entire history, going into the Second World War.  Given the excellent performance of black troops during World War One, it would be natural to suppose that the experiment would have been repeated during World War Two, but in fact the Army was, at least at first, more prejudiced during the Second World War than the First.

In spite of having longstanding all black combat units, prejudice from career officers, often with Southern roots, meant that the Army declined to deploy them as combat troops. For the most part, the Regular Army black units were busted up into service units during the war.  African American sailors likewise were relegated to service roles on board ship, something that had been the case since the steel wall Navy replaced the wooden wall one.  Blacks were allowed into the Marine Corps as the war progressed, but again in service roles.  Only late in the war, when pressure from African American groups and combat necessity required it, would this start to break down in the Army.

Still, the fact that the nation went to war espousing the ideal of equality made the hypocrisy a bit too much for society to bear.  Integration of the services would commence in the late 1940s and there was no going back.  This was brought about, in large part, due to the ideals expressed in the Second World War.

Related Threads:

Blacks in the Army. Segregation and Desegregation

Women in the Workplace: It was Maytag that took Rosie the Riveter out of the domestic arena, not World War Two

 

Friday, January 16, 1942. The death of Carole Lombard.

 

Elizabeth Peters, mother of Carole Lombard, Clark Gable, and Carole Lombard in 1939.

Carole Lombard, 33-year-old actress and wife of Clark Gable, died in an airplane crash, along with her mother, and fifteen soldiers.  The TWA flight crashed into a mountain outside of Las Vegas, Nevada on its way back to California.

She was the first Hollywood star to die in World War Two.

You can read more about this tragedy here:

16 January 1942

The US created the War Production Board.

In other aviation related news, Prime Minister Churchill returned to the UK by plane, the first Prime Minister to do so, and undoubtedly a safer way to make that trip, given the ongoing Operation Drumbeat.

Tuesday, December 30, 1941. A day of Axis setbacks.

 

The British offensive, Operation Crusader, drew to a successful conclusion on this day in 1941.  It had commenced on November 18.  It had driven the Axis forces in North Africa back from Tobruk and a substantial distance in retreat in Libya.

Winston Churchill, having recently addressed Congress, now addressed the Canadian Parliament in a speech famously recalled as the "Chicken Speech".  In it, he stated:

It is with feelings of pride and encouragement that I find myself here in the House of Commons of Canada, invited to address the Parliament of the senior Dominion of the Crown. I am very glad to see again my old friend Mr. Mackenzie King, for fifteen years out of twenty your Prime Minister, and I thank him for the too complimentary terms in which he has referred to myself. I bring you the assurance of good will and affection from every one in the Motherland. We are most grateful for all you have done in the common cause, and we know that you are resolved to do whatever more is possible as the need arises and as opportunity serves. Canada occupies a unique position in the British Empire because of its unbreakable ties with Britain and its ever-growing friendship and intimate association with the United States. Canada is a potent magnet, drawing together those in the new world and in the old whose fortunes are now united in a deadly struggle for life and honour against the common foe. The contribution of Canada to the Imperial war effort in troops, in ships, in aircraft, in food, and in finance has been magnificent. 

The Canadian Army now stationed in England has chafed not to find itself in contact with the enemy. But I am here to tell you that it has stood and still stands in the key position to strike at the invader should he land upon our shores. In a few months, when the invasion season returns, the Canadian Army may be engaged in one of the most frightful battles the world has ever seen, but on the other hand their presence may help to deter the enemy from attempting to fight such a battle on British soil. Although the long routine of training and preparation is undoubtedly trying to men who left prosperous farms and businesses, or other responsible civil work, inspired by an eager and ardent desire to fight the enemy, although this is trying to high-mettled temperaments, the value of the service rendered is unquestionable, and I am sure that the peculiar kind of self-sacrifice involved will be cheerfully or at least patiently endured. 

The Canadian Government have imposed no limitation on the use of the Canadian Army, whether on the Continent of Europe or elsewhere, and I think it is extremely unlikely that this war will end without the Canadian Army coming to close quarters with the Germans, as their fathers did at Ypres, on the Somme, or on the Vimy Ridge. Already at Hong Kong, that beautiful colony which the industry and mercantile enterprise of Britain has raised from a desert isle and made the greatest port of shipping in the whole world — Hong Kong, that Colony wrested from us for a time until we reach the peace table, by the overwhelming power of the Home Forces of Japan, to which it lay in proximity — at Hong Kong Canadian soldiers of the Royal Rifles of Canada and the Winnipeg Grenadiers, under a brave officer whose loss we mourn, have played a valuable part in gaining precious days, and have crowned with military honour the reputation of their native land. 

Another major contribution made by Canada to the Imperial war effort is the wonderful and gigantic Empire training scheme for pilots for the Royal and Imperial Air Forces. This has now been as you know well in full career for nearly two years in conditions free from all interference by the enemy. The daring youth of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, with many thousands from the homeland, are perfecting their training under the best conditions, and we are being assisted on a large scale by the United States, many of whose training facilities have been placed at our disposal. This scheme will provide us in 1942 and 1943 with the highest class of trained pilots, observers, and air gunners in the numbers necessary to man the enormous flow of aircraft which the factories of Britain, of the Empire and of the United States are and will be producing. 

I could also speak on the naval production of corvettes and above all of merchant ships which is proceeding on a scale almost equal to the building of the United Kingdom, all of which Canada has set on foot. I could speak of many other activities, of tanks, of the special forms of modern high-velocity cannon and of the great supplies of raw materials and many other elements essential to our war effort on which your labours are ceaselessly and tirelessly engaged. But I must not let my address to you become a catalogue, so I turn to less technical fields of thought. 

We did not make this war, we did not seek it. We did all we could to avoid it. We did too much to avoid it. We went so far at times in trying to avoid it as to be almost destroyed by it when it broke upon us. But that dangerous corner has been turned, and with every month and every year that passes we shall confront the evil-doers with weapons as plentiful, as sharp, and as destructive as those with which they have sought to establish their hateful domination. 

I should like to point out to you that we have not at any time asked for any mitigation in the fury or malice of the enemy. The peoples of the British Empire may love peace. They do not seek the lands or wealth of any country, but they are a tough and hardy lot. We have not journeyed all this way across the centuries, across the oceans, across the mountains, across the prairies, because we are made of sugar candy. 

Look at the Londoners, the Cockneys; look at what they have stood up to. Grim and gay with their cry "We can take it," and their war-time mood of "What is good enough for anybody is good enough for us." We have not asked that the rules of the game should be modified. We shall never descend to the German and Japanese level, but if anybody likes to play rough we can play rough too. Hitler and his Nazi gang have sown the wind; let them reap the whirlwind. Neither the length of the struggle nor any form of severity which it may assume shall make us weary or shall make us quit.

I have been all this week with the President of the United States, that great man whom destiny has marked for this climax of human fortune. We have been concerting the united pacts and resolves of more than thirty States and nations to fight on in unity together and in fidelity one to another, without any thought except the total and final extirpation of the Hitler tyranny, the Japanese frenzy, and the Mussolini flop.

There shall be no halting, or half measures, there shall be no compromise, or parley. These gangs of bandits have sought to darken the light of the world; have sought to stand between the common people of all the lands and their march forward into their inheritance. They shall themselves be cast into the pit of death and shame, and only when the earth has been cleansed and purged of their crimes and their villainy shall we turn from the task which they have forced upon us, a task which we were reluctant to undertake, but which we shall now most faithfully and punctiliously discharge. According to my sense of proportion, this is no time to speak of the hopes of the future, or the broader world which lies beyond our struggles and our victory. We have to win that world for our children. We have to win it by our sacrifices. We have not won it yet. The crisis is upon us. The power of the enemy is immense. If we were in any way to underrate the strength, the resources or the ruthless savagery of that enemy, we should jeopardize, not only our lives, for they will be offered freely, but the cause of human freedom and progress to which we have vowed ourselves and all we have. We cannot for a moment afford to relax. On the contrary we must drive ourselves forward with unrelenting zeal. In this strange, terrible world war there is a place for everyone, man and woman, old and young, hale and halt; service in a thousand forms is open. There is no room now for the dilettante, the weakling, for the shirker, or the sluggard. The mine, the factory, the dockyard, the salt sea waves, the fields to till, the home, the hospital, the chair of the scientist, the pulpit of the preacher — from the highest to the humblest tasks, all are of equal honour; all have their part to play. The enemies ranged against us, coalesced and combined against us, have asked for total war. Let us make sure they get it.

That grand old minstrel, Harry Lauder — Sir Harry Lauder, I should say, and no honour was better deserved — had a song in the last War which began, "If we all look back on the history of the past, we can just tell where we are." Let us then look back. We plunged into this war all unprepared because we had pledged our word to stand by the side of Poland, which Hitler had feloniously invaded, and in spite of a gallant resistance had soon struck down. There followed those astonishing seven months which were called on this side of the Atlantic the "phoney" war. Suddenly the explosion of pent-up German strength and preparation burst upon Norway, Denmark, Holland, and Belgium. All these absolutely blameless neutrals, to most of whom Germany up to the last moment was giving every kind of guarantee and assurance, were overrun and trampled down. The hideous massacre of Rotterdam, where 30,000 people perished, showed the ferocious barbarism in which the German Air Force revels when, as in Warsaw and later Belgrade, it is able to bomb practically undefended cities.

On top of all this came the great French catastrophe. The French Army collapsed, and the French nation was dashed into utter and, as it has so far proved, irretrievable confusion. The French Government had at their own suggestion solemnly bound themselves with us not to make a separate peace. It was their duty and it was also their interest to go to North Africa, where they would have been at the head of the French Empire. In Africa, with our aid, they would have had overwhelming sea power. They would have had the recognition of the United States, and the use of all the gold they had lodged beyond the seas. If they had done this Italy might have been driven out of the war before the end of 1940, and France would have held her place as a nation in the counsels of the Allies and at the conference table of the victors. But their generals misled them. When I warned them that Britain would fight on alone whatever they did, their generals told their Prime Minister and his divided Cabinet, "In three weeks England will have her neck wrung like a chicken." Some chicken; some neck.

What a contrast has been the behaviour of the valiant, stout-hearted Dutch, who still stand forth as a strong living partner in the struggle! Their venerated Queen and their Government are in England, their Princess and her children have found asylum and protection here in your midst. But the Dutch nation are defending their Empire with dogged courage and tenacity by land and sea and in the air. Their submarines are inflicting a heavy daily toll upon the Japanese robbers who have come across the seas to steal the wealth of the East Indies, and to ravage and exploit its fertility and its civilization. The British Empire and the United States are going to the aid of the Dutch. We are going to fight out this new war against Japan together. We have suffered together and we shall conquer together.

But the men of Bordeaux, the men of Vichy, they would do nothing like this. They lay prostrate at the foot of the conqueror. They fawned upon him. What have they got out of it? The fragment of France which was left to them is just as powerless, just as hungry as, and even more miserable, because more divided, than the occupied regions themselves. Hitler plays from day to day a cat-and-mouse game with these tormented men. One day he will charge them a little less for holding their countrymen down.

Another day he will let out a few thousand broken prisoners of war from the one-and-a-half or one-and-three-quarter millions he has collected. Or again he will shoot a hundred French hostages to give them a taste of the lash. On these blows and favours the Vichy Government have been content to live from day to day. But even this will not go on indefinitely. At any moment it may suit Hitler's plans to brush them away. Their only guarantee is Hitler's good faith, which, as everyone knows, biteth like the adder and stingeth like the asp.

But some Frenchmen there were who would not bow their knees and who under General de Gaulle have continued the fight on the side of the Allies. They have been condemned to death by the men of Vichy, but their names will be held and are being held in increasing respect by nine Frenchmen out of every ten throughout the once happy, smiling land of France. But now strong forces are at hand. The tide has turned against the Hun. Britain, which the men of Bordeaux thought and then hoped would soon be finished, Britain with her Empire around her carried the weight of the war alone for a whole long year through the darkest part of the valley. She is growing stronger every day. You can see it here in Canada. Anyone who has the slightest knowledge of our affairs is aware that very soon we shall be superior in every form of equipment to those who have taken us at the disadvantage of being but half armed.

The Russian armies, under their warrior leader, Josef Stalin, are waging furious war with increasing success along the thousand-mile front of their invaded country. General Auchinleck, at the head of a British, South African, New Zealand and Indian army, is striking down and mopping up the German and Italian forces which had attempted the invasion of Egypt. Not only are they being mopped up in the desert, but great numbers of them have been drowned on the way there by British submarines and the R.A.F. in which Australian squadrons played their part.

As I speak this afternoon an important battle is being fought around Jedabia. We must not attempt to prophesy its result, but I have good confidence. All this fighting in Libya proves that when our men have equal weapons in their hands and proper support from the air they are more than a match for the Nazi hordes. In Libya, as in Russia, events of great importance and of most hopeful import have taken place. But greatest of all, the mighty Republic of the United States has entered the conflict, and entered it in a manner which shows that for her there can be no withdrawal except by death or victory. 

Et partout dans la France occupée et inoccupée (car leur sort est égal), ces honnêtes gens, ce grand peuple, la nation française, se redresse. L'espoir se rallume dans les coeurs d'une race guerrière, même désarmée, berceau de la liberté révolutionnaire et terrible aux vainqueurs esclaves. Et partout, on voit le point du jour, et la lumière grandit, rougeâtre, mais claire. Nous ne perdrons jamais la confiance que la France jouera le rôle des hommes libres et qu'elle reprendra par des voies dures sa place dans la grande compagnie des nations libératrices et victorieuses. Ici, au Canada, où la langue française est honorée et parlée, nous nous tenons prêts et armés pour aider et pour saluer cette résurrection nationale. 

Now that the whole of the North American continent is becoming one gigantic arsenal, and armed camp; now that the immense reserve power of Russia is gradually becoming apparent; now that long-suffering, unconquerable China sees help approaching; now that the outraged and subjugated nations can see daylight ahead, it is permissible to take a broad forward view of the war.

We may observe three main periods or phases of the struggle that lies before us. First there is the period of consolidation, of combination, and of final preparation. In this period, which will certainly be marked by much heavy fighting, we shall still be gathering our strength, resisting the assaults of the enemy, and acquiring the necessary overwhelming air superiority and shipping tonnage to give our armies the power to traverse, in whatever numbers may be necessary, the seas and oceans which, except in the case of Russia, separate us from our foes. It is only when the vast shipbuilding programme on which the United States has already made so much progress, and which you are powerfully aiding, comes into full flood, that we shall be able to bring the whole force of our manhood and of our modern scientific equipment to bear upon the enemy. How long this period will take depends upon the vehemence of the effort put into production in all our war industries and shipyards.

The second phase which will then open may be called the phase of liberation. During this phase we must look to the recovery of the territories which have been lost or which may yet be lost, and also we must look to the revolt of the conquered peoples from the moment that the rescuing and liberating armies and air forces appear in strength within their bounds. For this purpose it is imperative that no nation or region overrun, that no Government or State which has been conquered, should relax its moral and physical efforts and preparation for the day of deliverance. The invaders, be they German or Japanese, must everywhere be regarded as infected persons to be shunned and isolated as far as possible. Where active resistance is impossible, passive resistance must be maintained. The invaders and tyrants must be made to feel that their fleeting triumphs will have a terrible reckoning, and that they are hunted men and that their cause is doomed. Particular punishment will be reserved for the quislings and traitors who make themselves the tools of the enemy. They will be handed over to the judgment of their fellow-countrymen.

There is a third phase which must also be contemplated, namely, the assault upon the citadels and the home-lands of the guilty Powers both in Europe and in Asia. Thus I endeavour in a few words to cast some forward light upon the dark, inscrutable mysteries of the future. But in thus forecasting the course along which we should seek to advance, we must never forget that the power of the enemy and the action of the enemy may at every stage affect our fortunes. Moreover, you will notice that I have not attempted to assign any time-limits to the various phases. These time-limits depend upon our exertions, upon our achievements, and on the hazardous and uncertain course of the war.

Nevertheless I feel it is right at this moment to make it clear that, while an ever-increasing bombing offensive against Germany will remain one of the principal methods by which we hope to bring the war to an end, it is by no means the only method which our growing strength now enables us to take into account. Evidently the most strenuous exertions must be made by all. As to the form which those exertions take, that is for each partner in the grand alliance to judge for himself in consultation with others and in harmony with the general scheme. Let us then address ourselves to our task, not in any way underrating its tremendous difficulties and perils, but in good heart and sober confidence, resolved that, whatever the cost, whatever the suffering, we shall stand by one another, true and faithful comrades, and do our duty, God helping us, to the end.

That part of the speech, set out above in French, was delivered in French.

The Red Army made amphibious landings in eastern Crimea.

The Soviets were demonstrating operational capabilities that the Germans lacked, which was creating real problems for the Wehrmacht.  Amphibious operations were one such capability.

The Battle of Kampar commenced in Malaysia, pitting Japanese troops against British and Indian troops.

Japanese tanks in the Battle of Kampar.

The battle would be a Japanese defeat.  The British and Indian forces ultimately withdrew, but their goal had been to slow the Japanese advance, which they did.

Manuel Quezon was inaugurated to his second term of President of the Philippines.  On that occasion, Gen. MacArthur delivered this address:

Never before in all history has there been a more solemn and significant inauguration. An act, symbolical of democratic processes, is placed against the background of a sudden, merciless war. 

The thunder of death and destruction, dropped from the skies, can be heard in the distance. Our ears almost catch the roar of battle as our soldiers close on the firing line. The horizon is blackened by the smoke of destructive fire. The air reverberates to the dull roar of exploding bombs, 

Such is the bed of birth of this new government, of this new nation. For four hundred years the Philippines has struggled upward toward self government. Just at the end of its tuitionary period, just on the threshold of independence, came the great hour of decision. There was no hesitation, no vacillation, no moment of doubt. The whole country followed its great leader in choosing the side of freedom against the side of slavery. We have just inaugurated him, we have just thereby confirmed his momentous decision. Hand in hand with the United States and the other free nations of the world, this basic and fundamental issue will be fought through to victory. Come what may ultimate triumph will be its reward. 

Through this its gasping agony of travail, through what Winston Churchill calls “blood and sweat and tears,” from the grim shadow of the Valley of Death, Oh Merciful God, preserve this noble race. 

Never before in all history has there been a more solemn and significant inauguration. An act, symbolical of democratic processes, is placed against the background of a sudden, merciless war. 

The thunder of death and destruction, dropped from the skies, can be heard in the distance. Our ears almost catch the roar of battle as our soldiers close on the firing line. The horizon is blackened by the smoke of destructive fire. The air reverberates to the dull roar of exploding bombs. 

Such is the bed of birth of this new government, of this new nation. For four hundred years the Philippines has struggled upward toward self government. Just at the end of its tuitionary period, just on the threshold of independence, came the great hour of decision. There was no hesitation, no vacillation, no moment of doubt. The whole country followed its great leader in choosing the side of freedom against the side of slavery. We have just inaugurated him, we have just thereby confirmed his momentous decision. Hand in hand with the United States and the other free nations of the world, this basic and fundamental issue will be fought through to victory. Come what may ultimate triumph will be its reward. 

Through this its gasping agony of travail, through what Winston Churchill calls “blood and sweat and tears,” from the grim shadow of the Valley of Death, Oh Merciful God, preserve this noble race.

Ernest King assumed command of the US fleet.