The territory in dispute, in any Pacific war, Will be ten thousand miles or more from San Francisco, and at some points only eight hundred miles from Tokyo. "Well, so our government's been trying to keep the japs quiet by letting them buy from us all the steel, scrap iron, and oil they want, though of course the stuff goes straight into the stockpile they need to fight a war against us. Now, I have no opinion of that policy-" "I sure have," came a sarcastic gravelly growl from the admiral. The officers laughed and applauded. Colton went on, "It's not fit for tender ears. Sooner or later they'll come steaming east, burning Texaco oil and shooting Pieceslof old Buicks at us. Some policy! Co ahead, Lieutenant. Sorry.)P Quiet ensued as Warren took away the chart. A pallid slide flashed on the screen, a situation map of the Russo-Japanese war. "Okay, a little ancient history now. Here's Port Arthur," Warren pointed, "tucked far into the Yellow Sea, behind Korea. jap back yard again. Here's where the japs beat the Russians in 1905. Without a declaration of war, they made a sneak attack on the Czar's navy, a night torpedo attack. The Russians never recovered. The Nips landed and besieged this key ice-free port. when Port Arth r finally fell, that was it. the Czar accepted a negotiated peace with a primitive country, one-eth the size of his own! It was as great a victory for the japs as the American Revolution was for us. "Now I personally think our history books don't give that war enough Play. That's where modern Japanese history starts. Maybe that's where all modern history starts. Because that's where the colored man for the first time took on the white man and beat him." In one corner, near the serving pantry, the white-coated steward's nates, all Filipino or Negro, were gathered. When the topic was not secret, they had the privilege of listening to officer lectures. Glances now wandered to them from all over the wardroom, in a sudden stillness. The Filipino faces were blank masks. The Negroes' expressions were various and enigmatic; some of the younger ones tartly smiled. This awkward moment caught Warren unawares. The presence of the steward's mates had been a matter of course to him, hardly noticed. He shook off the embarrassment and plowed on. "Well, this was a hell of a feat, only half a century after Perry opened up the country. The japs learned fast. They traded silk and art objects to the British for a modern steam navy. They hired the Germans to train them an army. Then they crossed to the mainland and licked Russia. "But remember, Moscow was a whole continent away from Port Arthur. The only link was a railroad. Long supply lines licked the Czar. Long supply lines licked Cornwallis, and long supply lines licked Napoleon in Russia. Thefurther you have to go to fight, the more you thin out your strength just getting there and coming back. "Incidentally, at the Naval War College war games often start with a sneak attack by the japs on us, right here in Pearl Harbor. That derives from the Port Arthur attack. The way the jap mind works, why shouldn't they repeat a trick on the white devils that once paid off so well? "Well, of course 1941 isn't 1905. We've got search planes and radar. This time the japs could get themselves royally clobbered. Still, the nature of this enemy is strange. You can't rule that possibility out. "But always remember his objective. When the japs took on the Czar in 1904, they had no intention of marching to Moscow. Their objective was to grab off territory in their own back yard and hold it. That's what they did, and they still hold it. "If war breaks out in the Pacific, the japs are not going to set forth to occupy Washington, D.C and my guess is they won't even menace Hawaii. They couldn't care less. They'll strike south for the big grab, and then they'll dare us to come on, across a supply line ten thousand miles long, through their triple chain of fortified island airfields-the Gilberts, the Marshalls, the Mananas-and their surface and submarine fleets, operating close to home under an umbrella of land-based air. "So I don't exactly see us blowing them off the map in two weeks." Warren looked around at the more than a hundred sombre young faces. "Peace in the Pacific once rested on a rickety three-legged stool. One leg was American naval power; the second, the European forces in southeast Asia; and the third, the Russian land power in Siberia. "The European leg of the stool got knocked out in 1940 by the C;ermans. Yesterday, the Germans knocked out the Russian leg. Stalin's not going into any Asian war-not now. So it's all up to us, and with two legs out of the stool, I would say peace in the Pacific has fallen on its ass." Warren had been talking along very solemnly, flourishing his pointer. The joke brought surprised chuckles. "As to Captain Nugent's question, what is Hitler's motive toti oe the mean us, the answer therefore comes out loud and Clear, when you look at the map. Der Fuhrer has sounded general quarters for the Enterprise. Rear Admiral Colton was first on his feet to lead the applause.
Clenching the cigar in his teeth, he pumped Warren)s hand. Gliding across an imaginary line that splits the Pacific Ocean from the north to the south polar caps, the sunrise acquired a new label, June 23. Behind that line, June 22 had just dawned. This murky international convention, amid world chaos, still stood. For the globe still turned as always in the light of the sun, ninety million miles away in black space, and the tiny dwellers on the globe still had to agree, as they went about their mutual butcheries, on a way to tell the time. The daylight slipped westward over the waters, over charming green island chains, once German colonies, all entrusted to japan under her pledge not to fortify them-all fortified. Endeavoring to emulate the white man, japan had studied European history in the matter of keeping such pledges. Day came to the city of Tokyo, dotted with charming parks and temples and an imperial palace, but otherwise a flat sprawling slum of matchbox shacks and shabby Western buildings. Catching up with the white man in two generations had impoverished the Japanese; four years of the "China Incident" had drained them dry. Obedient to their leaders, they were bending to their tasks, eating prison fare, building war machines by borrowed blueprints with borrowed metals under borrowed technical advisers, desperately trading silk, cameras, and toys for oil to make the machines go. Ninety million of them toiled on four quake-ridden rocky islands full of slumbering volcanoes, an area no larger than California-Their chief natural resource was willpower. The rest of the world knew little more about them than what could be learned from Gilbert and Sullivan's Mikado. They were puzzling people. Their Foreign Minister, a little moustached man named Matsuoka, American-educated and much travelled in F-urope, gave the impression of being a lunatic, with his voluble, self-contradictory chatter, and his wild giggling, grinning, and hissing, so different from the expected deportment of the Oriental. White diplomats guessed that his strange ways must be part of the Japanese character. C)nly later did it Turn out that the Japanese also thought he was demented. Why the militarist cabinet entrusted him with mortally serious matters at this time remains a historical mystery, like the willingness of the Germans to follow Hitler, who in his writings and speeches always appeared to people of other countries an obvious maniac. It is not clear just how crazy Stalin was at this time, though most historians agree he later went stark mad. In any case, the deranged Matsuoka was in charge of japan's relations with the world, when the deranged Hitler attacked the deranged Stalin. Japanese historians recount that Matsuoka obtained an urgent audience with the emperor and begged him to invade Siberia right away. But the army and navy leaders were cool to the idea. In 1939, the army had had a nasty unpublicized tangle with Stalin's Siberian army, taking losses in the tens of thousands. Theywanted to go south, where the Vichy French were impotent, the Dutch were cut off from home, and the beleaguered English could spare little force. Warren Henry's amateur analysis on the Enterprise's hangar deck had not been wrong on these main alternatives. But Matsuoka insisted that by signing the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy, japan had pledged to help them if they were attacked; and the German invasion clearly had taken place to fend off a Russian attack. Morality therefore required japan to invade Siberia at once. As for the nonaggression pact with Russia-which he had himself negotiated -Russia never kept pacts anyway. To attack right now was vital, before Russia collapsed, in order for the onslaught to appear honorable, and n just picking up pieces. Matsuoka called this position "moral diplomacy." One high-placed official is supposed to have commented quite seriously at this time that the foreign minister was insane; to which an elder statesman replied that insanity in Matsuoka would be an improvement. So much one can sift from the Japanese record. The official secret decision was to 'let the persimmon ripen on the tree"-that is, not to attack the Soviet union until its defeat looked like more of a sure thing. For the China war went on and on, an endless bog, and the Japanese leaders were not eager to take on heavy new land operations. The thrust south looked like the easier option, if they had to figbtPlanning for this was to proceed. Matsuoka was dismayed, and he soon fell from office. At the time of sunrise in Tokyo, the sun had already been traversing Siberia for over three hours, starting at Bering Strait. Before bringing a second sunrise to the battlefront, it had eight more hours to travel, for the Soviet union stretches halfway around the globe. Amid the invasion rumors of May and June, a bitter story had swept through Europe, crossing the frontiers between German-held and free territory. A Berlin actress, the story went, resting after lovemaking with a Wehrmacht general, persuaded him to tell her about the coming invasion of Russia. He obligingly took down an atlas of the world and began, but she soon interru ted him: p 'Liebchen, but what is that great big green space there all across the map 'y that, Liebchem, as I told you, is the Soviet union." "Ach so. And where did you say Germany was?" The general showed her the narrow black blob in mid-Europe. 'Liebchen," the actress said pensively, "has the Fuhrer seen this map?" It was a good joke. But the nerve center of the Soviet union was not in Vladivostok, at the far eastern end of the green space. The sunrise of lune 23, passing west of the Russian capital, shone out within the hour on German columns, twenty-five miles advanced toward Minsk and Moscow in one day, through the massed forces of the Red Army and its heaviest borderdefenses. ULE lightning cracked down the black sky, forking behind the PWashington Monument in jagged streams. July on the Potomac was going out, as usual, in choking heat and wild thunderstorms. "There goes my walk home," Victor Henry said. Through the open window, a tongue of cool air licked into the stifling, humid office, scattering heavy raindrops On the wall charts. It began to pour in the street, a thick hissing shower 'Maybe it'll break the heat wave," Julius said. Julius was a chief yeoman who had worked with him in the Bureau of Ordnance, a fat placid man of fifty with a remarkable head for statistics. "No such luck. The steam will be denser, that's all." Pug looked at his watch. "Hey, it's after six. Ring my house, will you? Tell the cook dinner at seven." "Aye aye, sir." Tightening his tie and slipping into a seersucker jacket, Pug scooped up papers from the desk. "I want to study these figures some more. They're kind of incredible, Julius." With a shrug and wave of both hands, Julius said, "They're as good as the premises you gave me to work from." "Jebosephat, if it comes to that many landing craft for the two oceans, how can we build anything else for the next three years?" Julius gave him the slightly superior smile of an underling who, on a narrow topic, knows more than the boss. "We produce million tons of steel a year, sir. But making all those hair dryers and refrigerators and forty different models of cars too-that's the problem." Pug dove through the rain to a taxicab that drew up at the Navy Building. A very tall man got out, pulling a soft hat low on his head. "All yours-why, hello there." "Well, hi!" Pug pulled out his wallet and gave the taxi driver a bill saying, "Wait, please.-How long have you been in Washington, Kirby?" "About a month." "Come home with me for a drink. Better yet, join me for dinner." "Thanks, but I don't think I can." "I'm alone," said Victor Henry. Kirby hesitated. "Where's your wife?" "Spending my money in New York. She saw off our daughter-in-laA, and grandson on a plane to Hawaii. Now she's shopping for furniture and stuff. We bought a house." "Oh? Did she get the one on Foxhall Road?" "That's the one. How'd you know about it?""Well-I ran into Rhoda when she was house-hunting. You were out at sea, I guess. We had lunch and she showed me the place. I was all for it." "Got much to do?" Pug insisted. "I'll wait for you." "As a matter of fact," Kirby said abruptly, "I only have to pick up some papers. Let me dash in here for a minute. I'll be glad to have that drink with you." Soon they sat together in the cab, moving slowly in the clogged rushbour traffic of Constitution Avenue, in torrents of rain. "What are you doing in this dismal town?" Pug said. "Oh, this and that." "U know what?" grinned Pug, stressing U for uranium. Kirby glanced at the bald round head and red ears of the driver. "Driver, turn on your radio," Pug said. "Let's catch the news." But the driver could only get jazz, buzzing with static. "I don't know what you hope to hear," Kirby said. "Except that the Germans are another fifty miles nearer Moscow." "Our deparunent's getting edgy about the japs." "I can't figure out the President's order," Kirby said. "Neither can the papers, it seems. Okay, he froze their credits. Does it or doesn't it cut off their oil?" "Sure it does. They can't pay." "Doesn't that force them to go to war?" "Maybe. The President had to do something about this Vichy deal that puts jap airfields and armies in Indo-China. Saigon's a mighty handy jump-off point for Malaya and Java-and Australia, for that matter." Kirby deliberately packed his pipe. "How is Rhoda?" "Snappish about various foul-ups in the new house. Otherwise fine." Through puffs of blue smoke, the scientist said, "What do we actually want of the japs now?" "To cease their aggression. Back up out of Indo-China. Get off the Chinese mainland. Call off that Manchukuo farce, and free Manchuria." "In other words," said Kirby, "give up all hope of beconidng a major power, and accept a military defeat which nobody's inflicted on them." "We can lick them at sea." "Do we have an army to drive them out of Asia?" "No.""Then don't we have our gall, ordering them out?" Pug looked at Kirby under thick eyebrows, his head down on his chest. The city was giving him a headache, and he was very tired. "Look, militarist fanatics have taken charge there, Kirby. You know that. Slant-eyed samurais with industrial armaments. If they ever break loose and min southeast Asia, you'll have a yellow Germany in the Pacific, with unlimited manpower, and most of the oil and rubber in the world. We have to maneuver while we can, and fight if we must. The President's freezing order is a maneuver. Maybe he'll work out some deal with them." 'Appeasement," Kirby said. "Exactly, appeasement. We've been appeasing them right along with the oil shipments. So far they haven't attacked south and they haven't hit Russia in the back. I think the President's just feeling his way, day by day and week by week." 'y doesn't he declare war on Germany?" Kirby said. "Why this interminable pussyfooting about convoys? Once Russia collapses, the last chance to stop Hitler will be gone." 'I can tell you why Roosevelt doesn't declare war on Germany, mister," spoke up theta)d driver in a rough, good-humored Southern voice, not looking around. "Oh? Why?" said Kirby. "Because he'd be impeached if he tried, that's why, mister. He knows goddamned well that the American people aren't going to war to save the Jews." He glanced over his shoulder. Blue eyes twinkled in a friendly fat face, smiling jovially. "I have no prejudices. I'm not prejudiced against the Jews. But I'm not prejudiced for them, either. Not enough to send American boys to die for them. That's not unreasonable, is it?" 'Maybe you'd better look where you're driving," said Pug. The cabbie subsided. 'It's a nice spot," Kirby said. They were on the back porch and Pug was pouring martinis. The house stood on a little knoll, topping a smooth lawn and a ravine of wild woods. A fresh breeze smelling of wet leaves and earth cooled the porch. "Rhoda likes it." They drank in silence. "How about that cabbie?" said Kirby. "Well, he said it straight out. It's been said on the Senate floor often, in double-talk." Kirby emptied his glass, and Pug at once refilled it.
"Thanks, Pug. I'm having unusual feelings these days. I'm starting to suspect that the human race, as we know it, may not make it through the industrial revolution." "I've had a bad day myself," Pug said, as the scientist lit his pipe. "No," Kirby said, slowly waving out the thick wooden match, "let me try to put this into words. It's occurred to me that our human values, our ideas of right and wrong, good and bad, evolved in simpler times, before there were machines. Possibly the Germans and the Japanese are really adapting better to the new environment. Their successes suggest that. Also the way their opponents keep stumbling and crumbling. We may be having a Darwinian change in society. Authoritarian rule may be best suited to urban machine life-armed bosses indifferent to mercy or probity, keeping order by terror, and ready to lie and kill as routine policy. After all, most of the machines aren't a hundred years old. The airplane isn't forty years old. And democracy's still a fragile experiment." Kirby paused to drain his glass. "You called the Japanese industrial samuraisThat rang the bell. They've starved themselves, stripped their country, to build or buy machines, and they've jumped out of nowhere to center stage of history. The Nazi or samurai idea may just make more sense in a changed world, Pug. Is this merely martini talk, and is there any left in that jug?" "There's plenty," said Pug, pouring, and more where it came from. I'm feeling better by the minute. It's nice on this porch." "It's Marvelous," said Palmer Kirby. "Why don't you stay for dinner?" Pug said. "What else do you have to do?" "I don't like to impose on you." "I'm having chops, potatoes, and a salad. It's just putting on a couple more chops. Let me tell the cook." "All right, Pug. Thanks. I've done a lot of eating alone lately." "Be back in a minute," said Victor Henry, taking the jug. He brought it back full and tinkling. "I put off dinner," he said. "Give us a chance to relax." 'Suits me," said Kirby, "though from the mood I'm in and the size of that jug, you may have to lead me to the dining room." "It's not far," Pug said, "and the furniture has few sharp edges." Kirby laughed. "You know, about the first thing your very sweet wife Rhoda said to me was that I drank too much. At the dinner she gave me in Berlin. You remember, when you had to fly back to see the President. I was in a bad mood, and I did swill a lot of wine fast. She brought me up short.""That was rude, The amount a man drinks is his own business," said Pug. "Not to mention that on occasion my proud beauty has sort of a hollow leg herself." "Say, you mix a hell of a good martini, Pug." "Kirby, what you were saying before, you know, is only this wave-of the-future stuff that the Lindbergbs have been peddling." "Well, lindy's the type of the new man, isn't be? Flying an ocean by himself in a single-motor plane! He pointed the way to much that's happened since." "He's not a liar and murderer." "Only the bosses need be, Henry. The rest, including the scientific and mechanical geniuses like lindy, and the wheelhorses like me, merely have to obey. That's obviously what's been happening in Germany." "I'll tell you, Kirby," Pug said, swirling his glass and feeling very profound, "there's nothing new about such leaders. Napoleon was one. He had his propaganda line, too, that weakened the foe before he fired a shot. Why, he was bringing liberty, equality, fraternity to all Europeans. So, he laid the continent waste and made it run with blood for a dozen years or so, until they got wise to him and caught him and marooned him on a rock." "You think that'll happen to Hitler?" "I hope so." "There's a difference. Napoleon had no machines. If he had had airplanes, telephones, tanks, trucks, machine guns-the whole industrial apparatus-don't you think he might have clamped a lasting tyranny on Europe?" 'I'm not sure. I happen to have a low opinion of Napoleon. Napoleon sold Jefferson nearly a million square miles of prime land, you know -our whole Middle West, from Louisiana to the rockies and the Canadian border-for fifteen million dollars. Fifteen million! It figured aut to four cents an acre for real estate like Iowa and Nebraska. And Minnesota, with all that iron ore. Colorado with its gold and silver. Oklahoma with its oil. I don't see how anybody, even a Frenchman, can figure Napoleon as a genius. He was a bloodthirsty ass. If he'd sent just one of his smaller armies over here to protect that territory-just a couple of divisions to hold the Louisiana territory, instead of wandering around Europe slaughtering and looting-and a few thousand Frenchmen to colonize the land, there's little doubt that France would be the world's greatest power today. Instead of what she is, a raped old bag." "I can't say that has occurred to me before," Kirby said, smiling at the phrase. "It's probably fallacious."'What's happening with uranium?" Victor Henry said. Kirby's smile turned wary. "Is that why you're plying me with martinis?" "If martinis can loosen you up about uranium, Kirby, let it happen first with an officer in War Plans, and thereafter don't drink martinis." "Doesn't War Plans have any information?" "No. It's still Jules Verne talk to us." "Unfortunately, it's more than that." The rain was starting again, with a whistle of wind, a rumble of thunder, and a whoosh of raindrops through the porch screen. Pug dropped a canvas flap on the windward side, fastening it down as Kirby talked. "The best present judgment, Pug, is that the bomb can be built. It might take, with an all-out effort, two years or fifty years. Those are the brackets. But we're not making an all-out effort. We're making a good effort on the theory end, that's all. Tremendous brains are at work, some of them driven from Europe by the Germans, for which we owe them cordial thanks. The big question is, how far ahead are the Germans by now? We aren't even started. There's no money available and no plan. Making uranium bombs will go in several stages, and some of us fear that the Germans have cracked stage one, which is to get enough of the isotope to start a controlled chain reaction." "What kind of weapon are we talking about here?" said Pug. "How powerful an explosive?" "Again, the answer is X. The power may be too much altogether. That is, the bomb may blow itself apart before it can really work. In theory one bomb might level New York City. Or even an area like Rhode Island. You're dealing here with very large unknowns. There's talk that it could start a process that could blow up the earth. The best men don't take that too seriously. I frankly don't know enough to be sure." "You're talking about a pretty good bomb," said Victor Henry. "Hellooo!" Rhoda Henry's voice rang through the spacious house, and they heard heels clicking on the parquet floor. "Surprise! Anybody home? I'm DPENcmw. I'm a drowned RAT.""Hi! I'm out here," Pug called, " and we've got company." "We have?" "Hello, Rhoda," said Kirby, standing. 'Oh my GAWD!" She froze in the doorway, staring. Rhoda's purple hat dripped, she carried a sodden paper bundle, and her flowered silk dress clung wetly to her shoulders and bosom. Her face glistened with rain. Her eye makeup was blurred, her lipstick blotchy on pale lips. Wet strands of hair hung down her forehead and neck. Pug said, "You finished up sort of fast in New York, didn't you? I asked Fred Kirby in for a drink, because we happened-' Rhoda vanished. Her scampering footsteps dwindled into the house and up a staircase. "Dad, what a place! It's a mansion' Madeline walked through the doorway, as wet as her mother, shaking rain from her hair and laughing. "Well, Mattyl You too?" "Look at me! Christ, did we catch it! No cabs in sight, and-hello, Dr. Kirby." 'You'll both get the flu," Pug Henry said. 'If somebody gave me a martini," said Madeline, eyeing the jug, 'I might fight the infection off." She explained, as her father poured the drink, that Hugh Cleveland had business at the War Department next morning. Rhoda had decided to come back to Washington with them. The girl took a quick practiced pull at the cocktail. "Where's your luggage?" Pug said. "Go put on dry clothes." "I dropped my stuff at the Willard, Dad." "What? Why? Here's a whole big house at your disposal." 'Yes. I came to have a look at it. Then I'll go back to the hotel and change." "But why the devil are you staying at the hotel?" 'Oh, it's simpler." She glanced at her watch. "Christ, almost seven o'clock." Pug wrinkled his nose at his daughter, not caring much for her brassiness. But she looked pretty, despite her wet hair and wrinkled pink linen sifit. Rhoda's fear that Madeline would Turn plain at twenty-one was proving flat wrong. "What's the rush?" "We're having dinner with a big Army wheel, Dad, to try to sell him on a new program idea. Hugh visits a different military installation every week. We put on amateurs from the service, and do a tour of the base, and a pitch about preparedness. I suggested the idea, even the name. The Happy Hour. The network is wild about it."She looked at the two middleaged men, her eyes very bright, and held out her glass. "Can I have a little more? I'll own stock in this thing if it goes through! Imagine! I actually will. Hugh Cleveland's going to form a corporation and give me some stock. He promised me. How about that? Maybe I'll be rich! Well, Dad?" she added with an arch giggle. "You look kind of sour." "To begin with," Pug said, " come September we may not have an army. Don't you read the papers?" Madeline's face fell. "You mean about the draft?" "Yes. Right now it's fifty-fifty or worse that Congress won't vote for renewal." "But that's insane. Why, by September I-Ltler will probably have beaten Russia. How far is he from Moscow now? A hundred miles, or something?" "I'm not saying the politicians make sense. I'm telling you the fact." "Christ, that would blow The Happy Hour sky high, wouldn't it? Oh, well. We'll see." She stood, shaking out her skirt. "Ugh. I have rain trickling around inside, in odd little places. I'll take a fast gander at the house. Then I'll tool off." "I'll show you around," Pug said. "How about it, Kirby? Want to join the tour?" "I guess I'll leave," said Kirby. "Rhoda's back, and I don't want to intrude, and besides I have a lot of-" "You sit right down," Victor Henry said, pushing Palmer Kirby into a wicker armchair. "Houses bore me too. Have one more shortie, and I'll be joining you." "I've had plenty," Kirby said, reaching for the jug. Madeline went from room............