INTERNATIONAL: Civilization v. the Horde

If the Martians (if there are any) trained their telescopes (if they have any) on the Earth this year, they gazed on scenes of almost unbelievable chaos: Europe overrun by war, with famine and pestilence riding behind; Asia, which always knows famine and pestilence, also locked in war; the rest of the world feverishly preparing for a war of continents. Yet the men of Mars, if they have been watching this world long enough, know that it has always been thus on Earth, that inevitably out of disorder comes order, and out of chaos, progress.

The world’s civilizations have invariably flourished beside the water: on the Nile, the Tigris & Euphrates, the Yellow River; on the Mediterranean; and, since Great Britain rose to power, across the waterways of the world. Invariably these civilizations have been challenged by inland hordes. Often they have fought off their challengers; often they have been overthrown; but invariably civilization has returned to the world by way of the water.

The chaos which had engulfed much of the world by December 1940 was no more than a phase of the challenge to the world’s two great sea powers, Great Britain and the U. S., and to Anglo-Saxon civilization. Through the disorder could be perceived the outlines of a new order—not the order of peace, but the final order of battle. The world was choosing sides.

The British Isles, long the world’s greatest naval fortress, staggered under attack and faced the destruction of its maritime supply lines, but the Battle of Britain would not necessarily decide the World War. The enemy had dangerously extended his lines and was having his share of trouble: from sabotage in Norway, from anarchy in Rumania, from military reverses in the Battle of Greece, which had become the Battle of Albania. Yet the stronger Axis partner apparently hesitated to send aid to the weaker partner for much the same reason that the Allies could not help the Lowlands in time: to do so might make enemies out of friends. German diplomacy worked to incorporate Yugoslavia in its Axis Order, to soothe Turkey and Bulgaria. In Spain Great Britain won a diplomatic victory, signed a clearing agreement that probably contained a secret understanding providing for the return to Spain of Gibraltar after the war. Thus, for the time being at least, was secured Britain’s second naval fortress.

The third fortress, Suez, was secure so long as British sea power held the eastern Mediterranean, so long as Italy was stalled in Egypt, so long as Russia kept Germany out of the Near East via Turkey. The Russians, another inland horde, were choosing not to help their rival horde, were biding the time (maybe many years hence) when they would be the challenging power.

In Asia the maritime power, Japan, chose the side of the challenger to help break the hold on the Far East of the Anglo-U. S. combination, issued its own challenge in shrill but vehement tones. But the Japanese were still far from Singapore, which is Britain’s fourth great naval fortress, and from the U. S. base at Manila.

The Western Hemisphere had chosen. The U. S. answered Japan’s challenge by further subsidizing Japan’s enemy in Asia, Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek. To complete the world circle of naval fortresses the U. S. was fighting a diplomatic war in Latin America, was checked by political bickerings in Argentina and Uruguay, but won an ally in Mexico’s new President. In Canada Parliament prepared to approve an unprecedented war budget as Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King spoke pessimistically of the war’s “appalling danger,” announced: “It is going to take all that all of us can give to beat it.”

Appalling though the danger was, not a single mighty fortress of sea power had yet fallen to the challengers. If those fortresses began to fall, the commercial civilization that sea power had built might break into several parts. Then would begin the Battle of the Continents, which might be only an endless armed peace. A Japanese Army spokesman in Shanghai may have spoken prophetically this week when he said: “No Japanese soldier is leaving Central China until Chiang Kai-shek is crushed, even if it takes 100 years.”