[The Thousand Million] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov] The Thousand Million Brief stories about the UNITED NATIONS, where one thou- sand million friends of the United States live, work, and fight This pamphlet has been prepared by the staff of the Office of War Information to provide background material on the 28 United Nations at war, with the United States, against the Axis. The contents may be quoted with or without acknowledgment. The material in the stories has been carefully checked and approved by the embassies and legations concerned. CONTENTS PAGE The Atlantic Charter.............................. iv Declaration by United Nations. .'.................. V The Thousand Million............................ 1 Australia......................................... 2 Belgium........................................... 3 Brazil............................................. 5 Canada.......................................... 6 China...............................•.............. 8 Costa Rica........................................ 10 Cuba................................/............. 12 Czechoslovakia.................................... 14 Dominican Republic................................ 16 Ethiopia.......................... .............. 17 Greece......................................... 19 Guatemala........................................ 20 Haiti. 21 Honduras........................................ 25 India.......................................... 26 Luxembourg.................................... 28 Mexico........................................... 29 The Netherlands................................... 30 New Zealand....................................... 32 Nicaragua...................................... 33 Norway............................................ 34 Panama........................................... 36 The Philippines.................. :............. 37 Poland.................................... ' 39 El Salvador. ................................... 40 South Africa...................................... 42 The Soviet Union................................ 43 The United Kingdom................................ 45 Yugoslavia....................................... 47 111 THE ATLANTIC CHARTER The President of the United States of America and the Prime Minister, Mr. Churchill, representing His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom, being met together, deem it right to make known certain common principles in the national policies of their respective countries on which they base their hopes for a better future for the world. 1 Their countries seek no aggrandizement, territorial or other. 2 They desire to see no territorial changes that do not accord with the freely expressed wishes of the peoples concerned. 3 They respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live; and they wish to see sovereign rights and self-government restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them. 4 They will endeavor, with due respect for their existing obligations, to further the enjoyment by all States, great or small, victor or vanquished, of access, on equal terms, to the trade and to the raw materials of the world which are needed for their economic prosperity. 5 They desire to bring about the fullest collaboration between all nations in the economic field with the object of securing, for all, improved labor standards, economic advancement and social security. August 14, 1941. 6 After the final destruction of the Nazi tyranny, they hope to see established a peace which will afford to all nations the means of dwelling in safety within their own boundaries, and which will afford assurance that all the men in all the lands may live out their lives in freedom from fear and want. 7 Such a peace should enable all men to traverse the high seas and oceans without hindrance. 8 They believe that all of the nations of the world, for realistic as well as spiritual reasons, must come to the abandonment of the use of force. Since no future peace can be maintained if land, sea or air armaments continue to be employed by nations which threaten, or may threaten, aggression outside of their frontiers, they believe, pending the establishment of a wider and permanent system of general security, that the disarmament of such nations is essential. They will likewise aid and encourage all other practicable measures which will lighten for peace-loving peoples the crushing burden of armaments. FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT WINSTON S. CHURCHILL iv DECLARATION BY UNITED NATIONS A Joint Declaration by the United States of America, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, China, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Costa Rica, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Greece, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, India, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Poland, South Africa, Yugoslavia. The Governments signatory hereto, Having subscribed to a common program of purposes and principles embodied in the Joint Declaration of the President of the United States of America and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland dated August 14, 1941, known as the Atlantic Charter, Being convinced that complete victory over their enemies is essential to defend life, liberty, independence and religious freedom, and to preserve human rights and justice in their own lands as well as in other lands, and that they are now engaged in a common struggle against savage and brutal forces seeking to subjugate the world, DECLARE: (1) Each Government pledges itself to employ its full resources, military or economic, against those members of the Tripartite Pact and its adherents with which such government is at war. (2) Each Government pledges itself to cooperate with the Governments signatory hereto and not to make a separate armistice or peace with the enemies. Y The foregoing declaration may be adhered to by other nations which are, or which may be, rendering material assistance and contributions in the struggle for victory over Hitlerism. Done at Washington January First, 1942 The United States of America by Franklin D. Roosevelt The United Kingdom of Great Britain & Northern Ireland by Winston S. Churchill On behalf of the Government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics 'Maxim Litvinoff Ambassador National Government of the Republic of China Tse Vung Soong Minister for 'Foreign Affairs The Commonwealth of Australia by R. G. Casey The Kingdom of Belgium by Cte- R. v. d. Straten Canada by Leighton McCarthy The Republic of Costa Rica by Luis Fernandez The Republic of Cuba by Aurelio F. Concheso Czechoslovak Republic by V. S. Hurban The Dominican Republic by J. M. Troncoso The Republic of El Salvador by C. A. Alfaro The Kingdom of Greece by Cimon G. Diamantopoulos The Republic of Guatemala by Enrique Lopez-Herrarte La République d’Haïti par Fernand Dennis The Republic of Honduras by Julian R. Caceres India by Girja Shankar Bajpai The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg by Hugues le Gallais The Kingdom of the Netherlands A. Loudon Signed on behalf of the Government of the Dominion of New Zealand by Frank Langstone The Republic of Nicaragua by León De Bayle The Kingdom of Norway by W. Munthe Morgenstierne The Republic of Panamá by Jaén Guardia The Republic of Poland by Jan Ciechanowski The Union of South Africa by Ralph W. Close The Kingdom of Yugoslavia by Constantin A. Fotitch On June 5, 1942, the Mexican Minister for Foreign Affairs informed the Secretary of State of the formal adherence of the GOVERNMENT OF MEXICO to the Declaration by United Nations of January 1, 1942. On June 10, 1942, the President of the Philippine Commonwealth informed the Secretary of State of the formal adherence of the GOVERNMENT OF THE PHILIPPINES to the Declaration by United Nations of January 1, 1942. On October 9, 1942, the White House announced that in response to a cablegram from the Emperor of Ethiopia, the President has replied accepting the adherence of Ethiopia to the Declaration by United Nations of January 1, 1942. vi THE THOUSAND MILLION THESE are the lands of the thousand million people—and more—our allies and our friends. The purpose of the articles that follow is to tell, in a few words, something about the thousand million and their 28 countries, pledged with us to fight in a great alliance against the Axis on all the continents and in all the seas. The thousand million live in tropic Caribbean ports; in Chinese mountain villages; in Britain’s seaswept countryside and in the incredible vastness of Russia. They live in the darkened streets of Dutch and Polish, Czech and Belgian towns where the invader’s sentry hammers at the door. Today they share the common destiny of the people who live all over America—in Concord or near Louisville, east of Wyoming or west of Santa Fe. Their roll is long: They live in Yugoslavia, Australia, Nicaragua, India, Panama, Haiti, Cuba, Costa Rica, Brazil, South Africa, Ethiopia, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, the Philippines—in Canada and Luxembourg and Mexico and Greece. From Norway to New Zealand they stretch across the world. Our destiny is bound together by the Declaration by United Nations signed at Washington on New Year’s Day, 1942., We are determined to win this war with the overwhelming might of our combined strength—and thereafter to establish a new age of freedom for all men on this earth. The world already knows these men of the United Nations: The Anzacs—Australians and New Zealanders—who go into fire and havoc singing: “Waltzing Matilda, waltzing Matilda, you’ll come a-waltzing, Matilda, with me.” Cossacks from the Don and young Red Army tank turret gunners who have met and smashed the best the Nazi Wehrmacht could offer. Soldiers of China who after 5 years in the blaze and darkness of war remain unconquered because they will not be conquered. The Dutch of Rotterdam and Java who lacked all things but valor. Canadians from the Airdrome of Democracy. Bearded Sikhs of India who have fought their way over the top of Africa and through half the jungles of the East. The Poles and Czechs who crossed the wreck of Europe to fight again in spite of Hell and Himmler. Evzones—men of Greece—who stood and died on hills where sunlight catches marble columns known to Greeks who 25 centuries ago created their unalterable dream of liberty. Norwegians who took death for tribute in Trondheim fiord, South Africans who taught the world what “Commando” means. Chetniks of Yugoslavia’s undefeatable mountain battalions. Add also Filipinos, and Americans from New Mexico ranches and Ohio river towns, Missourians, Texans, Californians, men of Kentucky, Wisconsin, Lincoln’s Illinois, who have given immortality to the words: Wake, Bataan, Corregidor. And Britons who on the cobbled streets of Calais and after Dunkirk’s beach faced alone the Fascists of the Western World. These are only a few. There are many more, and they are not all soldiers or sailors or airmen. There are also the people of the invaded countries who by torches, fires, and codes guide the United Nations fliers on their bombing raids to the enemy’s farthest arsenals. There are the men and women of the United Nations who have gone about their customary occupations while havoc burst around them. There are the stokers in the holds of cargo ships who have seen death as a familiar and gone back to face him again. There are the thousands who in forge and field, in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas, provide the sinews of victory. Victory for the United Nations cannot be won by resistance alone. We know it cannot be won by the quaking dream of isolation. We know it cannot be won by proudly licking our wounds. Victory will be won—and victory will be preserved afterward—only by strength of United Nations arms and thè fighting spirit of the thousand million. There is no other road to freedom. We can none of us travel it alone. We must all travel it together. We must save our friends if we would save our own. It is from foreign shores that the tyrants strike their blows at us, and it is on those shores that we are striking back. The people of the United Nations do not under 1 estimate the size of the task that lies ahead. Nor are they dismayed by it. Today their battle fronts are joined all over the planet, and their home fronts are making the combat weapons the fighters on those joined fronts will use. In the great alliance of the United Nations it is not a question of any one of us sending our friends what we can spare from our own defenses. We know that we shall none of us be safe until the enemy is defeated—everywhere in the world. Our problem is to detroy the forces of the Nazis, their hangers-on, and the Japanese lords of slaughter if we do not want them to destroy us. Whoever destroys any of those forces gives life to all of us. In our united war it does not matter whether the cannon was made in Springfield or in Coventry or Melbourne. It does not matter whether it is fired by men from Liverpool or Kuibishev or Chungking. When the gun throws back the enemy’s line in Russia, when the Nazi submarine is sunk, when the smashed Japanese plane comes down, the cause of the United Nations is advanced: there is an increased promise of freedom for all people—everywhere in the world. AUSTRALIA LIKE BRITAIN, Australia has become a for-4 tress of the United Nations, a springboard for attack against the Axis. In her short history Australia has never before been threatened by invasion. Now for the first time enemy bombers are over her homes, enemy ships are skulking in neighboring waters. Australia is a young and virile nation. For 154 years the Australians fought against the hard facts of their own geography. They conquered a continent, and the continent made a tough and resourceful people. When Australia declared war on Germany on September 3, 1939, she had no regular army but a skeleton force of about 4,000 commissioned and noncommissioned officers. Her 7 million people, scattered over a continent the size of the United States, were busy raising wheat, sheep, and cattle and shipping their wheat, wool, meat, and dairy products to the markets of the world. A small but efficient heavy industry has been built on rich mineral deposits and cheap sources of power. Since that day in 1939, Australia has beaten her plowshares into swords with remarkable speed and efficiency. Conscription of Manpower All men between the ages of 18 and 65 are now eligible either for military service or for labor corps work. The armed forces have been built up to about 550,000 out of a population of about 7 million. Australian air squadrons have been in active service in Britain, in Libya, in Malaya, and in the Netherlands East Indies, and Australian expeditionary forces have fought with the British and New Zealand forces in Greece, Crete, Libya, Malaya, Syria, Iraq, and Egypt. Ships of the Royal Australian Navy have served with distinction from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean. The drain of manpower has caused an acute labor shortage. As a result many thousands of women and over-age men have gone into factories, offices, and civilian defense forces. Although before the war only one Australian in five depended on industry for his livlihood, Australia is now producing quantities of weapons. Her steel works at Newcastle and Port Kembla are among the largest in the Empire and turn out more than 1,800,000 tons a year. But the munitions industry had to be started from scratch. Plants shot up, workers learned new skills, and, with the help of some Lend-Lease machine tools from the United States, Australia is making bombers, fighters, antiaircraft guns, machine guns, shells and ammunition of all sizes, mines, torpedoes, and precision instruments. Tanks are also beginning to roll off the assembly lines. Warships have been built in Australian shipyards. The war has changed the pattern of the daily lives of Australian men and women. An outdoor, sporting people, Australians used to take to the roads each week-end. The gasoline ration has long since driven all pleasure cars off the roads. Australians are also doing without most of the clothing, 2 household goods, and domestic comforts they used to import. The people are working as they have never worked before, and they have always been a hard-working people. What Is Australia? Like the people of the United States, the Australians tamed a continent—but a continent far less friendly than our own. Our periods of colonization are roughly parallel. Australia has a federal system of government like our own, composed of six states and two territories; she has a written constitution patterned on ours, a Parliament of two houses, the Senate and House of Representatives, whose members are elected on the same principle as our Congress. Her state and local governments run their own affairs much as ours do. But the Prime Minister and his Cabinet follow the British pattern of sitting as elected members of Parliament, with responsibility to that body. The Governor-General of Australia, appointed by the King on the advice of his Australian Ministers, is the personal representative of the British Crown, and like the King has prestige rather than political power. The English, Scotch, Welsh, and Irish pioneers who settled the new continent and whose descendants now make up 98 percent of the population had to travel 12,000 miles from home. They found hospitable harbors and fertile coastal grasslands; but behind these, they came up against a vast plateau, hot, dry, and seemingly without end. Forty percent of Australia is so hot and so dry that it cannot support settlement. On the fringes of this forbidding wasteland, the settlers went to work and made Australia the greatest wool producer, the fifth largest wheat producer, and one of the largest meat, butter, and cheese producers in the world. These riches pouring from Australia’s fine harbors have fed and clothed millions of people in all parts of the world. Six out of every ten Australians live in the harbor cities, handling the great export trade and working Australia’s industries. Today these cities are utterly changed. Their pavements echo to the tramp of United Nations troops. Their airports hum with the traffic of United Nations planes. The cities are “browned” out at night, but the war factories and shipyards roar on through the darkness. BELGIUM T)ELGIUM, a victim of German aggression in -U both great wars of our century, has been an occupied country since May 1940. Sweeping across the borders without warning, Hitler’s gray hordes overwhelmed a small nation which had made scrupulous effort to remain neutral in a Europe at war. An army of more than 500,000— one Belgian out of every sixteen was in it—fought gallantly until German numbers and German airpower made further resistance useless. 497902*—43——2 King Leopold III, who led his troops, is now a prisoner of war at Laeken. But the Belgian Cabinet had gone to France before the army surrendered and from London still directs colonial affairs and carries on the war as one of the United Nations. Many Belgian units are fighting with the British army. Many of Belgium’s merchant ships have been sunk, but the rest carry supplies for her allies. Belgium is the most densely populated country in 3 Europe, averaging 712 people to every square mile. Although only a little larger than the state of Maryland—11,775 square miles—it has a population of 8,386,000, more than four times as large as that of Maryland. As a result of this overcrowding, the Belgian people have always had to be industrious and thrifty to survive. The cities of Brussels, Antwerp, Bruges, and Ghent have been celebrated for great artisans and fine craftsmen since the Middle Ages. While there is excellent agricultural land in Belgium, three times as many people work in factories as work on farms, and the country in peacetime imports much of its food. The tradition of commerce and manufacturing is an old one: Antwerp has been a great port for centuries and the rich coal supply of the Walloon region stokes the furnaces of industry. With this coal and imported iron ore Belgium in 1937 produced 3,770,000 metric tons of steel. Other large industries are textilemaking and cement manufacture. Glass from Belgium shines in the windowpanes of many of England’s homes. Before the war, Antwerp and the Flemish provinces ranked first in the number of diamond cutters in the world. The people of Belgium speak two languages: French in the southern areas, Flemish in the north. Both languages are spoken in Brussels, the capital, a splendid metropolitan city of 900,000. The bombing of Brussels marked the opening of the German invasion of 1940. Romans, Franks, Burgundians, Spaniards, Austrians, Frenchmen, and Dutchmen have at various times held sovereignty over Belgian soil. But out of Belgian culture have come such artists as Rubens, the van Eyck brothers, Memling, Van Dyke, and Breughel, and the poet Maeterlinck. Modern Belgium became an independent nation in 1830; the King had to obey the constitution and the laws made by the two-house Parliament. The major powers of Europe guaranteed Belgium’s borders by treaty. It was this treaty that Germany violated in 1914. In 1940, Germany again broke her written promise not to attack Belgium. Belgium has one great colony in Africa: the Belgian Congo. The Congo has an area of almost a million square miles and a native population of about 14,000,000. From the fabulously rich Congo come copper, gold, ivory, tin, diamonds, palm oil, and more than half of the world’s uranium ore from which radium is derived. Many supplies vital to the allied cause are being shipped from the Congo under the direction of the governmentin-exile. Belgium, occupied, oppressed, poorly fed by her conquerors, still resists. Scores of underground organizations sabotage German efforts at pacification. Peasants by torches and fires and secret code guide the British fliers on their bombing flights. More than fifty underground newspapers are printed and secretly circulated by Belgian patriots whose fate, if caught, is death. And from the far Congo went Belgian native militia a year ago to help the British smash Italy in Abyssinia and restore Haile Seilassie to the throne. This dauntless colonial army, in which black troops played a prominent part, traveled 2,500 miles through the damp groves of the jungle, across veldt and desert to the mountains of inner Ethiopa where they forced the surrender of nine Italian generals and their troops. 4 BRAZIL' T)RAZIL is a land of immensities. Covering almost half of all South America, with an area of 3,286,170 square miles, it is bigger than all the 48 States of our country. Brazil is surpassed in continuous territory by only three countries—all in the ranks of the United Nations—the Soviet Union, China, and the Dominion of Canada. Every nation in South America except Chile and Ecuador is a border neighbor of Brazil. Over 40 million people live in Brazil, three-fourths of them in a narrow coastal strip about 100 miles wide in the central and southern uplands. Two other broad areas are the great Brazilian plateau, itself seven times larger than France, and the great basin of the Amazon, where the second longest river in the world rises, and drains an area larger than the United States east of the Rockies. Almost 4,000 miles from source to mouth, the Amazon courses through luxuriant deep jungleland to pour into the Atlantic at the rate of more than 5 million gallons per second. For 2,300 miles the river is navigable to ocean-going vessels. •The rich soil of Brazil will produce every crop known to man. Three-fifths of the world’s coffee comes from Brazil. In its forests are a billion acres of rosewood, mahogany, pine, and eucalyptus. Every known mineral is to be found in Brazil, including industrial diamonds (so important now for grinding intricate machines needed for war), bauxite, manganese, mica crystals, nickel, copper, lead, zinc, and chromium. Brazil has the largest and purest deposit of iron ore on earth. Her rubber industry, which declined after 1912, is taking on increasing importance in 1942. Brazil exports coffee, cotton, cacao, hides and skins, oranges, tobacco, vegetable oils, and canned meats. Natal, jutting out into the Atlantic on the hump 1 Brazil, while not having formally adhered, up to the moment of pubheation, to the Declaration by United Nations on January 1, 1942, is associated with those nations in the common war for liberty and freedom. of Brazil, is only 1,600 miles (five or six hours by fast bomber) from Dakar, French-controlled port in Africa. In the global war in which the United Nations are engaged, the coast of Brazil is of the utmost strategic importance. The South Atlantic between Natal and Dakar is the best place to hunt the submarines harrying convoys to the Middle East, Russia, and the South Pacific. Every ship now afloat in the world could be safely anchored in the great harbor of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’s* capital city with a population of 2 million persons. Brazil has an army of 100,000 men and 300,000 trained reserves. Her navy is composed of 2 battleships, 2 cruisers, 11 destroyers, 4 submarines, 6 torpedo boats, and lesser craft. The Brazilian Air Force is constantly growing in size, about a third of the planes being the newest American models. All are manned by skillful and daring pilots who have been trained in difficult journeys to distant jungle outposts. There are more than 600 landing fields in Brazil, including an airdrome at Barreiras created deep in the interior hundreds of miles from any rail or highway transportation. Brazil is engaged now in a large naval expansion program, much of it under way at the Ilha das Cobras navy yard in Rio harbQr. 5 CANADA Area.—3,694,900 square miles (roughly the same size as the United States including her territories and dependencies). Population.—11,419,000 (less than that of New York State). ’Capital.—Ottawa, Ontario. Principal cities.— Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, Winnipeg, Hamilton, Quebec, Ottawa. Form of government.—The Dominion of Canada is a self-governing British nation. Both her federal and nine provincial governments conform to the British pattern. The Parliament consists of a House of Commons, whose membership is elected for five-year terms, and a Senate whose members are appointed for life. The present Prime Minister is the Right Honorable William Lyon Mackenzie King. The representative of the King is a Governor-General, at present the Earl of Athlone. Provincial premiers and legislatures have much the same powers as our state governments. Flag.—Red ground with Union Jack in upper left-hand corner, Canadian Arms in center. War contributions (November 1942).—Army: 475,000; Navy: 50,000; Air Force: 125,000. Total volunteers for overseas: 500,000. Casualties: 6,500 (to the end of August 1942). Food: 2,000,000,000 pounds (bacon, wheat, flour, cheese, eggs, honey). Raw materials: Aluminum, nickel, asbestos, zinc, copper, lead, platinum, mica, sulphur, gold, pitchblende, wood pulp. Industrial production: All kinds of munitions and war equipment. With one-eleventh the population and one-sixteenth the national income, Canada early in 1942 was producing at one-fifth the rate of the United States. Money: 54 percent of everyone’s income. Canada and the United States In other parts of the world the children have grown up with the certain knowledge that many of their neighbors .are not their friends, that war will inevitably come to them as it has to their fathers for generations. We, who have never known the agony of instinctively distrusting our fellow men, do not realize how lucky we are in having such agreeable neighbors. The Canadian-American relationship is unique in the world. Two countries of such similarity in size and natural resources might well have become deadly rivals. Instead we have the inspiring spectacle of 4,000 miles of unfortified frontier. The war emergency has brought the two countries into increasingly close cooperation. The first step was the permanent Joint Defense Board, projected by Prime Minister King and President Roosevelt at Ogdensburg, New York, in the summer of 1940. The second important step was the Hyde Park Declaration of 1941 which was designed to gear the economic war effort of both countries. This agreement paved the way for the Joint Committees on Materials, Economics, and War Production which have subsequently been established. The Country There is a story that some Spanish explorers who were searching for gold in Canada finally cried in disgust “Acá Nada”—“There is nothing here,” These men didn’t stay long enough. Canada is now the third gold-producing country in the world. Her natural resources are rich although only partly developed. She has a virtual world monopoly of asbestos and nickel. Most of the fur coats worn by American women originate in the Canadian forests. So does most of the wood pulp for our newspapers. Canada has our same geographic regions and the patterns of existence in each region are very similar to ours. Life in the Maritime Provinces is much like life in New England. Quebec and New York State have dairy industries. Canada’s manufacturing is centered in Ontario and western Quebec, just north of our middle-western industrial centers. The wheat farmers of Manitoba and Saskatchewan have the same droughts and dust storms, the same problems of surplus production as our wheat farmers of Minnesota and the Dakotas. Calgary, in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies, has the biggest rodeo (they call it a “stampede”) in the 6 world. British Columbia has a logging industry which rivals our Northwest. We even have the same minorities settled in the same areas: Germans in the wheat country, Japanese in the truckgardening districts of the West Coast. The two countries differ in the distribution of their population. Whereas the United States is now fairly well settled throughout, the fringe of civilization in Canada runs in a 300-mile band along the United States border. The northern stretches are largely untouched frontier land, vast stillnesses broken only by the occasional hunter or trapper; more recently by the noise of mine operations in the newly developed radium area. Canadian summers are shorter, the winters longer and colder than ours. Children still go to school in 40-below-zero weather. Sleighs and dog sleds are common winter conveyances. The People Canadians show the traces of both their English heritage and American environment. Canada grew up within the framework of the British Empire. English traditions are her traditions. Politically, Canada has remained tied to the mother country. But the Canadian way of life is really the American way of life. Canada has the world’s highest standard of living next to purs. They too are gadget users. There is an automobile and a telephone for every nine people. Sixty-six percent of their homes have electricity. They listen to our jazz use our slang, eat the same food. They are baseball fans although hockey is their national sport. They like to sit on the front porch and gossip the way we do. They join the same sort of organizations. Their political beliefs parallel ours very closely. Canadians combine British caution with Yankee shrewdness. There is less divorce in Canada. There is more convention. Religion plays a stronger part in their life than it does here. Canadian Sundays are quieter. Canadians share the American spirit of enterprise. With less than one percent of the population, Canada has made herself the fifth trading nation in the world. French Canada Canada is the only country in the Western Hemisphere that has two official languages and two distinct cultures. Her earliest settlers were Frenchmen. When England finally acquired title to the country in 1763, the French residepts were numerous enough to maintain their own racial integrity. Now they comprise one-third of the population. They live mostly in Quebec Province. They are Catholics. They do not look to France as their mother country although Montreal is the second largest French city in the world. First and foremost they are Canadians. The War Effort Canada’s war effort has been studded with achievement records. One of her most spectacular contributions is the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan. Working with very limited facilities, Canada now has the best pilot factory in the world, capable of turning out more than 30,000 graduates a year. By the end of 1940, airdromes for 65 schools were completed, one more than had been originally planned for the spring of 1942. A thousand miles of runways have been built, 2,000 buildings. Service blue appears on the streets of every town from Halifax to Vancouver. A steady drone of training planes fills the air all day and all night. Seven men out of ten in the Air Force have been Canadians, the rest from Great Britain, Australia. New Zealand, and many of the occupied countries. Canada has footed most of the bill, and it is a large one (estimated at $2,000,000,000). It costs $21,000 to train a pilot, $22,000 for an observer, $8,750 for a wireless air gunner. The course averages 180 hours flying time to be completed in 24 weeks. Even then the men are only 7 semitrained and must be gradually worked into combat units abroad. Two Canadian army corps are now serving abroad. The Royal Canadian Air Force has flown with the R. A. F. from London to Java, A thousand Canadians took part in the Cologne raid. Canadians made up five-sixths of the landing forces at Dieppe. Canada’s Navy has jumped from a pre-war total of 15 ships to more than 500, her naval manpower from 1,800 to 50,000. Canadians, traditionally landlubbers, except the men of the Maritime Provinces, are now proving themselves tough, able seamen. Canadian corvettes and destroyers are taking an important part in Atlantic convoy duty. On the home front Canada faced the issue squarely and put herself rapidly on a complete war footing. The government has complete control over the domestic economy. In December 1941, a price ceiling was placed over all costs including wages, rents, public utilities, and services. Designs on all consumer goods are frozen to conserve machine tools. Heavy industry is completely converted to war production. Building is strictly limited to war necessities. Gasoline has recently been severely rationed. The famous Mounties (who are now completely mechanized—gone are the days of the hard-riding, two-gun heroes of childhood) have seen to it that no sabotage has hindered the production efforts. Canada’s exports to England have doubled in the past two years. From nothing at all Canada has built a munitions industry which turns out all forms of modern weapons. Canada’s women are filling over 20 percent of the million munitions jobs. Canada is really rolling. CHINA Chinese and Americans Because the Chinese live on the other side of the globe; because they wear white instead of black for mourning; because their books begin on what would be the last page of ours; because their family names come first, instead of their given names—as if they said “Smith John” instead of “John Smith”— they used to be regarded as people who stood on their heads. Lately we have learned that in many essential ways Americans are like the Chinese and they are like Americans. The Chinese live in a temperate country the size of our own. Among themselves they differ as much as a Wyoming rancher differs from a Yankee mechanic or a Mississippi plantation owner, but fundamentally their culture is as unified as our own; they speak many dialects, but their written language. is the same everywhere. Practical, ingenious, and resourceful, they are the best businessmen in the East. Like Americans, they are fundamefitally democratic, and they conceive democracy not as an equality of wealth but as an equal opportunity, to rise. They keep their ties with the land, even when living in cities. Just as American political and business leaders used to boast of having been born in log cabins, Chinese generals and statesmen have the tradition of the grass hut. The story of American relations with China goes back to 1784, the year after the Revolution ended, when the first Yankee merchantman anchored in Canton harbor. It was an American soldier of fortune, Frederick Townsend Ward, who first taught Chinese soldiers to fight in the Western 8 fashion. A shrine near Shanghai still honors this “wonderful hero from beyond the seas who sprinkled China with his azure blood.” In this war the two generals most feared by the Japanese have been an American and a Chinese— Douglas MacArthur and Chiang Kai-shek. The Land and the People China proper has an area of 2,903,000 square miles. Outer China—Manchuria, Mongolia, and Tibet—has an area of 1,577,000 square miles. The total is nearly 4% million square miles—more than a quarter of all Asia. In China proper there were 422,700,000 people in 1936, according to an estimate made by the Ministry of the Interior. Outer China had 35,100,000 people. The total 457,800,000 was more than a fifth of the human race. The War “We are fighting on the same side as the brave people of China,” President Roosevelt said on January 6, 1942, “who for four and a half long years have withstood bombs and starvation and have whipped the invaders time and again in spite of superior Japanese equipment and arms.” China has 2 million or more front-line troops, reserves of 2 to 4 million, and at least a million irregulars and guerrilla fighters. The front-line troops, chiefly consisting of infantry, hold a shifting front of perhaps 3,000 miles. Besides its ground troops, China in the beginning had a small but effective air force. The Chinese were ably assisted by the famous American Volunteer Group. In the course of 30 years’ struggle to free and unify his nation, Chiang Kai-shek has come to be the symbol of China’s unity and her will to survive. When the fortunes of his country were at their lowest ebb, he said to his councilors: “Let the Japanese come, let them drive us back into Tibet. In 5 years we will be back‘here and will wrest all China from the enemy again.” Free China includes: All Western China. All the South except for a few coastal cities. Central China, north of the Yangtze Valley. Its total population is between 200 and 250 million people. Occupied China includes: The coastal plain. Most of the river valleys. Most of the big eastern cities. The principal railroads and land adjacent to them. It is said that occupied China is like a coat, of which the Japanese hold only the buttons and the seams. Even in the northeast, Chinese guerrillas control the back country away from the railroads Outside of Manchuria, not more than 40 or 50 million Chinese are actually living under Japanese rule. The Oldest Nation China’s stream of culture has flowed uninterruptedly for more than 4,000 years, a record no other country in the world can match. The Chinese invented or discovered silk, porcelain, tea, printing, gunpowder. Long before Europeans, the Chinese had great cities, good roads, a canal that is still the longest in the world. They mined coal; they issued paper money; they had a public relief system and a civil service. China is famous for: Her philosophers: Confucius, Mencius, Lao-tse. Her poets: Li Tai-po and Tu Fu. Her landscape painting, her architecture, her gardens, her porcelains, her silk brocades. Her cooking; the good humor and courtesy of her people; all the arts of gracious living. Two heroes: In China, the great heroes of the past were not warriors but sages, statesmen, poets. The two heroes most widely revered today are Confucius, the great moral philosopher, who died over 50 years before Plato was born, and Sun Yat-sen, the founder and lawgiver of the Chinese Republic. The Winning of the West When the Japanese invaded the rich coastal provinces, 40 million Chinese trudged a thousand miles westward over the mountains. It was as if, to escape bondage, the entire population of France had moved to the Balkans. An island empire, rich in natural resources, was opened to development. For the refugees, besides their native skills, carried with them 353 factories—150,000 tons of machinery—on trucks and carts, on the backs of horses, on the backs of men. They carried their banks, their publishing houses, and their schools. Before the war, China had 108 colleges, almost all in what is now occupied territory. These had 32,000 students. Today, in the free West, she has 73 colleges, with 40,000 students. What Confucius Said: It is useless to discuss accomplished facts—to pro 9 test against things past remedy—to find fault with bygone things. When you see a good man, think of emulating him; when you see a bad man, examine your heart. The serious fault is to have faults and not try to mend them. To take an untrained multitude into battle is equivalent to throwing them away. A great army may be robbed of its leader., but nothing can rob a poor man of his will. What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others. COSTA RICA T TNITED STATES ARMY officers stationed in the Canal Zone know Costa Rica well. Before the war many of them had learned to escape to the little Republic just north of Panama for a few days in the cool air of its volcano-ringed highlands. But here in North America you don’t hear much about Costa Rica. It is a quiet, God-fearing neighbor. It doesn’t get its name in the papers. It is a nation of small farmers who take pride in its stability and progress. And it is one of the purest democracies on earth. The Name It was Columbus who christened it “Rich Coast” when, on his last voyage to the New World, he landed at what is now Puerto Limon and saw the Indians decked out with gold discs. He thought that they must have rich stores of metal and that the river sands must be thick with gold. But the gold seekers who followed Columbus were disappointed; Costa Rica had little readily accessible gold. The gold seekers went elsewhere, and only the farmers stayed. Costa Rica has mines, but its real riches are in coffee—and in the bananas planted nearly four centuries after Columbus by a tough jungle-busting New Yorker named Minor C. Keith, who also built Central America’s first railroad between Puerto Limón and the Costa Rican capital. The Country Mr. Keith’s railroad, which took 19 years to build and cost the lives of 4,000 men, starts out among the palm trees and banana and cacao plantations of the hot, wet Caribbean coast. It makes its way through a dense tropical jungle, hung with moss, vines, orchids, shimmering with birds arid butterflies, treacherous with swamps. Then it climbs, suddenly and precipitously, 5,000 feet up through cedars, past mountain torrents, across dizzying gulches, to the cool central plain. Costa Rica is about the size of West Virginia— 23,000 square miles—with only a little over a third of West Virginia’s population. This small territory is divided into three separate areas by boundaries of altitude. In the sultry Caribbean lowland, where it may rain 300 days a year, live mainly United Fruit Company managers and the West Indian Negroes who work on the banana plantations. The Pacific plain is a cattle country. The real Costa Rica is the lovely meseta—the central tableland at an altitude of 3,000 to 4,000 feet, with higher mountains towering over it. It is a country of tall green grasses, fresh winds, and perpetual spring. Here live three-quarters of the population. Here are the four largest towns, within a few miles of each other: San José, the 10 capital; Cartago, the old Spanish colonial capital, clinging to the foot of a volcano; Alajuela and Heredia, set down in the midst of sugar-cane fields and coffee orchards. Here are hundreds of small proprietary farms, from 10 to 100 acres each: 80 percent of Costa Rica’s cultivated land is owned in such small holdings. Here grows Costa Rica’s famous coffee—which all used to go to the London market—its white-flowered, red-berried trees clinging to mountainsides so steep you would think the orchardists would have to use ladders to tend them. The farms are neat and well-cared for; their low adobe houses have painted windows, filled with masses of bright flowers; their porches are heaped with drying ears of corn, beans, onions. The cities are small, low-lying, unpretentious. Even in San José, for all the impressive public buildings and the elaborate, sophisticated National Theatre, and the formal parks, the wide streets lead straight away into hills and fields. For Costa Rica is still a pioneer country, like the United States Northwest. Although two-thirds of its land is suitable for cultivation, only about onesixth of it is now cultivated. Much of the rest is still virgin forest—cedar, mahogany, cypress, guayacân. Each year the forest is pushed back a little farther; each year there are more miles of new roads. But outside of the few cities, away from the few railroads and the air lines, Costa Rican life has all the simplicity of the frontier. A gaily painted two-wheeled oxcart is still part of the Costa Rican farmer’s standard equipment. He travels from village to village in it—unless he travels on horseback; in it he carts his harvested coffee berries from his own “orchard” to the neighboring bénéficia or plant for treatment and shipment abroad; it may even be seen, pulled by a pair of leisurely oxen, in the streets of the capital. The People There are some 639,000 Costa Ricans. Only about 3,500 of them are Indians; the rest, except for the West Indian Negroes in the coastal banana plantations, are white. Their ancestors were hardy, energetic peasants from Galicia and the Basque Provinces of rocky northwestern Spain who set a pattern of hard work on small farms. The men are solid, sober citizens of dignity and pure Spanish speech; their graceful women still wear, in the country, long braids, flounced printed cotton skirts, and embroidered shawls, the heritage of Spain. For gayety, the provincial towns have concerts in their shaded parks, and they still have bullfights: neither the bull nor the torero is ever hurt and anyone may try his hand. But the national sport is soccer, which the young men play in the park in the late afternoons. The Costa Ricans have set up under these tropical skies, in the shadow of these Central American volcanoes, a way of life as sober and deliberate as that of a NewEngland village, and as free in its expression of opinion. It is not a way of life they would willingly part with. In the 1850’s under President Juan Rafael Mora, they fought to keep foreign control and slavery out of Central America. They would do it again. They have one of the freest presses left in this world, and one of the most enlightened school systems. Twenty percent of the national budget goes into the schools: the schools are free and every child must attend. Costa Rica’s greatest hero is no man-on-horseback, but President Jesús Jimenez Zamora, who back in the 1860’s laid the foundations of the school system, including public institutions for girls at a time when many more advanced and wealthier nations had never dreamed of such a thing. Every Costa Rican citizen is required by law to vote in the presidential flections held every 4 years and in the elections to the one-chamber legislature. The President is responsible to the Congress which may and often does override his authority. The President lives like an ordinary citizen, he walks about the streets unguarded; his house is open to any citizen of the Republic. . . . and the War This is the country which was one of the first of the American nations after Pearl Harbor to declare war on the Axis. Months before December 7-, the Costa Rican Congress passed a law providing for deportation of any person circulating Nazi opinions, and the law has been applied more than once. Since the War, Costa Rica has firmly put her German citizens of Nazi sympathies into concentration camps. Costa Rica has a standing army of only 500; she has always been proud pf having many more teachers than soldiers. But she has large reserves (150,000) in proportion to her population. She has a highly strategic position, as the nearest Central American nation to Panama, and her people realize it. President Calderón Guardia warned 497902 o—43----3 11 them recently that the country might “become a field of operations for powers trying to commit aggression against the Panama Canal.” Costa Rica owns a strategic island—the Isla de Cocos— southwest of her own coast in the Pacific. Meanwhile, besides her coffe and her bananas, and the cacao from which aré made some 10,000,000 pounds a year of fine chocolates for the United States’ sweet tooth—besides these staples of her economy, and sugar, and hardwoods like mahogany—Costa Rica has rubber which grows wild in her jungles. The Goodyear Company has a Costa Rican plantation which is beginning to produce excellent commercial rubber. CUBA “Cuba, almost in sight of our shores, from a multitude of considerations has become an object of transcendent importance to ... our Union. Its commanding position with reference to the Gulf of Mexico and the West India seas ... its safe and capacious harbor of the Havana . . . the nature of its productions and of its wants . . . give it an importance in the sum of our national interests, with which that of no other foreign territory can be compared . . .” —John Quincy Adams, in 1823 Cuba and the World Conflict Today Cuba, just 720 miles from the vital Panama Canal, is a key to the continental defense of the United States. The Windward Passage, nearest entrance through the Antilles to the Canal and chief route for traffic between the United States and the Canal Zone, lies between the eastern tip of Cuba and Haiti. The American naval base at Guantanamo, southeastern. extremity of Cuba, was rented by treaty in 1903. Guantanamo guards the strategic strait. The Cuban army and navy, while small, stand ready to supplement American defenses. In 1940 Cuba had two escort vessels, five gunboats, an armed transport, and a dozen coast-guard vessels of small size. The 20,-000 men of the army, navy and police can be augmented by 30,000 reservists. Cuba's Political Stand On December 9, 1941, Cuba declared war on Japan, and 2 days later on Germany and Italy. The Axis tried to use Cuba as a base for its propaganda mill, with Spanish Falangists and Nazi agents cooperating there. Two months before President Roosevelt declared a state of national emergency in the United States, President Batista barred all totalitarian propaganda in Cuba and outlawed organizations affiliated with Axis powers, their flags, uniforms, and insignia. Sugar and the War Cuba’s sugar has been a vital factor in furthering the war effort of the United Nations. Cuba has sold practically her entire 1942 sugar output of 4,100,000 long tons to the United States Defense Supplies Corporation. This sugar is not only for our own use, but for that of Great Britain and Russia too. Cuba and Cubans This island, with its fertile soil placed in the center of the most favored maritime routes, is 44,000 square miles—about the size of the State of Pennsylvania. Its population of 4,228,000 is 68 percent native white. Spanish is the official language, but English is widely understood. Cuba's Fight for Freedom Long before the Spanish-American War gave Cuba its independence, the cause of Cuban freedom 12 was popular in this country. Narcisco López, unsuccessful leader of a conspiracy against Spain in 1847, fled to the United States. The New York Sun offered him the use of its flagpole, and there, for the first time, the flag of the Cuban Republic was flown. When Narcisco López sailed for Cuba on another unsuccessful expedition, he was accompanied by 400 Americans. While no Cubans rose to the assistance of López, a bookish young aristocrat, Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, cherished the memory of López’s exploit and in 1868 he and 146 patriots made Cuba’s first real bid for freedom at the town of Yara. The Grito de Yara symbolizes the beginning of active revolt against Spain, and even though the Ten Years’ War ended unsuccessfully, de Céspedes is known to Cubans as the Father of His Country. In 1895, José Marti, an intellectual exiled from Cuba by the despotic authorities, raised money in America for the final insurrection. Marti had, as a boy, dedicated himself to the cause of liberty, saying: “To many generations of slaves must succeed one generation of martyrs.” In February of 1895, in the village of Baire, the second battle for freedom was launched, led by Máximo Gómez and the mulato, Antonio Maceo. Marti joined forces with them and lost his life. Many of the insurgents were Negroes—and as a result the Negro race has secured political standing in Cuba unmatched in any other country where whites are dominant. With their sugar-cane knives (called “machetes”), with torches that fired the cane fields, and with dynamite that blew up bridges and railways, the patriots made Cuba an economic loss to Spain. When the U. S. S. Maine^ on a courtesy call in Havana Harbor, was blown up in 1898, it was the incident that touched off the Spanish-American War. Peace and the Platt Amendment At the peace conference which followed the victory of the United States no Cuban delegates were present. A three-year period of American occupation followed. It was during this time that United States army doctors, working on a theory propounded by the Cuban, Dr. Carlos Finlay, proved that the female stegomyia mosquito was the cause of yellow fever, and cleared all Cuba of this dread disease. In 1901 Cuba’s constitution was signed. The United States required the addition of the Platt Amendment, however, which reserved for itself the right to prohibit certain foreign treaties, and to protect life, property, and individual liberty— should the Cuban Government fail to do so. The Platt Amendment was abrogated in May 1934, as part of President Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor Policy. Economic Ties Economically, Cuba is closely bound to this country. American citizens have invested many millions of dollars in Cuba. About 55 percent of Cuba’s sugar mills are owned by Americans and mostly operated by them. In 1939, 75 percent of Cuba’s exports went to the United States and 73 percent of her imports came from here. Cuba, second largest producer of sugar in the world, also exports tropical fruit, tobacco, and coffee. Cuba’s second major economic asset has been her tourist trade. Sugar and the tourist trade both fluctuate noticeably as conditions in America change. Raised tariffs and the economic collapse of 1929, which brought depression to America > almost ruined Cuba economically. With high tariffs in 1933 Cuba was able to sell only 1,600,000 tons of sugar, as compared with 3,384,000 in 1924. The reciprocal trade treaties of 1934 and the stable government of President Batista, however, have meant revived prosperity. The Lighter Side of Cuba In this sun-ripened land, the palm-thatched huts, the tall royal palms, and the brilliant fireflies are part of a memorable countryside. But American tourists have flocked particularly to the city of Havana, with her gold-domed Capitol, wide Prado, and Malecón; her old Castilian section, and Morro Castle, where Spain’s prisoners languished. Play Is Not All The understanding between Cuba and the United States goes deeper than shared holidays. Dr. Nicolás Rivero, of the Cuban Embassy in Washington, cited, in a recent speech, the friendly cooperation of the two countries in war, as in peace, and pledged continued gratitude “for the generosity and high idealism of the people of the United States in the struggle and attainment of Cuban independence.” 13 CZECHOSLOVAKIA The silver thread running through all Czechoslovakian history is the ideal of humanitarianism.—Palacky, foremost Czech historian. The Birth of the Republic In October of 1918, in Washington, D. C., Thomas Masaryk proclaimed the independence of Czechoslovakia. A simultaneous declaration was issued from Paris. The proclamation of independence and the Czechoslovakian constitution both acknowledged American inspiration. The new republic had its roots in the thousand-year-old Bohemian state, one of whose early rulers was Good King Wenceslaus. The battle of White Mountain in 1620 marked the beginning of Austria’s three-century domination of Bohemia. Its People More than two-thirds of the people were Czechs and Slovaks. So closely are the two groups allied, in background and tradition, that in official statistics they were classed together, as Czechoslovaks. They lived in a country which bore their name, but which had been so long a crossroads of Europe that it held many minorities: Ruthenians and Poles, Germans and Hungarians, small groups overflowing from each of the neighboring nations. The Country Roughly 15 million people (twice as many as in all our New England states together) occupied an area of 54,000 square miles—approximately the size of Great Britain and Ireland. In Europe, Czechoslovakia ranked ninth in population, thirteenth in area, third in industrial capacity. Twenty Years of Democracy Before Munich, Czechoslovakia was free, prosperous, tolerant, educated. She usually maintained a favorable balance of trade; matched heavy industries with agriculture; produced more steel and iron in 1929 than Italy; possessed the famous Skoda, third largest munitions plant in Europe. The Land Reform, around 1919, removed the vestiges of feudalism left from Hapsburg tyranny. There was no room for aristocracy in a republic of many peasant landholders, cooperatives, and a flourishing middle class. Czechoslovakia’s two greatest men, Thomas Masaryk, first President, and Eduard Benes, second President, were teachers and philosophers, both born of humble parents. Trade unions were powerful, and cooperated with welfare organizations to aid the unemployed, impoverished, and sick. Czechoslovakia was proud of its many schools, its almost 600-year-old University of Prague, its free intellectual life. The people were proud too of their thoroughly representative Parliament, and its policy of local self-government, fair to minority and state groups alike. The Nazis Take Over In the “settlement” at Munich in September 1938, Czechoslovakia was forced to grant to Hitler the Sudetenland, on her western borders, which contained all her great defensive fortifications. From that time on, it was easy for the Nazis. On March 14, 1939, they inspired a Slovakian secession; on March 15 they marched into Prague, the Czechoslovak capital; on March 16 they proclaimed the “Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia,” thus taking direct control of the richest, most populous part of the country, while manipulating “Slovakia” through their puppets. 14 Security of Life and Limb The “Protectorate” is policed by a force of 300,000 Nazi soldiers and Storm Troopers. By March of 1941, 4,000 Czechs had been murdered or tortured to death in Prague alone. Over 150,000 Czechs are in concentration camps and jails. The daily routine of persecuting Catholics, Protestants, and Jews cannot be broken by appeal to Nazi-dominated Czech courts. All cases involving Germans are tried in “people’s courts” in Germany. From September 1941, the Reich “Protector” was Reinhard Heydrich, second only to Himmler in the Gestapo and known as “Henker” (Hangman). In June 1942, Heydrich was killed by a few Czech patriots. Within 5 months after the shooting, over 1,750 innocent Czechs had been executed in reprisal. Because the village of Lidice was supposed to have sheltered Heydrich’s assassins, its entire male population was shot, its women sent to concentration camps and its children to “educational centers”; and—in the words of the official Berlin statement—“the township was leveled to the ground and the name of the community extinguished.” Workers and Owners Over 400,000 Czechs and Slovaks have been drafted for enforced labor in Germany. Trade unions, existing in name only, are lackeys of Dr. Ley’s Nazi Labor Front. The policy called “Germanization” is large-scale plunder. It means: destruction of domestic industries unless run by or for the Nazis; dispossession of Czechs from their farms and belongings, factories and banks; replacement of Czechs by Nazis, who pocket the profits and run the country for the greater good of Hitler. Hunger and slavery are Hitler’s gifts to the Protectorate. Education and Censorship Universities are closed, grade schools taught with Nazi texts, the Sokols (patriotic physical-culture societies founded 80 years ago) suppressed, newspapers made captive. Even Czech sermons and hymn books are censored, forbidden to call upon God to “protect our people.” The Fight The temporary capital of the free Czechoslovak Government is London. Here Dr. Benes’ Cabinet and the State Council plan resistance, look ahead to a future free Czechoslovakia, and a Czechoslovak-Polish confederation collaborating with a central European confederation and supported by a friendly Russia. Czechs who escaped from the Protectorate fought in France, in Poland, at Tobruk. Now, Czech soldiers, rescued by ship from southern France, are organized in a separate motorized brigade in England. A similar brigade is being organized in Russia. There are more than a thousand Czech airmen in England, an active unit of the R. A. F. credited with a record ’of 400 enemy planes destroyed. Inside Czechoslovakia, the fight must be underground. Their slogan is “Slow Down”; its symbol, the turtle. They know that if each man in a factory slows down but 10 minutes daily, the lag in production will hurt Germany more than the loss of a regiment. In the fall of ’41 the Germans found armament production had slowed down as much as one-third. Sabotage is ingenious and persistent. Chemicals, added to molten steel, make faulty cannon which explode mysteriously when they are used in the field. Bombs, filled with sand, have dropped as duds over England. Even the blackout is serviceable—under its darkness Czechs remove driving belts and essential machinery parts, crippling production for days. “Independent” Slovakia Slovakia, which separated itself from the Republic, now finds itself a Slavic people who must fight against other Slavs. Hitler points to Slovakia as his “Showcase State.” But deaths of many Slovak soldiers fighting for the Nazis on the Russian front make the people complain they are paying an even higher price in human life to the German aggressor than the Czechs in the “Protectorate.” There have been reliable reports of the withdrawal of Slovak units from the front lines—because disillusioned Slovaks were going over, in mass, to join the Russians. Today The honor roll of the dead, murdered by the Nazis, includes generals, priests, students, writers, teachers, mayors of cities, workers, peasants, landlords, bankers. All classes have been fused in the white heat of terror, and one solid united Czechoslovak nation prepares the day of its deliverance. 15 DOMINICAN REPUBLIC Area.—19,325 square miles—twice the size of the State of Vermont. Population.—1,656,000. Language.—Spanish. Capital. Ciudad Trujillo. THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC was the first land in the New World to open its borders to the refugees of war-torn Europe. In 1940 a colony was established on the shores of Sosua Bay. Today, with 450 Europeans in residence, it is a functioning farm settlement. The Dominican Republic occupies two-thirds of the island of Hispaniola which lies 48 miles southeast of Cuba and 64 miles west of Puerto Rico. Haiti occupies the other third of the island. Hispaniola is ribbed by high narrow mountain ranges and creased by deep valleys and sudden lowlands; an admiral, asked by the King of Spain to describe the country, is said to have crumpled up a piece of paper with the remark: “There, Your Majesty, is Hispaniola.” The history of the Dominican Republic, also called Santo Domingo, goes back beyond our own beginnings. Columbus landed there on his first voyage. There was the first European settlement in the Western Hemisphere, there the first university founded in 1538 and the first cathedral in 1512. The City of Santo Domingo—now renamed Ciudad Trujillo—was built by Columbus’s brother, Bartolomé, and named for their father’s patron saint. The ruins of the palace of Diego, Spanish Governor and son of Columbus, still stand. At first the Dominican Republic was the center of the entire enterprise of colonization on the continent. Exploratory voyages led to the discovery, conquest, and colonization of Mexico, Peru, Panama (then called Istmo de Darien), Cuba, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, and Florida. After the bustle of settlement and exploration died down, the original Indian population was found to have been practically wiped out by epidemics and forced labor. Lands once cultivated were given over to cattle-grazing. Sumner Welles, Under Secretary of State, once said: “There has been no republic on the American continent whose inhabitants have fought more nobly or against greater odds to maintain their freedom than the Dominicans.” This fight for self-determination began in 1821, but it was not until 1844 that independence of the Republic was achieved under the leadership of Juan Pablo Duarte. The driving force in Santo Domingo today is Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina, soldier President. Generalissimo Trujillo has been a firm friend of the United States, and Santo Domingo was one of the first of the Latin American countries to follow our lead in declaring war on the Axis. An army of 300 officers and 3,000 men, provided for peacetime, has been increased for the war period, and guards the coastlines. The Republic’s airfields have been opened to American military planes. Several of these airfields are excellent and the transports of Pan American Airways have made regular stops there for several years. Sugar is now the principal export, representing three-fifths of the productive wealth. The economic danger of too great dependence on one crop has resulted in the establishment of government agricultural stations in each of the provinces. These teach the latest farming methods and foster the growing of rice, corn, bananas, mangoes, guavas, coffee, and tobacco. The breaking up of 16 large estates into small parcels for the individual farmer has increased the internal prosperity of the country. The Dominican Republic has encouraged the investment of foreign capital and the extensive building of bridges and roads. Generalissimo Trujillo'S most opulent contribution to progress was the rebuilding of the capital after almost complete destruction by hurricane in 1930. It then became Ciudad Trujillo. Since that time the harbor has been dredged, opening the port to large ocean-going boats, and a large tourist hotel has almost been completed. Arturo Despradel, Secretary of State for Foreign Relations and delegate to the Havana Conference, made the attitude of the Dominican people plain when he said: “Our lands, water, air, and men are at the disposal of the governments of this continent to defend the ideals of justice and political independence of the American nations.” ETHIOPIA IN THE LATE afternoon of June 30, 1936 the delegate from the last independent empire of Africa rose to address the representatives of 52 nations gathered in the shining white Palace of Nations on the shore of Lake Geneva. It was an occasion without precedent: no head of a state— and no royal personage—had ever before represented his country in the League Assembly. Emperor Haile Seilassie of Ethiopia was making a final appeal to save his people’s 6,000-year-old independence from complete obliteration. For seven months the Emperor’s people had-defended themselves with spears and swords and a few old rifles against the mechanized forces of the invading Italian army. The Ethiopians had not been planning for war. The Italians had been preparing for it for over two years. Italian planes bombed Ethiopian villages and sprayed fleeing women and children with poison gas. The Ethiopians fought bravely, but they could not, as their Emperor said, fight the heavens or the burning rain. The Covenant of the League of Nations, the Emperor reminded the delegates, “lays upon every state member of the League the duty to come to the aid of the victim of aggression.” But when Ethiopia asked the League for financial assistance for the purchase of arms, that assistance was refused. The economic sanctions against Italy decided on by the League Assembly were applied only halfheartedly if at all. The Emperor asked the League members to fulfill their obligations under the Covenant, to assist the victim of aggression. In a prophetic address, the black-bearded Ethio pian ruler solemnly warned the League delegates that on their decision depended the future of the world. The issue was much wider than Italian aggression or Ethiopian independence. “It is,” he said, “a question of collective security; of the very existence of the League; of the trust placed by States in international treaties; of the value of promises made to small States that their integrity and their independence shall be respected and assured. . . . Are States going to set up the terrible precedent of bowing before force?” For four days the representatives of the world’s civilized nations deliberated. But the Italian forces were already in the Ethiopian capital. Bowing before force, the Assembly adjourned without taking action. The precedent was set up. Only a few months later Italian troops and German tank and air forces were helping the rebel Franco against the elected republican government of Spain. Less than two years later, Nazi troops marched into Austria, in another year into Czechoslovakia, and then into Poland. Four years after Haile Selassie’s prophetic warning to the League, German mechanized columns rolled across the Low Countries; German dive-bombers machine-gunned the panic-stricken refugees on the roads of France. It took four years to learn the lesson of collective security preached by Haile Seilassie. Meanwhile the last independent African nation had become a province of Mussolini’s second Roman Empire. The conquerors built some excellent roads and installed a little modern plumbing and a few elementary schools. But 17 their ambitious schemes for the development of Ethiopia’s rich resources did not get very far. The fiercely independent Ethiopians were never completely conquered. Many of them waged guerrilla warfare against the Italians from their inaccessible mountains. Those who worked for the new masters did so sullenly; they had not forgotten the bombs or the mustard gas or the shooting of Ethiopians without trial after the fall of Addis Ababa. For an attempt on the life of the Italian Viceroy in 1937, 1,600 Ethiopians paid with their lives. In May 1941, after five years of exile, the Emperor of Ethiopia rode back into his capital in triumph. British troops and Free French troops had swept across Eritrea into Ethiopia; Ethiopian warriors had rallied to their Emperor at the Egyptian border; together the allies defeated the Italians. Ethiopia was the first reconquest from the aggressor. Ethiopia is one of the oldest nations in the world. To its high plains and peaks, towering fortress-like above the east African deserts, the descendents of Ham, the son of Noah, are supposed to have migrated 6,000 years ago. Since these Hamites soon intermarried both with the Negro peoples whom they found in their new country, and with the Jews who made their way to Ethiopia during the Captivity, the Ethiopians of today have dark skins and Semitic features. The Ethiopians trace the lineage of their emperors back over 2,900 years, to the son of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba who, they believe, ruled over Ethiopia. Ethiopian law is still based on the Mosaic code, which Solomon’s son Menelik I is said to have brought back to his people; the origins of Ethiopian religious ceremonies and dances go back to Solomon’s Temple; the rolling cadences and complex alphabet of Amharic—the Ethiopians’ principal language— derive from ancient Hebrew. Except for Liberia and the British dominions, Ethiopia is the only Christian nation in Africa. Converted to the Coptic Church early in the fourth century, when most of western Europe was still pagan, it stood for hundreds of years as a rock of Christianity against the tides of the Moslem invasions. Ethiopia became a legend to medieval Europe, which heard of it as a kingdom of the unknown East ruled over by a Christian king called Prester John. In the 16th century Portuguese troops marched into Ethiopia to defend its Christian people against the Moslem Turks; for a short time Portuguese priests established missions there. Apart from this brief period, and the visit of an occasional explorer, Ethiopia was cut off from the rest of the world, by physical geography and by hostile neighbors, for over a thousand years. Because of the many centuries of isolation, Ethiopia has remained in many ways as primitive as in the days of the Queen of Sheba. The Ethiopians are the only African people to practice Christianity and to have a written language. But until a railroad was built early in this century, they had never known any sort of wheeled vehicle, not even a cart. Only in this century was the country unified; until then it was divided into several kingdoms ruled by kings who warred among themselves for possession of the imperial throne. Even now, under the strong guiding rule of Haile Sel-lassie, Ethiopia retains elements of feudalism; the various tribes—the advanced Christian Amharas, the more primitive Moslem and pagan Gallas (who appeared in the country during the Moslem wars), the nomadic Danakils and Somalis—owe allegiance to several strong provincial chiefs. The Amharic nobles still travel with retinues of dozens or even hundreds of white-robed servants. They still feast on raw beef. The mass of the people are illiterate, live in one-room mud huts without sanitation, exist mainly on lentils and millet-seed bread. Emperor Haile Seilassie, when interrupted by Italian aggression, had for 16 years been making a serious attempt to modernize his country. He was trying to abolish its feudal customs, to eliminate slavery, to build roads and schools and bring in 18 medical missions, to introduce a sound financial system and something like representative government, as fast as the prejudices of his people and the opposition of reactionary local chiefs would permit. Now that Ethiopia has been restored to the Ethiopians, the Emperor is again encouraging his primitive but highly intelligent people along the road to modern civilization. Among his first acts after his return were the convocation of parliament and a guarantee of religious freedom to Ethiopians not belonging to the official Coptic Church. He hopes to have foreign technicians help Ethiopia in the exploitation of its untapped resources and in the development of its fertile soil, capable of producing unlimited quantities of grain, cotton, coffee, livestock. He has promised the United Nations “the most loyal help and collaboration from the whole of the Ethiopian people,” not only in winning the war but in winning the peace. Out of the bitter lesson of 1936, Haile Seilassie urges the United Nations to swear “that if one nation be harmed, all the world will fly to the rescue, and the swords of the world will be drawn as a single sword. If we live in that faith, firm and unshakable,” he says, “no sword need ever be drawn.” GREECE “CAIRO, EGYPT, March 16, 1942—By Associated Press.—Starvation, exposure, and executions have taken a toll of 150,000 to 200,000 lives in Greece in less than a year of German-Italian occupation ... In February ... an intense cold wave combined with lack of food and water to boost deaths in the Athens area alone to 1,500 daily . . . The ration is 4 ounces of hard, black bread in which cornmeal, rice, and chestnut flour are mixed ... A park in the center of Athens’ main plaza, Constitution Square, has been converted into a cemetery because so many people died in the heart of the city . . .” /^NE YEAR before the above dispatch was sent, American newspapers printed heroic stories of the Greek armies driving back Italian invaders across the Albanian frontier. Mussolini had attacked Greece without warning on October 28, 1940, but his offensive backfired. A new tyrant struck in the year between that triumphant repulse of Fascist armies and the spring day in 1942 when a reporter abroad sent his account of tragic suffering. Hitler suggested but the Greeks refused an armistice with the Italian whom they had so roundly trounced. On April 6, 1941, both Yugoslavia and Greece were invaded by Germany. British and Imperial forces joined in the Greek fight against tragic odds. Outnumbered, outflanked, surrounded, the allies fought on to the last. The Greek King and his ministers went first to Egypt and later to London, to carry on the Government. The Greeks with calm fortitude watched their allies and government depart. They helped many of their own soldiers to escape and they helped their ships, manned by Greek sailors, to flee toward allied ports. These fighting forces now have been reassembled: the Royal Hellenic Air Force is operating in Libya against Germans and Italians while Greek soldiers fight in the Near East, and Greek sailors have joined other United Nations fleets. When German columns entered Athens on April 27, 1941, the citizens watched in silence. Axis soldiers who now police the country feel its people’s scorn for them, know that courage, endurance, and 497902°—43----4 19 love of freedom in this land have not been broken by starvation and torture. In the spring of 1942, Greek guerrilla bands opened a new Balkan front against the Axis along the Bulgarian border. They are now striking at German and Italian camps and supply lines on the mainland and in Crete. First European Democracy The first European democracy was born in Athens. The Greeks of antiquity were responsible for Europe’s first philosophies of the soul’s immortality, the recognition of the importance and dignity of the individual human life. Greek was the tongue of Homer, Plato, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Euripides, and Aeschylus. The glories of Greek sculpture and Greek architecture have survived 25 centuries. Greeks are proud of their history and their ancient heroes. To the list of their immortals they have added the name of Byron who in an earlier day helped Greece’s fight for freedom and died there. Greece forms the southern end of the Balkan Peninsula and is a land of steep mountains, scanty rivers, and—for the most part—poor soil, only one-fifth of which is at all arable. The country is cut almost in two by the Gulf of Corinth and surrounding the mainland are islands large and small, the “isles of Greece.” Crete, the southernmost, was the last battiefield of the German invasion. Although freedom of worship is guaranteed all, the Greek Orthodox Church is the State Religion. Tobacco and currants are the most important crops. Other products such as olives, olive oil, and wines are exported in large quantities. As industry has developed, native manufactures have gradually replaced some imports—particularly silks, other textiles, and chemicals. The land contains a variety of mineral deposits such as copper, bauxite, zinc, silver, nickel, and iron ore. The Greeks are excellent sailors. Their merchant navy before the war contained 549 steamships, while the Navy was a defensive force of mostly light craft. About 300 merchant ships with a gross tonnage of one million which escaped the Axis are now chartered to the United Nations with their own crews, as transports and cargo vessels in the Atlantic and Pacific. To strengthen the Navy, which had heavy losses, the British Government turned over ten warships. These the Greeks now operate along with their own remaining units in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. There was no “peace” party in Greece; when war began, bitter opponents of the government’s internal policies rallied to the nation’s defense. Hitler faced a united people. “They bow to no man and are never slaves,” a would-be conqueror of the Greeks said twenty-four hundred years ago. His words are true today. GUATEMALA SOMEWHERE in Guatemala a businesslike airfield is tended by men whose ancestors worshipped in the stone temples of the Mayas. Out from the hangars roll trim United States planes assigned to the bomber patrol guarding Pacific and Caribbean approaches to Panama. This airbase is a solid symbol of Guatemala’s share in the war against Axis barbarism. Ride with the United States Army pilot as his plane soars over Guatemala. From volcano to jungle, the land unrolls beneath him—45,450 square miles. Down below, in the towns and villages, live the people of this Central American republic, 3 million of them—more than in any other land in Central America. Guatemala is mostly mountain country. To the southwest lie the 28 volcanoes of the Sierra 20 Madre, whose lava has streamed through the history of this suns wept land. To the north is the plain of Petén, a lush jungle of brilliant birds, screaming monkeys, rare hardwoods, and the sapota tree whose trunks runs with chicle for chewing gum. Beneath this tangled jungle the ancient ruins of the Maya Empire, hardly visible from the air, crumble into dust. Fourteen hundred years ago, men lived here who plotted the courses of the stars and charted a calendar as scientific as our own of 1942. Of Guatemala’s 3 million, a large portion have Indian blood, pure or mixed with Spanish. Many Indians speak dialects that have come down straight from Maya forebears, though Spanish is the official language. The Indian lives away from the cities. His home is a thatched hut in a little village. On his tiny farm, he raises beans and corn, comes home to eat tortillas—cornmeal pancakes. His wife makes the colorful textiles and blankets for which Guatemala is famous. Her work is all by hand. Most Indians labor on the fincas, the estates belonging to wealthier Guatemalans or to foreigners. “Liberty,” says Guatemalan law, “lies in the choice of the class of work which one prefers to do.” At least once each week, the central plaza of every Guatemalan town explodes into vivid color. Market day is the high spot of Indian life. Traders walk as much as 40 miles from their villages with blankets, cloths, pottery, dyestuffs, spices, vegetables, fruit. Booths go up under the palm leaves and in the arcades of the town hall. The sound of voices glorying in a hard-driven bargain rises high in the warm air—already heavy with the smell of tortillas frying, beans simmering, meat stewing with spices and sauces, and coffee roasting. Nearby, in the church, the devout whisper their prayers. But not all of Guatemala is age-old Indian tradition. Under vigorous President Jorge Ubico, 4,000 miles of good new highways have been built to connect the cities. An American-built railroad runs from Puerto Barrios, on the Caribbean, to Guatemala City, the clean-swept capital. In a few miles the line climbs 5,000 feet, crossing over deep canyons and mountain torrents, pushing through dense green jungle. One of Guatemala’s heroes is Justo Rufino Barrios, the Republic’s President from 1873 to 1885, who wrote: “One of the most precious liberties of man is that of adoring God according to the dictates of his own conscience, and . . . liberty of conscience, in order to be real, carries with it the right to worship the Creator according to the belief of each individual . .. . and this right, won by humanity after centuries of fighting, has been recognized and sanctioned by all the civilized nations of the world . . . Liberty of conscience is inviolable in the territory of Guatemala.” As a principle, this statement stresses one of the great issues of our war against the Axis. Guatemala’s army is the largest in Central America. Her greatest contributions to the war effort of the United Nations are twofold: 1. Her cooperation with the United States in maintaining air bases for American patrol planes. 2. Her natural resources. Guatemala produces a hundred million pounds of coffee each year, two-thirds of which goes to the United States, making up 70 percent of the country’s total exports. Guatemala also produces more than 8 million stems of bananas each year, nearly 3 million pounds of chicle for American gum-chewers, sugar and coconuts and dyestuffs and castor oil for airplane engines. In her jungle grows the Castilla elastica, the wild-rubber tree, which may some day become a source of rubber for wheeled warefare. HAITI COLUMBUS called the island Hispaniola— “little Spain.” One of his ships, the Santa Maria, ran aground there on Christmas Eve in 1492. Out of its wreckage the crew built a fort, the first European structure in the Western Hemi sphere. After Columbus came the shiploads of Spaniards in search of easy riches. The native Indians, in the course of a few years, vanished as a people and Negro slaves were imported from Africa. 21 Nearly two centuries later the mountainous-island was taken over by the French. It became one of the most prosperous colonies in the West Indies. Never since then has Haiti been so rich. Its products made up one-third of all France’s foreign commerce. In return, France gave Haiti her language and her culture, which remain French to this day. But Haiti has long been freed from French domination. It was the second nation in this hemisphere to become independent, the first to abolish slavery. Today, from her capital at Port-au-Prince, Haiti rules herself, sharing the West Indian island with the Dominican Republic. It is a small land of 10,204 square miles with a history of courage and audacity. The impact of the French Revolution rippled southwest across the Atlantic, and beat against Haiti’s shores. One Haitian leader emerged to rank with the great characters of history. Toussaint L’Ouverture was a former slave who led the Haitians in revolt against the French landowners. Napoleon sent an expeditionary force. L’Ouverture was trapped, captured, and brought back to France to die as a prisoner. Two of his countrymen, Dessalines and Potion, who had once served along with Toussaint L’Ouverture as high-ranking officers in the French Army itself, carried on the fight. On January 1, 1804, Dessalines proclaimed the independence of Haiti. Standing by the shore of the blue Caribbean, he tore the French tricolor in three pieces. The white stripe he tossed into the sea, dramatically symbolizing freedom from white oppression. The red and the blue he sewed to-gether mo make Haiti’s flag. Later a coat of arms was added. During the years that followed, Haiti was a battleground for ambitious leaders. Dessalines set the style by proclaiming himself Emperor. Henri Christophe, who called himself King, built the famous citadel at Cap-Haitien. Nine Haitians in every ten are black, the rest mulatto. As in most Latin countries, the principal religion is Roman Catholic. The 3,000,000 Haitians, for the most part, live in their villages, work the plantations, gather the fruits and vegetables on which they live. Their thatch-roofed huts blend into a lush landscape of palm trees, bougainvillaea, poinsettias, against a backdrop of mountains reaching high into the sky. They speak French and a local Creole. Haiti grows coffee, cotton, and cocoa, sisal for rope-making, tobacco and bananas and sugar. Nearly half its exports go to the United States, in return for cotton manufactured goods, foodstuffs, machinery and apparatus, mineral oils and soap. With funds from the United States, Haiti has built roads and is carrying out a program for the large-scale production of rubber. Plans provide for planting 7,500 acres of rubber trees now, 70,000 acres later on. This can be good rubber country, for soil and tropical climate are right and there is a large supply of manpower. But it will be a few years before the new rubber trees can be tapped. Meantime, Haiti is increasing its production of sisal to replace former United Nations imports from Malaya and the East Indies. When the Axis began all-out war on the United States with the attack on Pearl Harbor, Haiti promptly declared war. By this act, Haiti takes its place among the United Nations pledged to fight through to victory for human freedom. 24 HONDURAS HONDURAS—the third largest of the Central American republics—is the greatest banana land in the world, exporting more than 12,000,000 stems a year. The banana industry has its own capitals of Progreso and San Pedro Sula; its own ports of Puerto Cortes, Tela, and La Ceiba; its own tramlines and narrow-gauge railways; its own palm-thatched villages raised on stilts above swamps; its own schoolhouses and hospitals. All this activity is confined to a 75- to 80-milewide strip along the hot and sticky Caribbean coast. Honduras beyond the coastal region is a vast and tangled complex of volcanoes, jungles, and forests, of mesas and high valleys, deep basins and many rivers, of mountain walls rising to 10,000 feet, of thick cedar and pine forests dominated by an occasional mahogany tree, its leafy yellow-reddish crown jutting into the sky. It is a lush land, a land that formerly served as a hiding place for adventurers, a land where ancient races such as the Caribs (the Indians after whom the Caribbean was named) still live deep in the jungle. Honduras has an area of about 44,000 square miles, roughly the same as Pennsylvania; its population, estimated at a little more than a million, is about one-tenth of Pennsylvania’s. With the exception of the pure Indian tribes of the unexplored Mosquitia Territory, the Hondurans are a mestizo people, 95 percent of them a mixture of Spanish and Indian. They are peaceful and hardworking, small farmers in the main. Honduras is a young country. Its industries and banks are just beginning to sense the complexities of the modern world. A rough and almost impassable terrain has infinitely complicated the pressing problem of building more railroads and highways. But the administration of President Tiburcio Carias has created roads and schools to the limit of the national budget. Civilization has been brought to remote communities. President Carias has established a government experimental farm, where tropical trees and crops from many parts of the world are tested for adaptation to the climate and the fertility of Honduras. Although the dark green banana plantations are most important in Honduran economy, the country is also rich in minerals: lead, copper, iron, aluminum, coal, antimony, zinc, and nickel exist in quantities worth mining, and Honduras only needs outside help to develop these resources. Spanish conquerors of the 16th and 17th centuries found Honduras a literal gold and silver mine, and millions of pesos’ worth of metal were extracted from lodes such as the Rosario mine at San Juan-cito. Indians still recover some $100,000 worth of gold and silver each year from the sands of the Rosario, España, and Almendras rivers. Mahogany has been exhausted almost everywhere else in the Caribbean area, but Honduras still has an ample supply. The trees are scattered through thousands of acres of forest; often there are not more than one or two mahogany trees to the square mile. Harvesting the mahogany involves a peculiar and ancient technique: scouts climb high trees and peer about for the crown of the mahogany trees, which often reach a height of a hundred feet and stand twelve or more feet in diameter. Jungle thickness prevents their being located from the ground. Planes are often used today to spot the trees. Native custom requires that mahogany be cut in the rainy season and by the light of the waning moon, when the tree is richer in color and freer from sap. Honduras declared war on Japan on December 8, and bn Germany and Italy December 12. One- 25 year military service has been made compulsory in Honduras, and in peacetime it has had a standing army of 5,000, with 20,000 reserves. An aviation school has recently been opened, under the guid ance of men trained in the United States. Road improvements will make possible the speedy tran-portation of troops and materials as well as the passage of peaceful commerce. INDIA Area.—1,575,000 square miles—half the size of the United States. Population.—389,000,000—three times larger than the United States. Capital.—New Delhi. Principal cities.—Calcutta, Bombay, Madras. Chief Products.—Jute, rice, wheat, sugar, cotton (originally an Indian plant), wool, manganese, tea, tobacco, leather, mica, iron, steel. India has the largest single steel-producing plant in the British Empire. THE SUBCONTINENT of India is a vast peninsula extending dagger-like from continental Asia into the Indian Ocean. It contains one-fifth of the world’s population and a substantial share of the world’s natural riches. It is a land of enormous contrasts; There are vast arid regions in western India and there are the rich, fertile plains of the Ganges; there is piercing cold in the Himalayan mountains along the northern border, and jungle heat in the southern interior; there are tall, light-skinned men in the .north and short, dark-skinned men in the south; there are violent contrasts in religion, politics, race, culture, society, and wealth. A stream of invading peoples—the Aryans, Greeks, Scythians, the Huns, Afghans, and Moguls —came and left their individual marks. (India now has about 100 languages although only 16 are spoken at all extensively.) Indian civilization dates back nearly 5,000 years. A highly developed culture flourished there before the Greeks entered Greece. India’s contributions to art and philosophy have received world recognition. The works of her most recent great literary figure, Rabindranath Tagore,'have been translated into English and many other languages. Today nine-tenths of India’s people live in mudwalled thatch-roofed villages and 75 percent of them farm for a living. The men wear cotton waistcloths. The women wear loose cotton robes. As a whole they are vegetarian people, living principally on rice, chapatty (a kind of wheat cake), and vegetables when they can afford them. However, the larger cities are cosmopolitan, with restaurants, movies, high-powered automobiles, well-paved streets, a modern communications system. Religion is the dominating force in India’s life, the root of most of her social and political differences. Sixty-six percent of the people are Hindus; 23 percent are Mohammedans. Other religious groups are the Sikhs, from whom a considerable section of the army is recruited, Jains, Christians, and Parsees. Hindu society is rigidly organized. A man can rarely advance in either economic or social standing through his own efforts. His place in society is normally determined by the accident of birth. 26 From his parents he virtually inherits his occupation and his social grouping. He eats, drinks, marries, plays and sorrows with the members of that group only. This is his “caste.” As he is born within its limits, he dies according to its rites. In theory there are four principal castes; the Brahmans, who are teachers and holy men, although they may have more ordinary occupations; the Kshatriyas or warriors; the Vaisyas, the commercial caste; the Sudras, who are largely tillers of the soil. Actually, there are hundreds of subcastes to fit all shades of occupation and locality. Below these again are about 50,000,000 Untouchables who, although Hindus, are considered to be so lowly that they must remain outside the caste system. In this way they are automatically excluded from many of the conveniences of daily life. They cannot drink at'the same pumps, eat or touch the same food, use the same schools, as do the caste Hindus. Some of the upper castes consider themselves polluted if the shadow of an Untouchable falls on them. Enlightened Indian leaders are trying to relax the caste system. Mahatma Gandhi, respected by all India, has done much to improve the lot of the Untouchables. Railroad travel, where all must rub elbows; the radio, which all may hear; new industrial factories, where workers are drawn from all groups; the army, where men of every caste fight side by side; science, whose benefits rich and poor alike may share; and, above all, the extension of formal education are helping to break the barriers. The Moslems do not recognize the caste system. With them all men are bom equal. Moslems worship only one god, Allah, whereas the Hindus worship many gods. In the realm of politics, there are two principal nationalist groups, divided along religious lines. The Congress Party, led by Gandhi and Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, is largely a Hindu organization although it does have considerable Moslem and other non-Hindu support. The Congress seeks full self-rule for India. The chief Moslem political organization is the Moslem League, under the presidency of Mohammed Ali Jinnah, whose platform is Pakistan, which asks for a division of India into Hindu and Moslem autonomous states. The Congress and the Moslem League are mutually opposed and both are opposed to the British. In an effort to unite the country behind a compact war effort, Sir Stafford Cripps, a member of Great Britain’s War Cabinet, brought to India in March 1942, a plan for dominion status for India immediately after the war. This plan was not acceptable to the Indian leaders. The administration of India is divided among the eleven provinces that make up British India and the 562 separate principalities known as the Indian States. British India contains slightly more than half the country’s total area and about three-fourths of its population. Each province has a British-appointed governor and a legislative assembly elected by the people of that province. The central government consists of a governorgeneral (Viceroy) with an Executive Council and a two-house legislature. The hereditary princes are the sole rulers of the Indian States. The Viceroy has ultimate control over the defense and foreign affairs of both the Indian States and British India. India's War Effort India has made gallant contributions to the war not only in manpower and raw materials but also in the field of industry. India now makes an impressive amount of “small” war supplies, notably fuses, grenades, land mines, shell cases, other ordnance parts. She is also building mine sweepers, submarine chasers, motor launches, tugs. In clothing and accessory equipment her production has been particularly significant. She now turns out 8,000,000 pieces of military clothing a month. She makes such accessories as boots, puttees, pith helmets, mosquito netting, tents, sand bags, 550 billion yards of cotton a year. Armor plate is being produced for armored cars; motor bodies are under construction. Airplanes are now being assembled there. India’s peacetime army of 175,000, larger than that of any of the British Dominions, has grown to over a million and a half men without any form of conscription. Recruits have recently been absorbed at the rate of 70,000 a month. More than 300,000 Indian soldiers are now serving overseas. Indian troops, who firmly believe they are disgraced if they are forced to retreat, fought heroically at Sidi Barrani and Tobruk. They were in the vanguard of the operations in Egypt. In Ethiopia, the Italian Duke of Aosta surrendered to an Indian Division. India is also expanding her small navy and air force. Home defence forces, air-raid patrols, medical units, supply corps, women’s auxiliaries have been organized. 27 LUXEMBOURG THE memory of feudal days survives in the picturesque castles of Luxembourg. Its 999 square miles represent all that is left of a large duchy which, through the Burgundian, Spanish, Austrian, Belgian, and Netherlands periods of its history, changed size and shape with each succeeding treaty and family pact. But the spirit of independence and democracy burns brightly in the hearts of its 297,000 people. Driving at 60 miles an hour from one end of Luxembourg to the other, one would be out of the country in less than an hour and a half or crossing it one would need but 34 minutes. Because the Duchy has never been strong enough to defend itself, in spite of what, in medieval times, was considered the almost impregnable, fortress of the city of Luxembourg itself, its fate has always been what its neighbors or treaties have made it. In 1859 when the first railroad connecting Luxembourg with the world was built, a poem in the Luxembourg dialect was written which summed up the spirit of the people—they were glad to welcome the world but wanted no further foreign entanglements. This became the national song: Come ye from Prussia, Belgium, France, To view our land with friendly glance Ask the people, near and far, “We will remain just what we areI” We are contented with our fate, Devoted to our native State! Millions can it never count, But, to its people, paramount! And we, joyous, shout as one No better land is blessed by Sun! But the country was not permitted to remain what it was. It became. a completely separate nation in 1867, and its independence was then guaranteed by the great powers, but it was denied the right to arm in self-defense. Luxembourg was therefore easily overrun by Germany in 1914, and again in May 1940. The Nazis appointed a Gauleiter to take charge of the country. German was proclaimed the only official language, and on August 15, 1940, the Gauleiter declared the constitution void. At the same time he abolished the customs barrier between Germany and Luxem bourg, and soon abolished the Diet and the Council of State. And what was the democracy of Luxembourg? Although the sovereign power of the country rests in the nation, the Grand Duchess is the head of the State. Every adult over 21 years of age, male or female, has the right to vote. Proportional representation assured the representation of all parties in the government, which consists of a Chamber of Deputies of 55 members, each of whom must be over 26 years of age. There are also five chambers for traders and industrialists, agriculturists, artisans, private employees, and workmen, which have the power to create and maintain institutions and the right to propose bills which must be submitted to the Chamber of Deputies. They must also be consulted before laws affecting their professional interests are passed. The motto of the House of Nassau of which Grand Dutchess Charlotte is a member is “I will maintain.” Part of what the Luxembourgers would like to maintain is the large iron and steel industry. Until the Nazis struck, headquarters of the International Steel Cartel were there. The Grand Duchy, which occupies an area four-fifths the size of Rhode Island, includes the north end of the rich Lorraine iron-ore basin. In May 1938, 21,388 workers were employed in the blast furnaces, steel works, and mines in the Grand Duchy; of these 4,199 were aliens. The value in francs of the 1937 production was as follows: iron ore, 150,693,000; 28 cast iron, 992,914,790; and steel, 1,256,219,692. Luxembourg is the seventh greatest steel-producing country in the world. Despite the importance of its industries and despite the not too fertile soil. 32 percent of the population is engaged in farming. Roses and wine are large items in export, the wine industry having prospered greatly since California vines were grafted to the Luxembourg vines. To bring back to her country the independence it had enjoyed, Grand Duchess Charlotte, the constitutional sovereign, left Luxembourg and established her government partly in London, partly in Montreal, where the United States Minister to Canada is also the United States Minister to Luxembourg. Only the success of the United Nations can restore her liberties to helpless Luxembourg. MEXICO The Cornucopia Mexico is shaped like a cornucopia, the horn of plenty. This is symbolic: Mexico has been called the Treasure Chest of the World because of the vast wealth of valuable minerals which lie locked in the Mexican earth. These resources are the nation’s golden promise for the future. Government •Mexico is a federal republic. There are 28 states. Congress is made up of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. Mexico City, the capital, is a metropolitan city of 1,750,000, almost three times as large as San Francisco. It is located on a plateau 7,500 feet high. Size and Population Size: 763,944 square miles. Mexico is three times as big as Texas, four times as big as Spain, onefourth as big as the United States. Population: 19,478,000. History This was the Indian empire of the Aztecs conquered by Cortes in 1521. Mexico became independent of Spain in 1821 after 11 years of struggle. The revolutionary patriot, Benito Juarez, was one of those who contributed most to the establishment of a free republic. Strategic Metals Mexico produces silver, copper, lead, molybdenum, antimony, zinc, mercury, manganese, coal— all vital in munitions-making. Some 43,000,000 barrels of oil flowed out of Mexico’s oil wells in 1939. Farm Products Sugar, wheat, bananas, vanilla, sisal, coffee, cotton, corn, beans, cattle are raised. Approximately 70 percent of the working people are farmers, but they live on only 7 percent of the land. The rest is either mountain or desert too arid to till. Many Tongues Spanish is the official language of the country, but more than 50 different Indian languages and dialects are spoken. The Life Line The friendship of Mexico, our ancient neighbor to the south, is of inestimable value to the United States, both in peace and in war. Two coast lines—1,080 miles on the Atlantic and 2,860 miles on the Pacific—offer bays and inlets where enemy 29 invaders might make landings on the American continent. And through Mexico also runs the great paved road which, when finished, will be our overland life line to the Panama Canal. This is the Inter-American Highway. Mexico finished the section of the road from Laredo, Texas, to Mexico City in 1936. Since then thousands of automobiles have sped over the rocky tableland which for countless earlier centuries was traversed only by burros and shoeless men with burdens on their backs. This road is now being cut through from Mexico City to the border of Guatemala. This road, which has brought face to face the modern world and a civilization in places little changed since the Aztecs, bisects the three lands of Mexico—the dry temperate lands of the plateaus, the cold lands of the mountains, the hot lands of the tropical valleys and coastal plains. To most of Mexico, water is the most important thing in life. The national emblem tells the legend of an arid land’s thirst: an eagle on a cactus on a rock in the middle of a lake. The War On June 1, 1942, President Manuel Avila Camacho proclaimed—in accordance with the declaration passed by the Federal Congress on May 29 and 30—that a state of war had existed between Mexico and the three Axis nations since May 22. On June 5 Mexico adhered to the Declaration by United Nations, thus associating herself fully with the crusade to wipe out Fascism. The declaration of war was Mexico’s answer to the sinking, on May 13 and May 20, of Mexican merchant ships with a heavy loss of life. But even before declaring war, Mexico had chosen her side. • Shortly after Pearl Harbor, Mexico broke off relations with the Axis nations. Axis funds were frozen by President Avila Camacho. Mexican soil and Mexican ports were offered to the United States for the uses of the military. Mexico made an agreement to sell practically all of her exportable strategic materials to the United States. She has expanded production in all fields. Mexico has a regular army of 60,000. There are, in addition, some 150,000 trained reserves. All civilians between 18 and 45 are receiving preliminary training until conscription goes into effect on January 1, 1943. The Air Force has about 100 planes, and excellent soldier pilots. The Mexican Army will cooperate fully with the armies of the United States in defending the long continental coast lines. Mexico will be of assistance to her United Nations allies in fighting the submarine menace. The Navy has three 2,000-ton gunboats, eleven armored coastal patrol vessels, and one heavy transport. The coastal patrol vessels can make more than 26 knots, thus exceeding the best speed submarines can manage in surface cruising. Mexico is in the war until victory is won. The Army is at its defense posts. Labor has suspended strikes for the duration of the conflict. The Navy is busy all along the wavering coasts where the white water of two oceans beats against the land that Cortes and Montezuma knew. THE NETHERLANDS Area.—13,600 square miles. Population.—9,000,000. Ruler.—Queen Wilhelmina. Prime Minister.—Pieter S. Gerbrandy. Capital.—Amsterdam. Seat of government.—The Hague. Present seat of government.—London. Chief products. Textiles, coal, butter, cheese. The Netherlands Overseas territories.—Netherlands East Indies, Netherlands West Indies, Surinam. r| 'HE NAZI BOMBERS that brought war to -■- Holland on May 10, 1940, shattered a peace unbroken for over a hundred years. The Dutch were not cowards or appeasers—they were free men, civilized men, men of peace. In their small, flat country on the North Sea, one-quarter of its land won back by dikes and drainage from underneath the water, they had built a prosperous, modern, forward-looking nation. A fifth of the people of Holland earned their living on the land—mostly on small holdings of less than fifty acres. Dutch cheese and butter, 30 Dutch tulips, Dutch cereals and other crops were famous for their quality. The land was fertile, and the people worked it well. Another fifth of the people lived by commerce. The Dutch believed in trade; they always had. Their land was a crossroads where three great rivers came from inside Europe to the sea. They had 922 seagoing ships, and 19,280 more on their inland waterways. From all the world came raw materials, and to the world went Holland’s manufactures and her food. Two-fifths of Holland lived by making things. Ships were built and textiles woven. Coal was mined, and tin was smelted. Diamonds were cut in Amsterdam. Holland was crowded and active. Holland was civilized. Holland had the lowest death rate in Europe. Holland had education for all. Seven Dutchmen had won Nobel prizes. They had free speech, a free press, religious freedom. Holland was small, no match in armed strength for the Nazi hordes. In 5 days the country was overrun. The great city of Rotterdam was bombed into ruins. Queen Wilhelmina, 50 years a Queen of peace, escaped with her Government to London. Holland was down but the Netherlands Empire continued the war. In the 19 months between the Nazi attack on Holland and that other treachery, in the Pacific, the Dutch fought on, and made ready. They smashed the Nazi fifth column in their Indies territories. The single code word “Berlin,” flashed to the Indies on the tenth of May 1940, had blocked the Nazi plans. The Dutch still had much to guard. The Netherlands East Indies—southeast from Asia, northwest from Australia—are great crowded islands where the world came for rubber, tin, and oil, cinchona bark and kapok—for pepper, fiber, coconut, and palm oil. The islands together were a fourth the size of the United States, with half as many people. To this rich land Dutchmen had come centuries before to trade. They had stayed to rule and pacify and teach. They had fought disease and ignorance. They and Indonesian leaders were slowly working toward a modern freedom. But it was a land that war lords wanted. The Japanese were coming, and before they came the Dutch were ready to fight. On the day of Pearl ■ Harbor the Dutch declared war on the Japanese. They fought—for weeks the Netherlands navy and the air corps sank a ship a day. They lost—but not before the Japs had paid heavily and not before defiant will had ruined all that could help the enemy. Five hundred million dollars was blown up so the Japs should not have oil for months. Dutchmen and Indonesians still resist in the Indies. Fighting men of the navy, marines, and air corps and a few officials have been taken to Australia. Their families and the other Dutch remain to share the lot of the Indonesians. The Dutch navy is still in action. Dutch ships still carry men and guns and food for the United Nations. Men of the Dutch Legion are in England, in Canada, in the Dutch West Indies, and in Surinam (Dutch Guiana). These last free Dutch territories are important. In Curasao and Aruba are great refineries for Venezuelan oil. In Surinam is bauxite for aluminum. The Dutch will fight on, however long the struggle. They will come eventually through invasion and defeat to victory and peace. 31 NEW ZEALAND “We are only a small young nation, but we are one and all a band of brothers, and we march forward with a union of hearts and wills to a common destiny.”—M. J. Savage, late Prime Minister, on September 6, 1939. The People Ninety-four out of every 100 New Zealanders are of British origin. Four out of every 100 are Maoris—the natives who were there before the white men. Their War Effort New Zealand’s men and women are completely mobilized’ for war. The fighting forces number more than 250,000 men, fully trained and equipped. Half of all males between the ages of 16 and 60 are in the fighting forces. , New Zealand’s forces overseas number 65,000 men, stationed in Egypt, Libya, and the South Pacific. These forces, have fought in Greece, Grete, Egypt, and Libya. New Zealand airmen have flown with the R. A. F. from Iceland to Singapore. Many thousands of them are in service abroad. New Zealand’s two cruisers have covered themselves with glory. The Achilles helped to defeat the Graf Spee. The Leander sank an Italian raider in the Indian Ocean. New Zealand’s home front is tightly organized for war. Peacetime industries, such as textiles, clothes, and shoes, have been converted to military needs. Labor is conscripted. All prices are controlled. War spending will be nearly three times as much in 1942 as it was in 1941. Taxes, already high, are going higher. Direct taxes reach a maximum rate of 90 percent on earned income of $12,000. Labor is scarce, and luxury services have disappeared. Sugar and tea are rationed, but most other foods are plentiful, for New Zealand is a great meat and dairy-producing country. Pleasure driving is over for the duration; the gasoline ration allows only enough to drive a car forty miles a month. The war factories are turning out gun-carriers, mortars, grenades, and bombs. As more and more women enter the factories, the day of all-out production is close at hand. Among the United Nations, it would be hard to find a people who are fulfilling their own particular part more effectively or more gallantly. New Zealand is, in every sense, a United Nation. New Zealand’s two islands are slightly smaller in area than the British Isles. Together they are about the same size as Colorado. New Zealand’s population of 1,600,000 people is one-thirtieth that of Britain—and about the same as that of the American city, Detroit. Its nearest neighbor, Australia, is 1,200 miles across the sea, while the British look 20 miles across the Channel and see the French—and now the Nazis—on the other side. New Zealand is a good example of what the British might have done with more space and less Europe; with a temperate climate that had not only plenty of rain but plenty of sunshine; with a clean new country which boasted all nature’s beauties and most of nature’s blessings, from snow-capped mountains, high waterfalls, lakes, and pine forests to rich pasture lands and fine natural harbors. What New Zealanders have done in 102 years is to build a utopia for ordinary people. The migration from England was essentially a farmermechanic migration and, like the earliest settle 32 ment of our own shores, a family migration. This fact determined the character and pattern of the hardy, healthy, provincial life of New Zealand today. If anyone is looking for the good life that we are fighting for, let him look at New Zealand in the days before the war. In 1938, New Zealand had no extremes of poverty or of wealth; it had the second lowest death rate and the lowest infant mortality rate in the world. It had plenty of houses—one to a family. It had little crime. It had a high standard of living and plenty to eat. The average New Zealander ate more bread, butter, flour, and sugar than the average American, twice as much beef, twelve times as much lamb and mutton. The New Zealander was, and still is, protected by social insurance against sickness, unemploy ment, and want in old age. A model for both Britain and the United States, New Zealand was a pioneer in the years before World War I in old-age pensions, State fire and accident insurance, State aid to the farmers, wage and hour laws, recognition of collective bargaining, and votes for women. More recent laws provide health insurance, free medical and dental care for school chiL dren, and free milk in the schools. Yes, it was a good life in New Zealand before the war—a life that fused the homely traditions of the mother country with the inspiration of the wide open spaces and happy isolation of the South ' Pacific. For while New Zealand is the farthest from “home” of all the members of the British family of nations, it is as British as tea and crumpets, rugby football, horse racing, and plum pudding. NICARAGUA Area.—57,000 square miles. Central America’s largest country, about the size of Georgia. Population.—1,380,000. Third largest in Central America, and about one-third as large as Georgia’s. Capital city.—Managua (population 118,400). Other important cities.—León (population 38,600). Granada (population 22,300). Products.—Gold: 60 percent of total exports. Coffee: 20 to 30 percent of total exports. Bananas, cotton, sügar, cocoa, lumber and dyewoods, hides and skins, maize, sisal and abacá (substitutes for hemp). Climate.—Tropical on the coasts; wet, especially on the Caribbean coast; cooler in the mountains. NICARAGUA is the largest Central American republic. The Nicaraguans are descendants of Spanish conquerors and peaceful Indian farmers. The majority of them are Ladinos^ of mixed Indian and white blood. They are lively, gay, and emancipated. Their national life reflects many Americanisms: there are more than 200 baseball teams; their drugstores, like ours, are piled high with much besides drugs—they sell groceries, clothing, hardware, jewelry, and gardening equipment. Nicaragua is famous for the perfection of its volcanic peaks; for its two great blue lakes; for its ancient Indian monoliths and Spanish and colonial cities; for being the birthplace and burial spot of one of the greatest lyric poets in Spanish literature, Rubén Darío; for the tenacity of its people, which has allowed them to survive earthquakes and civil wars. Although in 1940 its chief export was gold, 33 Nicaragua’s economy is founded on the land—on coffee, bananas, cotton, coconuts, sugar, cocoa, tobacco, cattle—but the country has always been a nation of city dwellers. Since 1858, Managua has been the capital, picked as a compromise after years of rivalry between the colonial cities of León and Granada. From early Spanish colonial days León has represented the liberal segment of Nicaragua; Rubén Darío lies buried there. From León come the nation’s lawyers, physicians, writers, intellectuals; it is the city of artisans and small landowners, whose little fincas (farms) are scattered in a wide plain around the city. It is a city of passionate political opinion and discussion. In it you will find splendid old Spanish churches. Granada, on the other hand, is stanchly conservative. Seventy miles south of León, it is the home of aristocrats—wealthy merchants and large landowners, whose cattle ranches and cocoa and sugarcane plantations stretch for miles around the upper end of Lake Nicaragua. Three major regions compose Nicaragua: the plain just inland from the Pacific Coast with its cities and two great lakes; the hot, flat, wet Mosquito Coast along the Caribbean with its swamps and jungles and banana plantations; and the highland country—lying between the other two and rising sharply from the lakes to 7,000 feet, then sloping gently to the Caribbean. Seen from the air, the highland country—with its rolling green hills, high green mountains, rivers and lakes, its stretches of forest dotted with farm cottages—looks not unlike northern New England. But the highland country is isolated, roads are difficult to build. Nicaragua’s important cities lie in the plain on the Pacific side. Representing about one-quarter of Nicaragua’s area, the Pacific plain houses nearly three-quarters of the population. To a Nicaraguan, the two most important things about his country are the two lakes: Lake Managua, 40 miles long and 10 to 16 miles wide, dominated by the smoking volcano of Momotombo; and Lake Nicaragua, 100 miles long and over 40 miles wide, the largest inland body of water between Lake Michigan and Lake Titicaca in South America. Lake Nicaragua gives the country its peculiarly strategic position. Connected with the Atlantic Ocean by the San Juan River, it is separated from the Pacific by only 13 miles of land. Its surface is 106 feet above sea level. A cut through those 13 miles (the lowest point in the western continental mountain chain), plus a widening and deepening of the San Juan River, would result in a through water course from sea to sea. Nicaraguans very much want this canal built, not only for hemisphere defense, but because it would, at last, provide quick communication between their coasts. Such a canal would be 180 miles long, compared with the 50 of the Panama Canal, and would take from eight to ten years to build. NORWAY Area.—124,556 square miles; almost three times as large as Tennessee. Population.—2,950,000; about that of Tennessee. Coast line.—Island-dotted and fiord-cut, making a total of 12,000 miles, or half the distance around the equator. Possessions.—Spitzbergen, a group of islands in the Arctic Ocean, with rich coal mines still in the hands of the United Nations; other minor islands to the north of Norway and in the Antarctic. Government.—A constitutional, hereditary monarchy, with legislative power vested in the Storting, the parliament of the sovereign people. Capital.—Oslo. Temporary seat of government.—London. King.— Haakon VII, who in 1905 was elected to and accepted the crown on invitation of the Norwegian people. The land.—Norway is mountainous. 72.2 percent is unproductive, 24.2 percent is forest-covered, 3.6 percent is under cultivation or otherwise being used. Many waterfalls are of great potential industrial value. The principal exports.—Paper and pulp; food products, chiefly fish and fish products: base metals and manufactures thereof. The minor exports.—Fatty substances and waxes, including products made from whale oil: machinery; hides, skins, leathers, and leather work. 34 NORWAY is a land of rocky soil and deep cleft bays. From forests and mines its people cut timber and dug iron for their industrial plants. They built, meanwhile, the world’s fourth largest merchant marine. Farmers, sailors, woodsmen, industrial workers, fishermen—these people loved freedom. And to safeguard that freedom these people learned to pull together. There were many things that made this lesson hard to learn—mountains cut off community from community, ships would be gone from home for months, a living was hard to dig from the less than a quarter of Norway’s soil that is productive. But for the common good, the Norwegians learned more and more how to cooperate with each other. And almost every group in Norwegian life—laborers, teachers, industrialists, nurses, ministers, lawyers, and men who sailed the seven seas—had its own cooperative organization which helped to distribute the advantages of good times and cushion the shock of bad times. These people, so far north that one-third of their country is in the Arctic Circle, watched the war in Europe. To protect their neutrality, the Neutrality Defense Corps was called into active service to man the few coastal guns. The small navy was put on the alert. But Norway did not think there would really be an invasion. What had neutral Norway done to provoke an attack—from anywhere, by any people? Yet on the morning of April 9, 1940, without warning, German warships steamed up the fiords, and German transport planes landed troops that took over the airfields. Astounded, the Norwegians watched this unbelievable thing, while the few Norwegian soldiers under arms fought bravely. Then from the cities the men hurried to assemble in the mountains and for 62 days, while British help came and then was forced to leave, the Norwegians fought for their independence, though many of their cities were in the hands of the Nazis. When finally the army was forced to surrender, the King and all the members of the government had already left the country, by vote of the Storting, to be free to carry on the war outside Norway. From the capital of the exiled government, London, two wars for Norwegian freedom are now being directed: the war inside Norway and the war outside Norway. For Norway is not really conquered. The Germans may have physical possession of her iron and bauxite mines, her pulp factories, her water power, her fishing boats. But German militarism has not conquered the soul of Norway. About 2 percent of the population had voted for the Quisling National Socialist Party before the invasion; Once Quisling had been thrust into power in 1940 by the Nazis, Norwegians resisted him at every turn, using their democratic institutions as weapons of revolt. When Storm Troopers were permitted to break the law, the Norwegian Supreme Court resigned in a body. When the Quislings tried to head the labor unions, the members refused to pay dues. When the Nazi-directed police stopped a service at Trondheim Cathedral and the Nazis decreed that all youths must join a Nazi organization, the seven Bishops resigned, and the clergy followed their lead. Hundreds of t.eachers chose to endure hard labor rather than join the Nazi teachers organization. While the Norwegian government was still in Norway an order was broadcast to all Norwegian ships to put into British or other allied ports in order to escape German capture. Not a single ship disobeyed this order, though the Nazi-controlled Oslo radio gave conflicting instructions. Today, with her merchant marine which before the war was of 4,900,000 tons, Norway is making a most valuable contribution to the United Nations. Her boats, manned in 1940 by 30,000 seamen, are carrying supplies to battle lines all over the world. Many ships have been torpedoed and many lives have been lost, but the Norwegian seamen who escape go back to the battle again. 35 The most valuable part of the merchant marine is the tanker fleet which carries more than 50 percent of the oil and gasoline needed in Great Britain. The Norwegian floating whale factories that used to bring whale oil from the Antarctic are now tankers for aviation gasoline. Norwegian naval vessels, including many whale “catch-boats,” are patrolling from the Caribbean to the Red Sea. Norwegian naval bases have been established at Durban in Africa, in Australia, in the Mediterranean, in Iceland, Great Britain, Canada, and in the Caribbean. And Norwegians trained in Canada are flying under Norwegian colors in Iceland and Great Britain and are serving in the Air Transport Command across the Atlantic and the Pacific. The Norwegian Army protects sectors of the British shore and Iceland. Norwegians take part in the Commando raids. In spite of all handicaps, the Norwegian Government continues to make payments on its loans and to care for the soldiers and sailors fighting under the Norwegian flag. PANAMA pANAMA is the bridge that links the Americas and the gate that joins the seas. In the Canal, Panama contains fifty miles of water for which half the world’s navies may one day contend. Panama is a very small country with a very big place in the modern world. In size—some 34,000 square miles—it is a little larger than the State of Maine; in population—more than 600,000 people— it is about the same as San Francisco. The climate of Panama is hot—80° is the average temperature—and the land is tropical. It is a country of mountains and jungles. In the jungles grow the brilliantly colored flowers and trees of the tropics; in them live lizards and monkeys, alligators and parakeets. It is a land of water; hundreds of streams flow into the Pacific on one side or the Caribbean on the other. The cities of Panama are old. Panama City was founded in 1519, a century and a year before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. This city was destroyed in 1671 by Morgan the buccaneer and a new one was founded not far away. Panama is the youngest of the New World’s republics in age, and one of the oldest in its record of fighting for freedom. Panama declared its independence from the Spanish throne in 1821. Today one of the most important stands for the freedom of the United Nations is being made in the defense of the Canal. The Republic of Panama is now a joint partner with the United States in the defense of the Canal, which is powerfully guarded by American land, sea, and air forces. These defenses extend from the Canal Zone—a strip of land ten miles wide from sea to sea, leased by the United States— to points hundreds of miles away in other United Nations of the Americas. The people of Panama, like the people of most nations, are of many races—white and black and brown. They speak two languages: Spanish and— because of the Canal—English. Some of the Indians of Panama enjoy a large degree of independent self-government. Within 50 miles of Panama City’s cosmopolitan shopping district live Indians who go about their daily lives very much as their forefathers did in the days of Balboa. The Canal is Panama’s main source of livelihood, 36 in peacetime or in war. It has been estimated that almost a third of the population lives from it in one way or another. But the people of Panama also raise bananas, coconuts, sugarcane, coffee, tobacco, corn, and rubber. There is gold mining on the land and pearl fishing in the waters of Panama. Lead, copper, asbestos, and. manganese come from Panama. Columbus first set foot on the mainland of the New World in Panama. It was from a mountain in Darien that Balboa first looked on the Pacific Ocean. The trail the Spaniards hacked through the jungle was for two hundred years the “Road of Gold.” Over it went the fabulous treasures of Peru on their way to the galleons of Spain. Span iards, Englishmen, Frenchmen, and men of the Americas dreamed and planned ana fought for centuries to join the oceans at Panama. The Forty-Niners on their way to California’s gold fields followed the old trail of the “Road of Gold.” The first railroad to join the two oceans was completed in Panama in 1855, at the cost of $8,000,000 and many lives. The Republic of Panama declared war on Japan on December 8 and on Germany and Italy on December 12. Panama acts in concord with the United Nations. In doing so it serves the best interests of Panama for whatever endangers the Canal endangers the country that surrounds it. THE PHILIPPINES IN THE HISTORY of man’s unending struggle for freedom, there have been defeats greater than any victories. These were defeats of a few fighting against many, fighting to their death without hope but with unconquerable faith. They were defeats, bitter and crushing, but not final. The peoples defeated at Thermopylae, Alesia, Kosovo, Warsaw, and Madrid learned in defeat to know themselves as nations. The latest of these heroic defeats was Bataan. Bataan is the peninsula which forms one pillar of the gate to Manila Bay in the Philippine Islands. It is a tiny peninsula about 30 miles long and at most 20 miles wide—some 600 square miles of steep hills, deep gullies, tangled jungle. Here the men of the Philippines made a last stand against American forces in 1901; and here in 1942 Filipinos and Americans together made a last stand against the Japanese. For 4 months after the fall of Manila, 27,000 Filipinos and 9,000 Americans on Bataan kept perhaps 300,000 Japanese from other battlefronts. General Douglas MacArthur, who organized the defense of Bataan, said of them afterward: “No army has ever done so much with so little.” They had a few much-patched P—40’s—because the United States air force in the Philippines was practically wiped out on the first day of the war. They had a few cannon, a few tanks, a few ammunition dumps. From the middle of January they were on short rations. (Two out of every .three supply ships trying to slip through were sunk.) Toward the end they were feverish with malaria, and there was no quinine; -they were wounded, and had gangrene, and there was no ether. But for 4 months, from their fox-holes, from under the giant jungle roots, they threw back wave after wave of attackers. The Japanese had to send their ablest commander—Yamashita, conqueror of Singapore— new supplies of tanks and long-range artillery, swarms of bombing planes and tens of thousands of fresh troops, before the men on Bataan could be blasted out. They were conquered only when they could no longer stand on their feet to fight. And 37 even then, a few managed to carry on the battle. For another month, Corregidor held out under continuous bpmbing and artillery fire. Of the 36,000 defenders of Bataan, 27,000 were Filipinos. The Americans called them all “Joe”— out of affection. “Joe” had other and more specific names. “Joe” was Captain Jesús Villamor, the great pursuit pilot of the Filipino Air Corps, leading five battered pursuit planes against three dozen z or so Japanese bombers. He was Major Gregorio Sandiko, who with 28 of the Philippine Constabulary met the shiploads of Japanese landing at Legaspi and fought them until he and 24 of his constables were dead. “Joe” was Father Getulio Ingal who went into occupied Manila to take news to the Philippine Scouts’ families, was captured, and escaped under fire to go back to Bataan. He was Corporal Narciso Ortilano, who was charged in his machine-gun nest by 11 Japanese and killed all of them. He was the nameless wounded Scout who said to his nurse, when he found he could never fight the Japanese again, “I do not want to live now, Mum.” The Islands The Philippine Islands stretch for 1,150 miles on the far side of the Pacific, some 7,000 miles west of San Francisco. The southernmost islands lie close to British North Borneo; the northernmost is only 65 miles from Japanese-held Formosa. The total land area is about the same as that of the British Isles. There are 7,083 islands. Only 2,441 have names. Only 462 have an area of as much as one square mile. Some are no more than tiny volcanic rotks in the Sulu Sea. But some are very large: Luzon, in the north, with the capital city of Manila; Mindanao in the south. Other important islands are Mindoro, Panay, Palawan, Cebu, Negros. Their hot, flat little towns have strange and lovely Malay names, known to every sailor in Far Eastern waters: Iloilo, Tuguegarao, Zamboanga. The economy of the Philippines is 80 percent agricultural. Between the high motín tain chains, where gold and other ores are mined, and the dense tropical forests of the larger islands are fertile plains where the Filipinos grow corn and cassava. Banana, coconut, and papaya trees bear fruit the year round. But the great staple food is rice. The rice terraces of the primitive Ifugao people in northern Luzon are among the world’s great engi neering miracles: 30 to 50 feet high, they are carved out of the mountainsides, walled up with rock and clay, fertilized and irrigated with precise science. Industrial crops are sugar cane, copra, tobacco, pineapple, and abaca or Manila hemp, of which the Philippines is the world’s chief source. The rich land could grow many crops besides. Land, before the war, was the chief Philippine problem, not for lack of it but because it was unequally distributed. Over half of the land is potentially arable; only 15 percent is cultivated. The average Filipino farmer had only three acres. The population was concentrated in parts of Luzon and the central islands. Before the Japanese came, the Commonwealth Government had begun a resettlement movement from the overcrowded areas to more sparsely setded regions. The People There are 16,350,000 Filipinos. They are mainly of Malay descent, with some admixture of Spanish and Chinese. They speak 87 distinct—but related—languages and dialects. One of these— Tagalog—is now the national language and is taught together .with English. Some Filipinos, especially in official and social circles, also speak Spanish—the heritage of 300 years of Spanish rule in the islands. They are small, sturdy people—warm, hospitable, and gay, fond of color, gifted musically. The younger generation has been brought up in the American tradition: they have been taught in schools much like those of the United States; they read American books and magazines and use American slang. The Filipinos are proud of being the only Christian nation in the Far East; 90 percent of them profess Christianity, two-thirds being Roman Catholics. Perhaps 5 percent are Moslems: these are the Moros, who live in parts of Mindanao and in the Sulu and Jolo islands. The remaining 5 percent worship the native gods of their pre-Conquest ancestors. 7 he Commonwealth The Filipinos are also proud of having established, with the help of the United States, the only democratic republican government along Western lines in the Orient. In 1872 Filipinos revolted after three centuries of Spanish rule, during which the 43 different tribal groups had come gradually 38 to recognize that they were all Filipinos. In 1896 they revolted again, and yet again—the second time in protest against the execution of their national hero, José Rizal. In 1898, after Dewey had defeated the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay, Filipino revolutionaries tried to set up an independent republic, but finally made their peace with the United States. It was generally felt that the masses of the Filipino people were not quite ready for self-government. The first United States Commission sent to the Philippines was directed by President McKinley to “bear in mind that the government which they are establishing is designed not for our satisfaction, but for the happiness, peace, and prosperity of the Philippine Islands.” Accordingly, in the next 35 years, American administration in the Philippines introduced free primary schools and health control, dug artesian wells, built roads and bridges and strung telegraph wires .from Luzon to Mindanao. But above all the Filipinos were encouraged to manage their own local affairs, and were brought as rapidly as possible into the administration of their own islands. The culmination of this process of education for self-government was the creation of the Commonwealth of the Philippines in 1935, a 10-year intermediate stage before complete independence. The Commonwealth has its own Constitution, drawn up by the Filipinos’ own duly elected representatives. As Japan’s intentions in the Far East became more threatening, some Filipinos felt that it might be wise to ask for dominion status under the continued protection of the United States. But the first President of the Philippines, Don Manuel Quezon, has never abandoned his stand in favor of complete independence. His reelection, in November 1941, by an overwhelming majority established beyond doubt—in the words of one Filipino writer—that “rightly or wrongly the Filipino masses believe in independence.” This independence of which they had dreamed for 70 years, the Filipinos would have achieved in 4 more years. With the fall of Bataan, the dream was shattered. But only temporarily. Though its islands are occupied by the Japanese, the Philippine Commonwealth fights on as a member of the United Nations. The presence of President Quezon on the Pacific War Council in Washington, the Philippines’ Captain Villamor and Colonel Carlos Romulo with the United Nations fighting forces in Australia, and the formation of Filipino units in the United States Army are evidences of that fact. The Filipinos are fighting with America, as President Quezon has said, “in defense of our liberties, for attainment of independence, in defense of freedom and justice everywhere, and for the right of all peoples to be masters of their destiny.” President Roosevelt has pledged “the entire resources, in men and material, of the United States” that the Filipino people shall be masters of theirs. POLAND Area.—150,000 square miles. Population.—(1939) 35,100,000. Capital.— Warsaw (temporary seat of government—London). President.—Wladyslaw Raczkiewicz. Prime Minister and Commander-in-Chief.—General Wladyslaw Sikorski. Chief cities.—Warsaw, L6dz, Lw6w, Poznan, Wilno, Cracow. Chief products.— Wheat, oats, rye, barley, potatoes, sugar beets, lumber, coal, oil, textiles. Fighting forces. Army, 500,000. Navy had five submarines, four new destroyers, three old ones. Now stronger, through Anglo-American replacements and additions. QN SEPTEMBER 1, 1939, Adolf Hitler ordered his armies to attack Poland, and began a war which has spread to all the continents and all the oceans. Hitler was strong; the Poles were not. In 4 weeks the campaign was over; the war was not. The defense of Gdynia—the heroic resistance at Warsaw—these are remembered among Poles as Americans remember Bataan. The Poles have many such memories. Theirs is a history of struggle against oppression. For a hundred and nineteen years before the last war 39 Poland was divided three ways under the German, Russian, and Austrian Empires. But the Polish national anthem, written in those other days of Polish suffering, is “Poland Is Not Yet Lost.” That anthem is still sung. The Poles have not surrendered. They have signed no armistice. The Polish Government, under General Sikorski, is in London, and under its leadership about 200,000 Poles who have escaped the conqueror’s grasp are now in active service against Hitler—an army corps in Scotland, 12,000 men in the R. A. F., an army in the Middle East. Nor have the horrible cruelties of the Nazi conqueror broken the spirit of the people still in Poland. The Polish Government estimates that Polish war dead in 1939 numbered 200,000 About 1,700,000 Poles have been transported to Germany to work at forced labor. At least a million more have died of starvation, disease, and the concentration camp. Yet the Poles still resist. Their treasures of art and culture have been destroyed. Most of the private property in western Poland has been confiscated. But under the noses of their oppressor the Poles still publish about 120 secret newspapers. They still fight in small guerrilla detachments in Poland. They still strike at Hitler wherever they get the chance, derailing trainloads of Nazis, dropping emery dust in Nazi machines. Poland, the land for which these brave men fight, was before the war the sixth nation of Europe in population and size,—a land smaller than California, with five times as many people. The heart of the country is the great central plain, the historic Vistula River basin. Here were most of the Poles, living mainly by agriculture—three out of five of the people of the country lived on the land. Southwest were the coal mines, backbone of Polish industry; southeast the oilfields coveted by Germany. Eastward lay the famous Polesie marshes, great forests, and the farming land where White Russians and Ukrainians were more numerous. North was the province of Pomorze, giving Poland access to the sea—“the Polish Corridor” as the Germans called it. A nation with a past—in science, with Copernicus and Madame Curie, in music with Chopin and Paderewski, in statecraft with Casimir the Great, John Sobieski, and Kosciusko. A nation that worked mightily with mighty problems after its rebirth in 1918—repairin the devastation of a war fought on its land, and not ended until 1921—pulling together the people freed from three different empires—starting from scratch to build a modern state. And a nation with a future. For that future the Poles are fighting. In common purpose with the other United Nations and in special comradeship with their neighbors, Czechs and Russians, they are fighting. “Poland Is Not Yet Lost.” EL SALVADOR SMALLEST country in size on the American continents—“small and sweet as a lump of sugar” El Salvador is a land of only 13,000 square miles with a population of 1,811,000 people, most of whom earn their living from the soil. Almost all the land is cultivated, even to the sides of the volcanoes that push their cones into the tropical sky. Although El Salvador is a volcanic land—two mountain ranges march the full length of the country—the landscape itself is soft and smiling. Gentle 40 plateaus and valleys lie between the ranges, among them the rich valley of the River Lempa, the greatest river flowing into the Pacific between Mexico and Cape Horn. El Salvador has a dry season, or summer, running from November to April, and a wet season, or winter, during the rest of the year. There is a brief dry spell—the veranillo or little summer—in August, when Salvadorans plant their next year’s crops. In the old days, it was the custom in El Salvador never to fight a war or revolution during the veranillo. Both sides would lay down their arms, and return home to plant the earth. Perhaps more than any other country, El Salvador has been a one-product nation, famous for its excellent coffee. It is the world’s fourth producer of coffee. Although 80 to 90 percent of its export trade is in coffee, El Salvador has recently been attempting to diversify its agricultural products. It produces sugar cane, grains, and “balsam of Peru,” an essential healing antiseptic obtained from a species of balsam tree which grows nowhere in the world but a section of El Salvador called the “Balsam Coast.” An important product during wartime is henequen, used for the manufacture of sacks and ropes, and as a substitute for hemp* But it is coffee that has made El Salvador a prosperous and united nation. It was not until the last quarter of the 19th century that farseeing planters began to appreciate the vast possibilities of growing coffee in El Salvador. Although many of the plantations were at low altitude, they were near the coast, thus making transportation costs relatively cheap. Large-scale coffee plantations set the pace for El Salvador, but there soon de veloped thousands of small, individual plantations. In 1939, for example, 11,545 coffee plantations were owned by 10,921 proprietors and covered 202,432 acres. Perhaps it is these numerous individual holdings that have given the Salvadorans a firm love of homeland and great skill in utilizing their natural resources. Prosperity arising from coffee planting is responsible in great measure for the new buildings, automobile highways, and extension of railroads that have made El Salvador a progressive modern nation. El Salvador’s population is more than 90 percent Ladino—mixed Indian and white blood. Unlike the Guatemalan Indian, who lives an isolated life in his own village, has his own primitive economy, and his own Maya dialect, the Salvadoran Indian has been assimilated into the national life. He may be poor and have only a small patch of land, but he is conscious of his nationality, and is likely to work in one of the towns as an artisan. He speaks Spanish; the Indian dialects have vanished. El Salvador has a healthy tradition of political democracy. One of its greatest heroes is Father José Simeón Cañas, whose fervent plea for the abolition of slavery before the Constituent Assembly of the Central American Federation in 1823 still stands as a landmark in Salvadoran and Central American history. A sick man, Father Cañas rose before the Assembly to say: “I come with feeble steps, but even were I at death’s door, from death’s door would I come to propose to you a measure on behalf of helpless human beings . . . I beseech you, before you do anything else, to proclaim in today’s session the emancipation of our brothers in slavery . . . we all know that our brothers have been violently deprived of the inestimable gift of liberty, that they groan in servitude, sighing for a kindly hand to break the bonds of slavery . . . The entire nation has been declared free; so should be the individuals who compose it.” Forthwith freedom for the slaves was written into the new constitution—the first national emancipation measure in continental America, and one passed a good forty years before the slaves were freed in the United States. El Salvador has a constitution that guarantees freedom of speech, religion, and press. Voting is compulsory for men, optional for women. El Salvador has now fpr its President General Maximiliano Hernández Martínez, who has fortified the 41 country’s financial position. Under him El Salvador has an excellent road-building and publicworks record. El Salvador defied the Axis in 1940, forbidding all anti-democratic propaganda and expelling the German Consul. In June 1941, El Salvador shut down a secret Nazi radio station which was in touch with German agents throughout Central America. Immediately after Pearl Harbor, El Salvador declared war on the Axis. SOUTH AFRICA Area.—472,550 square miles. Population.—2,152,000 whites, 6,600,000 natives (Negroes), 770,000 mixed, 220,000 from India. Capital.—Pretoria, Transvaal. Cape Town, however, is the seat of Parliament. Principal cities.—Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban. Products.—Gold, diamonds, asbestos, copper, chrome, manganese, iron ore, platinum, fruits, cotton, corn, wheat. Flag.—Blue, white, and orange, with a miniature Union Jack and the flags of the Boer states, Transvaal and Orange Free State in the center. Armed forces.—190,000 (including 30,000 Negro troops). Form of government.—Self-governing Dominion of the British Empire. JUTTING SOUTHWARD into the sea some 7,800 miles from New York and washed by the water of two great oceans lies the Cape of Good Hope. This jagged, rocky peninsula meant “Good Hope” to the hardy mariners of the 15th century who were seeking the fabled riches of India. “Good Hope” this peninsula promises today to the ships of the United Nations. Round the Cape go vast convoys of men and arms from Britain and America to Libya, India, Australia, and other battlegrounds, stopping at Cape Town, once called the “tavern of the seas,” to take on supplies or to leave ships and weapons for repair. The Cape stands as one of the vital bastions of the fight for freedom. The Country Much of South Africa is like Texas and our western prairies—land that is fairly high, dry, and covered with sparse foliage; much is wasteland, barren and waterless. The country is something like an overturned saucer, with a narrow coastal belt fringing the sea; thence a steep escarpment and mountainous ridges and finally a great central plateau. Practically no harbors or ports break the bleak monotony of the western seacoast and only a few— Cape Town, Mossel Bay, Port Elizabeth, East London, and Durban—are to be found along the Indian Ocean side. South Africa is still a frontier country, its farmers and cattle growers living close to the soil. Most of its towns are small and isolated. Only the rugged mining town of Johannesburg, the busy wharves of Cape Town, and the urbane English atmosphere of Durban reflect the changes of the 20th century. Racial Issues While it is the white people who control the economic and political life of South Africa, a much larger number—over 7 % million—of darker peoples furnish the labor for mines, factories, shops and farms. The first Dutch and English settled along the Indian Ocean. The English stayed in and near 42 the ports in order to conduct their trading and banking interests; the Dutch farmers—called Boers —trekked through the mountain passes into the greener pastures that later became the Orange Free State and the Transvaal. Today the descendants of the original Dutch settlers—now called Afrikaners—account for about 56 percent of the white population and the British about 39 percent. Both Afrikaans and English are recognized as official languages. Political Issues The political division within the Union might have proved extremely serious had it not been for a great soldier-statesman, Jan Christiaan Smuts, who fought against the British in the Boer War and for them in the first World War and who helped Woodrow Wilson draft the covenant of the 'League of Nations. While a member of the British War Cabinet he induced Lloyd George to establish the R. A. F. as a separate unit, and had the prophetic vision that in the future mass attacks from the air on populous industrial centers would become an important part of war. General Smuts assumed control in South America in Sept-tember 1939, after the cabinet had split down the middle on the war issue and after Prime Minister Hertzog, another veteran of the Boer War, had been defeated in the House on his resolution for neutrality. The War Effort South Africa’s industry plans to produce 600,000 tons of steel yearly; it builds armored cars, artillery, rifles, bombs, shells, bullets, uniforms, shoes, and many other necessities of war. One out of every seven white men is in the armed forces. A large proportion of these men have fought valiantly in East and North Africa, where today they are aiding in the offensive in Libya. South Africa’s planes, manned by graduates of 24 training schools, and a small navy of patrol boats are guarding the vital sea lanes to the Cape. Many thousands of English- and Afrikaans-speaking volunteers are pressing forward across the sands of Libya and will continue to do so until victory is won. THE SOVIET UNION ZjN SUNDAY, June 22, 1941, without warning, the Nazi armies attacked the Soviet Union For almost 6 months, in a series of tremendous battles, they advanced into Russia, assisted by their subservient “allies,” until they stood at the gates of Moscow. But in December they were stopped, and from December through the Russian winter they were forced back. In the words of Douglas MacArthur, the Red Army had managed “the greatest military achievement in all history.” The mightiest army of all time, attacking by surprise at the peak of its strength, was fought and punished, stopped and thrown back. Again the Nazis pushed their way across Russia, in the spring and summer of 1942, to the foothills of the Caucasus and to the industrial city of Stalingrad on the Volga. And again they were stopped. After three months of siege Stalingrad still stood. At the end of November great Russian offensives were launched from north and south of Stalingrad, in the Caucasus and near the Latvian border. Literally millions of Nazis were put out of action. How was it done? First, the Soviet Union is big. It was as big in June 1941 as all of North America. A land of endless plains and forests, a land of rich mines and productive oil wells, of Arctic wastes and Central Asian mountain peaks, of great modern cities and still more modern factories. A big country, with a people like our own who like bigness. A country that has everything: iron, coal, electric power, oil, grain, even rubber—everything, and lots of it. A land that stretches 5,000 miles from Central Europe to the Pacific Ocean. And the Soviet Union is many people, over 170,000,000 at the last census. A hundred million Russians, 30 million Ukrainians, and others of 50 different racial strains. Four-fifths in Europe, onefifth in Asia—a great people, European and Asiatic, but mostly Russian. The Soviet Union is chiefly the work of men. The product of history, revolution, suffering, and struggle, human will and astounding achievement. For 300 years before 1917 Russia was the Empire of the Romanovs—out of the mixed people of eastern Europe and northern Asia they forged a 43 great land empire, rooted in autocracy, brutal and backward by Western standards, but massively strong. This was the nation that crushed Napoleon’s hopes, the nation that trembled between foreign war and home unrest for 50 years before 1917—and then went through a most violent revolution to emerge as the world’s first avowedly Socialist state, first under Lenin and then under Stalin. While the civil war was still in progress, work for the construction of a new state was begun. Russia became Socialist—all industry and all commerce owned by the state—all farms collectively owned. Private property? Yes, private homes and personal possessions, private bank accounts, private incomes—and taxes—but no private business as we know it in America and no private land. It was a new pattern. Millions suffered. “You cannot make a revolution with silk gloves,” said the Russians. But there was new freedom too. There is no race prejudice now; all the scores of peoples keep their own languages, their own traditions. A man stands on his own abilities, and all men are citizens. Women have fully equal rights; thousands of them serve today in government, in industry, and in the Red Army. The right of education is being extended to all the people. Russia, under whatever system, must move out of a time far back—out of centuries of dark oppression. It is a long and mighty work. The biggest job of the Soviet Union was to build its industry. In the great successive Five-Year Plans begun in 1928 that job was done. Steel output was doubled and redoubled; electric power was multiplied. Machines were made for the farm and the oil field, for the factory and for the army. Russia between two wars became the second industrial nation of Europe, close behind Germany, rebuilding what was wrecked in the revolution and pressing fiercely forward. That meant sacrifice. Ruthlessly the Russians chose to have more factories and not more clothes and comforts. They remade Russian agriculture from small peasant holdings into huge collective farms. Farm production in the last years before war reached new highs, and the path was clear for even greater progress. Russia solidly entrenched herself as the world’s leading agricultural country: easily first in wheat and rye and barley and oats. And the Russians prepared for war. They were between the Nazis and Japan, no place for a weak sister. The Red Army grew until it numbered 2% million men, with 12 million trained reserves and more millions on tap. Russian arms also grew— tanks, guns, planes by thousands and factories for more thousands—scores of submarines for the Pacific, a modernized fleet for the Baltic and the Black Sea—all these were prepared against the rising menace of attack. The Russians got ready. They were big and many and strong. They were a young people: a hundred and ten million of them were under 30, knowing only the new Russia. For the new Russia, as Russians and as Socialists, they were ready to fight and suffer and die. Which they are doing. Some say the Socialist State did it. Others say it was the age-old Russian spirit. Wiser men know it was both. Anericans know the Communist system, and they do not want it for themselves, but to the youth and unity and fighting skill of the Soviet people they can and do send their salute. The war has been unbelievably hard for Russia. At least half a million square miles of her land were overrun. Her third and fourth cities were taken, her two largest, Moscow and Leningrad, besieged and battered. Tens of millions of her 44 people are still under the invader’s heel. Millions of her finest young men are dead or wounded. The “scorched earth” policy, applied by both sides, has destroyed untold Russian wealth. The defiance of the Russians, blowing up their own hard-built dams and wrecking their own mines, was outdone only by the fury of the baffled Nazis, burning and slaughtering in retreat. The Russians are still fighting, on the 2,000-mile front, in the great factories, and behind the enemy lines. They know their cause is just, and they know that they will win. As President Roosevelt has said, “Russian forces have destroyed and are destroying more armed power of our enemies— troops, planes, tanks, and guns—than all the other United Nations put together.” THE UNITED KINGDOM These Make Britain Great: The Melting Pot. Like the United States, Great Britain is a melting pot. Unlike the United States, the melting pot has had a thousand years in which to simmer gently. Britain’s 41% million English and Welsh, 5 million Scots and 1% million Ulstermen have strains of Roman, Celt, Saxon, Norse, Danish, Norman, and Huguenot blood. The English Channel. . . only 20 miles wide makes Britain an island cut off from Europe yet part of Europe; free to develop her own democratic government— one of the best yet devised; her own public opinion—strong and vocal; her own poetry—a hymn to freedom. The Gulf Stream. . . lots of rain and mist, no extremes of heat or cold—a lush, green, gentle countryside helps to make a moderate people: reasonable, temperate, hating extremes. There has been no successful invasion of Britain since 1066; no civil war since 1660. The Empire. . . explored, settled, built up by Britons, feeds Britain, and Britain’s industries feed the Empire. The Empire’s arteries and veins depend upon the freedom of the seas. War Aim “We are fighting to save the whole world from the pestilence of Nazi tyranny, and in defense of all that is most sacred to man.”— Winston Churchill on Sunday, September 3, . 1939. BY NATURE a sane and moderate people, the British hated going to war. But at the same time they welcomed the decision with an overwhelming sense of relief. This paradox was the result of the nightmare of alternating shocks and humiliations in which the people had lived since Hitler came to power. Step by step the tyrant had turned their orderly world into a madhouse. The release from nightmare into reality, however grim, was a release of the national will and spirit. Their darkest hour came in the spring of 1940, with the sudden collapse of Holland, Belgium, and France. In that hour Britain faced the Fascist world alone. Winston Churchill, now Prime Minister, again spoke for the people when he said, “Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.’ ” History may well place that judgment on the story of Dunkirk and the Battle of Britain which followed. The immediate task was to rescue 350,000 men—the shattered remnants of the British and French armies—from the beaches of Dunkirk. On May 29 the evacuation was begun. By June 4 the job was done. The next job was to prepare against a Nazi invasion. That summer of 1940 Britons worked as they had never worked before. Their factories had to replace the vast quantities of weapons and equipment left on the fields and beaches of 45 Flanders. Britain had to be converted into a fortress to repel invasion. Road signs came down, pillboxes went up. The cliffs and beaches became a maze of barbed wire and gun emplacements. The British had little time. On August 8 the Germans began intensive daylight raids on England—the “softening up” process preliminary to invasion. Their objects were, of course, to demoralize production and civilian life, and to drive the R. A. F. out of the skies over Britain. In both of these objectives the Nazis failed. The Battle of Britain, the greatest air battle in history, lasted from August 8 to October 31, 1940. It cost the Germans 2,375 planes destroyed in daylight alone, and many more at night. On one day, September 15, 185 German planes were brought down over England. The battle of Britain cost the British 375 pilots killed and 358 wounded; 14,281 civilians killed and 20,325 wounded. But war production, went on. This was because British workers soon decided to stay at their machines and benches during raids. Indifferent to the throb of planes and the thud of bombs they worked furiously, 56—64—and even up to 80 hours a week until exhaustion forced them to limit the hours of work. After October 31 the German squadrons abandoned mass daylight raids. But they continued to pound away at night until the following June when the British night flyer and radio detector made the cost too high. The Battle of Britain was won. The German invasion was foiled. A handful of young R. A. F. flyers had saved Europe and perhaps the world from destruction. Again Winston Churchill spoke for his people: “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.” Foiled in his plans to invade Britain, Hitler turned south and east, and the British began to fight campaigns far from home—in Greece, Crete, Libya, Iraq, Syria, and Iran—determined to strike at the enemy wherever he could be reached. As a result both of these campaigns and of Russia’s magnificent stand, Suez and the oilfields of the Middle East remained outside Hitler’s grasp. Meanwhile Britain was fighting another defensive war on the Atlantic against the fierce German submarine campaign. Again the Germans failed in their objectives—to cut Britain off from her Empire and the United States. Two and a half years of defensive warfare, of delaying actions, of retreating, outnumbered and out-equipped by the enemy, of playing for time, of making hard choicés between reinfoicing one or another hard-pressed front—these years of defeat and discouragement might have broken the spirit of a people less dogged and determined than the British. Sheer stamina carried them through this period of reverses. Sheer stamina kept the people at work producing planes and more planes, until, in the spring of 1942, R. A. F. squadrons mastered the skies over Germany as well as over Britain. Then for the first time the magic word “offensive” was on the people’s lips, not as a far-off hope, but as a reality. The offensive began, modest but daring. It began with a series of Commando raids on the German-held coasts of Norway and France. Small bands of picked men of the Army, Navy, and Airforce, with perfect teamwork, surprised German garrisons, blew up radio stations, docks, and oil tanks, and made off with prisoners. The offensive continued, daring but no longer modest. It continued with the mass R. A. F. attacks on Lübeck, Rostock, Cologne, and Essen. Rotterdam and Coventry were at last avenged as waves of British-built planes, more than a thous-sand in a night, descended upon German centers of shipping and industry. The 1,036 planes which leveled Cologne were made in British plants. The British promised to return regularly and to bring American squadrons with them. The Battle of Germany had begun. Britain today is immeasurably stronger at home than ever before, after 3 years of war during 46 * which she has borne the brunt of the battle on many fronts. Britain’s armies have fought ten campaigns and garrisoned strategic bases such as Iceland, Malta, Gibraltar, India, and the Middle East. Up to September 1, 1942, Britain’s fighting forces had suffered 183,500 casualties—71 percent of all the Empire dead and wounded. Britain’s Navy, with never less than 600 ships at sea, has sunk over six million tons of enemy merchant shipping and convoyed 100,000 United Nations ships with losses of only one-half of 1 percent of these convoys. Britain’s Air Force fought and won the Battle of Britain; its Coastal Command has flown more than 50 million miles. Britain’s factory workers produced, in 1941, twice as many finished weapons as the »United States—exporting 5 planes to every 1 imported, 15 tanks to every 1 imported. Britain’s people are contributing almost 60 percent of the national income for war. This means giving up all luxuries and many necessities—a drastic reduction in the standard of living. The British income-tax rate, always high, is imposing a severe burden on the people. A married man with two children earning $2,400 in 1941 paid about $480 in income taxes, as compared with the American of similar income who paid $6. Under existing rates in Britain, it is virtually impossible for any one to have more than $20,000 left-after paying his taxes, no matter how large his income. During the year in which Britain and her Empire faced the Nazi world alone, her island became a haven for the free governments in exile and the fugitives from conquered nations whose sole idea was to go on with the battle against the Axis. Following in the footsteps of Benes and the Czechs came the representatives of Free Poland, Free Norway, Free Holland, Free Belgium, Free France, Free Luxembourg, Free Greece, and Free Yugoslavia. All found refuge in London, where they pooled their remaining resources in the service of the United Nations. Britain became the training ground for the free legions of all these countries. Polish and Dutch fliers, Czech, Belgian, and French soldiers, Norwegian, Greek, and Dutch seamen all found their chance to serve freedom in Britain. In her long history Britain has fought a succession of European tyrants—among them her own Charles the First, Louis XIV, Napoleon, Wilhelm II, and Hitler. That great tradition is being carried on today. YUGOSLAVIA Rise, O Serbians, swift arise, Lift your banners to the skies, For your country needs her children, Fight to make her free. Rise, O rise, and crush our enemy, Rise and fight for liberty. Free the Sav and Duna flow, Let us too unfettered go. O’er the wild Moravian mountains, Swift shall flow sweet Freedom’s fountains, Down shall sink the foe. (0, Serbia—Yugoslav National Song) I OVE OF FREEDOM as expressed in its national anthem is the force that makes Yugoslavia’s story one of alternate submergence 47 and revival. Slavic tribes coming from southern Poland and western Russia to make new homes on the southern part of the Balkan Peninsula in the 5th and 6th centuries enjoyed first prosperity under independent sovereigns, then years of eclipse and foreign domination. Their heroes fought the Byzantines, Turks, Magyars, Italians, and Germans; their exploits are preserved in rich folk sagas. In the 17th and 18th centuries bands of Balkan peasants called Hajduks fought foreign oppressors in guerrilla fashion. Later, as nationalistic feelings were roused, such peasant rebels adopted definite political aims, central headquarters, and a new name—Chetniks. They were guerrillas in the Balkan War of 1912 and were very active throughout World War I which began on Serbian soil. The Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated June 28, 1914, on a street in Sarajevo by a young student. One month later Austrian guns fired on Belgrade the first shells of the war which was to wreck the Austro-Hungarian empire and fulfill the national aspirations of the South Slav people. On December 1, 1918, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, later named Yugoslavia (Land of the South Slavs), was bom from the voluntary union of Serbia, Bosnia, Slovenia, Croatia, Dalmatia, and Montenegro. Its capital is Belgrade, its area 95,558 square miles, and its population 16,000,000. In this country, about the size of the British Isles, large, rich valleys of the north change gradually into snowy mountains covered with forests. Nearly a third of the land is forests and through them flow many rivers, including the famous Danube and Sava, which make the soil fertile. More than half of it is cultivated by a predominantly peasant population. Cattle raising, forestry, and farming combined occupy 85 percent of the people. When his father was assassinated in 1934,11 -year-old Peter II of Yugoslavia became Europe’s youngest king. A three-man regency council handled affairs of state. Great national progress was being made when the Yugoslavs began to see despotic powers overrunning the world and Nazi hordes massing at their very door. Though they had scant military protection, the Yugoslavs’ traditional spirit of resistance to oppression rose against the enemy’s cruelly persuasive arguments for submission. The regency faltered and a weak cabinet even signed a pact with Hitler, but the people themselves rose swiftly during the night of March 27, 1941, to stage a bloodless revolution which swept the Axis-controlled government from office, set up a new cabinet under General Simovitch, and gave young King Peter, now seventeen years old, full royal powers. So the nation, poor in the instruments of war, fought desperately against tremendous odds, attacked not only by Germans, Bulgarians, and Italians but also by Hungarians who a few weeks before had signed a pact of “perpetual friendship” with their Yugoslav neighbors. On the battlefield barehanded soldiers attacked armored tanks, but the enemy rolled relentlessly into hills and valleys. After the Axis occupation came partition. No other European state has become spoil for so many aggressors. Hitler reserved the most important portion for himself; the rest was given to Italy, Bulgaria, Hungary, and a puppet Croatian ruler, Ante Pavelich. But these new oppressors won only the physical outline of a country whose people, for the most part, are today united in support of their King and Government, now in London. Almost immediately resistance sprang up against the puppet ruler Pavelich, who is trying to dominate not only the hostile Croatian Peasant Party under Dr. Vladimir Machek, but also some two million rebellious Serbs. Three months after the debacle the army was reorganized by General Draja Mikhailovitch from troops who, like himself, had fled to the hills rather than surrender. Mikhailovitch’s men are modern Chetniks who fight where they can, destroying troop concentrations, burning storehouses, wrecking transportation and supplies. They have even fought pitched battles with large Axis detachments; they have recaptured many villages and towns and reportedly hold a considerable part of Bosnia and West Serbia. Meanwhile another guerrilla army—the Partisans of the National Liberation movement—battles the Axis mainly in Croatia and Slovenia. Women and children and old people assist in countless ways, particularly by keeping communications moving ‘between groups of guerrillas. The bold thoroughness of Yugoslav resistance has brought great suffering. A wave of executions by the Nazis followed the invasion and a second wave came in reply to the escape of Yugoslav naval units through the Strait of Otranto. (These units now fight with the British.) German punitive 48 expeditions into Kragujevac and Kraljevo killed an estimated 7,000 men and boys—entire classes of high-school students, their teachers, and other townsmen. The Government of Yugoslavia in London reports that henchmen of the traitorous Ante Pavelich and Axis invaders murdered [more than 300,000 persons in the Bosnia region; in Nazi-occupied zones hundreds and thousands of Slovenes, including children separated from their parents, were driven from their homes in freezing weather and became wandering refugees. Thousands more were forcibly sent to Germany and Axis-occupied portions of Poland and the Soviet Union. Whole forests have been burned down by German command to force the guerrillas into the open; death is often the penalty for women and children who give so much as a drink of water to these soldiers. Yet the terror does not stop the fighting. From mountains and forests new sorties go out daily to harass the several divisions of troops which the Axis has found it necessary to keep in Yugoslavia. Mikhailovitch and his men are not too busy to make fun of the Germans. Once they captured a group of Nazis in an abandoned factory and sent them back to the German lines with a large red “V” painted on the seats of their trousers. While plundering Axis soldiers keep themselves well supplied, both citizens and guerrillas in the hills do without many things. But their ability to get along on practically nothing and their fighting spirit are the two things which make the Yugoslav men, women, and children such good soldiers. These same qualities explain the appropriateness of an ancient military custom still followed in Yugoslavia—citizens passing each other on the street and Army Commanders saluting their troops use the same greeting: “Bog vam pomogaojunaci!” which iqeans, “God’s help to you, heroes!” 49 The Thousand Million DECEMBER, 1942 For additional copies, write Office of War Information, Washington, D. C, OFFICE OF WAR INFORMATION Washington, D. C. OFFICIAL BUSINESS Penalty for Private Use to Avoid Payment of Postage, $300 0. 9. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE: 1943