Plan for an A.E.F.

A confidential report prepared by . . . direction of President Roosevelt calls for American expeditionary forces aggregating 5,000,000 men for a final land offensive against Germany and her satellites. It contemplates total armed forces of 10,045,658 men . . . is a blueprint for total war . . . in at least two oceans and three continents. . . . July 1, 1943 is fixed as the date for the beginning of the final supreme effort by American land forces to defeat the mighty German Army in Europe. . . . Against Japan the report recommends eventual "strategic methods" consisting of a strong defense of Siberia . . . a reduction of Japanese military power by air raids and a Chinese offensive against the Japanese forces of occupation. . . .

This was the story that confronted President Roosevelt last week in Colonel Robert Rutherford McCormick's violently isolationist Chicago Tribune. It purported to be a transcript of a secret document drawn up for President Roosevelt by the high command of the U.S. Army & Navy.

Washington buzzed with the disclosure, but the Government seemed strangely unconcerned. White House Secretary Steve Early would neither confirm nor deny it. To a crowd of agitated reporters, he remarked calmly: "Your right to print the news is . . . unchallenged and unquestioned."

At his press conference next morning, President Roosevelt had nothing to say. He referred newsmen to the Secretary of War. At the War Department, spry old Secretary Henry L. Stimson said: "What would you think of an American general staff which . . . did not investigate and study every conceivable type of emergency . . . and every possible method of meeting that emergency?"

When Japan attacked the U.S. this week, suddenly and without warning, the Tribune story looked very dead indeed. Dead, too, was the specter of war which Colonel McCormick had waved before the Midwest for the last two years, laid by a menace far more grim and real.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.