Time

Time--the Quicksand

TIME RUNS OUT--Henry J. Taylor -- Doubleday, Doran ($3).

Henry J. Taylor claims to be the last U. S. correspondent to wangle his way in & out of Germany before Pearl Harbor. This is his eleventh-hour report from the enemy camp, and an eloquent warning that time is not on the side of the democracies.

An economist and a businessman (pulp and paper), Taylor was sent by the North American Newspaper Alliance for a last look around Europe before the iron gates slammed completely shut. He went to Portugal, Britain, Spain, Finland, Sweden, Switzerland. In France he scooped the world press on Vichy's elimination of Gen eral Weygand. But what is most pertinent to U.S. readers is what Correspondent Taylor reports about Germany and the Nazi plans for the war's next phase.

Apathy. "It is dreary," says Taylor, "in the capital of Germanic Europe. You sense that this is the core of a heavy mass. . . . As you walk with a high German officer, the salutes of passing soldiers come so aimlessly that you wonder why he bothers taking them. . . . This is now the tempo of the Berlin people. . . . It isn't resentment, or despair. It isn't the touchiness of revolt, or even clear dissatisfaction. Certainly it isn't fear. Just apathy." Reason: "al though their generals have supplied them with the most dramatic series of victories ever known . . . they do not see any prospect of these victories being converted into the fuller life that National Socialism has dangled before their eyes for more than nine years." This domestic apathy does not mean, Taylor warns, any military apathy. "German morale has definitely gone over to the conviction that it is sink or swim with one another and with the Nazis. For us, this means . . . Germany must be invaded and beaten in Germany. Make no mistake about that."

Claim Adjusters. Author Taylor worked out his own technique for handling the Gestapo. His rule: "Don't try to shake them. Always absorb them." They will steal money and cigarets when they search your luggage, "but not much else." Author Taylor believes that the Gestapo has ceased to be the name of an organization and has become the name of a system. Every petty leader has his Gestapo. "Himmler does not control the Gestapo. Neither does Hitler. Nobody controls the Gestapo. They are all caught in the Gestapo system." Most of the Gestapo people "are mild little men who clutch to their jobs, try to get their brother and sister on the political bosses' payroll. . . ." They "look and act very much like the claim adjusters for a small insurance company. And they are very poor detectives."

In Germany Author Taylor did a little detective work of his own. He "cased" Fritz Thyssen, who once subsidized, later broke with Hitler, and was rumored (TIME, Oct. 13) to be in a concentration camp or dead. Says Taylor: "First I found that Thyssen is not in the hands of the Gestapo. ... I found he is not dead. He is back in Berlin. He is in a hospital. The Nazis are liking Thyssen better and better again since their attack on Russia, which he had always advised. ... I found . . . that Hitler called on Thyssen in the hospital. . . . Hitler . . . wants to use [Thyssen] ... to soften up unsuspecting people in other countries."

New Navy. Taylor also discovered "irrefutable evidence of an immense new German Navy being built. The great shipyards are working twenty-four hours a day on it. Officers are being taken out of the Army and trained for and assigned to the German Navy. Why? The Nazis have made a new guess on the length of the war. Diplomats and generals I saw in Berlin now agree on one thing. ... It will be a very long war. Certainly many years. No one of importance in Berlin sees it any other way. Neither does Hitler."

Author Taylor believes that when World War II began, the Germans were trained and equipped only for "certain continental objectives. With the fall of France, Hitler did not attempt to invade England--a fact which still puzzles most British--because from the very beginning he had not planned to cross the Channel and was not prepared to do so." For in Hitler's view there are two wars--the "Civil War of Europe" (which began in Spain and is continuing in Russia) and an Interocean War between the world powers, which the Nazis did not intend to fight until years after they had consolidated their gains from the civil war. "By fighting when she did, England rushed the Germans' hands by at least five years and upset the whole fundamental sequence on which the Nazis intended to operate."

Interocean War. Now Hitler is preparing to begin the Interocean War. "Hitler's Navy and the Japs are his answer and his final play for world domination." There will be a simultaneous attack on Iceland and the North Ireland bases. And this time there will be an attempt to invade Britain. Whether Hitler succeeds will not depend "on the Channel or a foggy night, or even on British and American soldiers quartered in England. It certainly does not depend on the British Navy." It depends, Author Taylor believes, on how much power the Allies allow Hitler to concentrate against England. It depends on the war in Russia and in North Africa "to begin with, and whether we can hit the Nazis simultaneously on widely separated fronts. Our fighting, divided in space, cannot be divided in timing."

To meet such far-flung needs, U.S. production is growing. But "as our production grows, the Axis will spread us further and further in sea distances, while the Germans strike at the British Isles and work down the pole through the Near East, the Caucasus, Iran, Iraq, to liaison on land with the ascending Japs. That is the cold, agonizing outlook."

One of the war's great fallacies, says Taylor, is the idea that time works for the Allies. It does not do so in a military sense. It does not do so in the minds of Europe's conquered people. "It is not enough to say 'all in good time,' " he warns. "Time runs out. The great resources of the United States, the abundant strength of the Allied cause, cannot rely on success through some ultimate victory. For if it takes too long, it will not be a victory at all. The process of economic, human, and spiritual liquidation, pressing on disillusioned people from Helsinki to Gibraltar . . . will of itself create the defeat of peace. The thoughts, the determination of countless democratic men and women are delayed from our awful task at hand by the overevaluation of our ultimate strength. . . . Either we hurry, either we do God's task with speed, or there is no end to war."

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