A very important effect of our declaration of war upon Germany would be the effect upon Japan. The Japanese mental processes are difficult indeed to understand but I venture to guess that if they saw us formally aligned with the British for the duration, they would be likely to take a milder rather than stronger attitude toward us. Needing principally smaller vessels in the Atlantic, we could base our main Battle Fleet on Singapore and confidently await any move Japan might make. Our declaration of war might well force Japan out of the Axis. China, like Britain, would be given the most precious possession in warfare, the assurance of final victory. For even if Japan continued to fight China, once the Allies’ main task was performed and Germany defeated, the combined British and American navies could be counted on to bring Japan back to reason without much difficulty. On all the other countries, as neutral Portugal, non-belligerent Spain, encapsuled Sweden and Switzerland, the effect of our going to war would be revolutionary. Our South American friends would become even better neighbors. All over the world the conviction that now Germany will be defeated would become the decisive element in the policy of every government. Q. _But would we really go to work if we did declare war? Britain didn’t at first and neither did France. What makes you think we would?_ A. You are right. It took Dunkirk to wake Britain up and France never did awake; she passed without regaining consciousness from deep sleep to death. Perhaps we too would not awaken even if we went to war, but we will never awaken until we do go to war. Most nations in this war have remained curiously apathetic until their first battle experience; this may be true of us. But the fact of our being actively belligerent would be bound to improve our spirit since it would put our moral position right. Ever since the beginning of the war we Americans have suffered from a divided personality. Half of our minds clung to the idea that we could keep at peace if we wished for peace hard enough, and this half declared: “It is not our war.” This half of our minds made the Neutrality Act. The other half of our minds realized all along that we should have been in the war from the beginning, that Hitler was fighting to conquer the world, that it was for us a matter of life or death to keep him from succeeding and that every consideration of self-interest, as of honor, urged us to take our full part in the world-wide struggle against the new Barbarism. This half was responsible for the Lease-Lend Bill, a half-measure, condemned by the very definition: “All aid to Britain _short of war_!” Our souls remained divided, and this division has made us an ailing nation, hypochondriac, complaining of low morale, nervous, and subject to fits of depression alternating with elation. We are unreasonably discouraged or cheered as the tide of battle ebbs and flows, and always we try to