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Show Senator in Egypt By Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. iWtJ'd Feature Through special arrangement arrange-ment with American Magazine) It would be a blessing if every American could visit one of our battle fronts. After you've been in action, you clearly see the mortal peril in which America stands today. to-day. And you shed, once and for all, the comfortable illusions of invincibility invinci-bility which threaten, more than Nazi agents, to sabotage our war effort. ef-fort. With other tank men, I was under fire on the Libyan front recently. We were on the receiving end of practically everything they had to throw at us. I We were shelled, bombed and mtihinp-ffiinnerl. We took it. but we gave it back, too. Our American -tanks, manned by American crews, swung into action alongside their British Allies. When the smoke cleared away, they had knocked out at least eight German tanks. Our boys were quick, cagey, courageous, cou-rageous, and they did justice to the magnificent training they had received re-ceived back in the States. But we all acquired a healthy respect re-spect for the Nazi fighting machine. We saw it in action, saw it sweep back British forces, saw it operate with watchlike precision and effective effec-tive leadership. We Can Lose This War. My own experiences convinced me that we can lose this war unless we Americans gear our whole nation na-tion to the monumental task of winning. win-ning. Make no mistake. We have inherited in-herited World War II. We are the ones who will win it or lose it. We must be careful not to indulge in a dangerous over-emphasis on our weapons of war. Some of us seem to feel that our guns, tanks and planes are so infinitely superior to those of the 'enemy that they can almost win battles by themselves. Nobody has a greater respect than I for American ingenuity and productive pro-ductive genius. But the grim fact, as I learned in Libya, is that the Nazis have some pretty fine equipment equip-ment themselves, and they use it like professonal soldiers. On the Libyan desert, as the Nazis smashed forward under Rommel, I studied the magnificent organization, organiza-tion, drive and timing of their fighting fight-ing machine. Most of my observations observa-tions are military secrets, which I reported to the army authorities and to the senate military affairs committee. com-mittee. But I can say openly that their equipment was on a par with their aggressiveness. Even where our equipment was better, the margin wasn't enough to allow us any complacency. A Word About Our Tanks. Take our famous M-3 tanks, for example. They're the medium job that the British call General Grants. Well, the armor plate of these machines ma-chines is top-rank. Although it will be pierced by the German 88s, it will turn back the German tank guns. And its own 77 mm. isn't outranged by any German tank gun. In our new M-4 tanks, already in production, the gun is in the turret. The silhouette is lower, making it harder to hit. And the hull is welded weld-ed instead of riveted, eliminating the possible danger of rivets buckling or popping out under the impact of shells. A man would have to be blind not to see that the German soldiers were superbly equipped for the peculiar rigors of desert fighting. German civilians have had to content themselves them-selves with ersatz materials, but not their fighting men. German engineers carried extra parts for British and American tanks, and they were past masters at "cannibalizing" tearing apart a captured tank and using its innards to repair another. When one of our machines fell into their hands, it often turned up later on their side. Germans Confident of Victory. One afternoon I talked with a German Ger-man prisoner who was calmly confident con-fident that his side would win. Not because he felt that Hitler was an infallible fuehrer, or because he regarded re-garded his generals as superior to the British. His optimism seemed to him extremely realistic. "We will win," he said, "because our equipment equip-ment and organization are better." Today, that boy's words ring in my ears whenever I hear an American Amer-ican make the same observation. Personally, my bet is that every firm that is manufacturing equipment equip-ment for our soldiers will keep abreast or ahead of the Axis. But it isn't safe to count on any margin of superiority to hand us victory on a silver platter. America has always been a land of big figures. We can produce, and always have produced, more of everything ev-erything than anybody else in the world. But large numbers alone don't win wars. |