1940, The First Year of War Economy

When Franklin Roosevelt last week told reporters that he would speed aid to Britain by eliminating the silly-fool dollar sign from the transaction, he stamped 1940 as a year in which a U. S. Revolution came out in the open. In that symbolic phrase, and in the year of gathering fears and tensions that had led up to it, the whole eight-year course of the New Deal seemed suddenly to be photographed in lightning. Politicians had steadily taken power from businessmen. And now in A.D. 1940, with the world in the grip of...

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