The Shape of Springs to Come

It looked as if Hitler intended to throw his full weight at Russia, but his first moves were tentative and met a rough Russian answer. It looked as if the Japanese Army were going to try to knock China out of the war, and yet the campaign seemed, at least to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek’s plane-blind forces, unclear and not yet full-blown. It looked as if the Japanese Navy were re-forming for another reach at Australia’s screen, but the concentration was not yet completed. There was renewed activity in the Mediterranean, but it was not clear whether either side would dare to start anything in the face of summer’s dizzying heat.

The German Navy stirred in the north, but its mission was not yet defined. Spring had come in its various ways to the battlefronts of the world. But each front’s spring was still vague in shape.