What this country needs, said President Roosevelt at a press conference in April 1942, is a good name for the war. After getting thousands of suggestions, he picked one that barely lasted the day: the War for Survival. Australia's late Prime Minister John Curtin had even less success with his suggestion: the People's War.
Last week the New York Herald Tribune asked some handy historians what they were calling it. Said Englishman Denis W. Brogan, now lecturing at Yale: "Maybe after a time I shall call this the atomic war, or the world war, part two." But to him, World War I...
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