A swarm of bees in May</br> Is worth a load of hay. </br> A swarm of bees in June </br> Is worth a silver spoon. </br> A swarm of bees in July </br> Is not worth a fly. </br>
This ditty, roared out by gruff Lord Beaverbrook in Britain's august House of Lords, was a handy text for the war's great new development: a race for the initiative on Germany's western and southern fronts.
Catchpenny Clamor. The urgency was obvious. Therefore it was not surprising that Lord Beaverbrook, inveterate roarer for a second front, should roar again to the peers of the realm: "I believe that the war is not won. Whatever may be the plans of the Germans, we should strike and strike now, before the Germans can regroup their divisions. We should strike before the Germans can recover from the Russian offensive."
The Beaver's agitation—which his friend Winston Churchill terms "a process of emphatic stimulation"—was not as significant as its reception. Lord Trenchard criticized Lord Beaverbrook for arousing the British people, who could not be told the true facts just now. The Earl of Listowel accused the Beaver of doing "a positive disservice to the country" by bringing the matter up at this juncture. Viscount Simon said that the discussion was "absolutely dangerous," called the term second front a "catchpenny phrase," based on ill-informed clamor.
The inference was that the strategy makers were well aware of the urgency, that they were in fact doing all they could about it. The Lords, like everyone else, were admittedly a little bewildered as to just what was going to be done; but they believed that what could be done, would be done.
"The U.S.S.R. Expects." There was a difference between the British second-front clamor of last year and this voice crying in the bewilderedness. The outcry last year was truly popular. It was based on a widespread impression that the U.S. and British leaders had no plan and were doing nothing. It was in response to pleas from a Russia which seemed to be in real danger of collapse. The argument then was actually more moral than military.
Now the shoe was on the other foot. Now there had been a Casablanca. More important, the Red Army* had risen on the count of nine and was mightily belaboring the Germany adversary. That greatest of propagandists, Stalin, had got up from a suppliant position and was now using the second-front issue as something very like a threat. Last week London turned out so enthusiastically to a reception in honor of the Red Army at Ambassador Ivan Maisky's house that one of the guests said: "We could easily open a second front right now if we just turned all these fellows loose." Turning this enthusiasm to good use, Ambassador Maisky spoke as a partner, not a beggar: "It is natural . . . that the U.S.S.R. expects an early realization of the military decisions taken at Casablanca."
What those decisions were, only the campaigns of 1943 can tell. If they are German campaigns, they will not tell. But the urgency on both sides, of the Allies' earnest determination to fulfill Casablanca and the Germans' to frustrate it, there is no doubt. All around the profile of Europe there are signs.