MEMORANDUM                         
 
 
June 17, 1940
 
 
Up to the eighth of April of this Year, when Hitler
marched into Denmark and attacked Norway, those who realized
the incalculable destruction in material, social, and
spiritual values which the outbreak of the war in the West
would entail were justified in hoping, If not in believing,
that such a war might be avoided. The problems facing the
world which had not only failed of solution in the World
War but had been developing in acuteness since Versailles
had attained much magnitude in proportion and such complication 
in kind that the possibility of solution no longer
lay within the operation of human capacities. The only
possibility, therefore, of avoiding the overwhelming consequences 
of a totalitarian war was that, through the lapse
of time and abstention from any further impetus, these
problems which were preventing the organization or an
ordered world night through natural processes gradually
reduce themselves to proportions which placed then within
the capacities of governments to solve by orderly methods.
Hitler's move against Denmark and Norway, however, settled
ones and for all the possibility of such a solution. That
action did not even observe the meager fiction which had
 
 
been