The War About to Come

In due course the plane descended below 10,000 feet as it came over the upper harbor along the Brookyln waterfront headed towards Governor's Island.

In that era (1940), anyone looking at New York, whether from ground level or 12,000 feet, could not have help but been struck by the thick seamless jagged carpet of wharves and piers that jutted nearly every available piece of real estate on the waterfront.

Along both sides of the East River, and on the other side of the island along the North River---the part of the mighty Hudson and it scrapes along the west side of Manhattan, carving its last great channel as it barrels to the sea.

There on the Manhattan side are the great terminals of the mighty passenger lines, whose numbers of elegant traffic has dropped precipitously over the last year with the coming of the war.

The last war finished off the great German lines. Now the British ones are falling to the same fate. Cunard's great new, the RMS Queen Elizabeth is a troop transport. Soon the American ones will join them, and instead of passengers in Manhattan they will pick up men in uniforms on the opposite bank, on the Hoboken pier, disgorging from the rail lines that fan out to the military training bases. These men will be gathered from around the country to come here, and they must be transported over the ocean. Then they will be transported back, or their cadavers, some of them, and dropped off at the pier once again, and then fanned out across the continent back to their homes.

It's a big beautiful system. Last time was so disorganized. It was a trial run. This time we will get it right. The system will work much better, and this time too it will be sustained.