John's family lunch at noon today, the food was very rich. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 Info Considering that Crawford is a half-old country (Adele's family lived in Louisiana when they first moved from France), Adele had the chef prepare a few New Orleans specialties: fried fish fillet, soft-shell crab, spicy shrimp and Creole okra bisque (New Orleans really didn't have grilled chicken wings), served with French brandy and Mexican tequila. Although it is not an expensive dish, the guests and hosts have a good time.

In particular, Adele's own after-dinner dessert, the frosted Bennett cake, made little Ella and Bradley's daughter eat a mouthful of "white beard". The banana foster (a banana-based dessert with cream, cinnamon, dark rum, and liqueur) for men was also praised by officers in the Army Staff.

At the dinner table, everyone chatted happily and soon discovered a lot of common ground with each other. For example, Crawford's wife, who is still in his hometown in New Orleans, is also French, and they have a daughter who is about the same age as little Ella.

Another example is Clark's father, Charles Clark (a former U.S. Army colonel), who worked as an executive for several years in John's railroad company after retiring from the army, and John also had a relationship with him.

Even Martin and Bradley discovered that both had served as tactical instructors at the Fort Benning Infantry School, just a year apart.

John also discovered that, in addition to Crawford, the men in the room were all connected to Eisenhower to some degree. (Bradley was Eisenhower's classmate, Martin was Eisenhower's comrade-in-arms in the Philippines, and even Clark's mentor at West Point was Eisenhower.) ）

Unconsciously, these common topics have brought everyone closer together. I heard that Major Crawford had recently been looking for a house and had brought his wife and daughter to Washington. The enthusiastic Adele and Mrs. Bradley took on the task, and the two women agreed to go together next week to help Crawford look at the house.

After lunch, the lady and the children went to the sunroom in the small garden, while the men stayed in the living room, playing bridge and chatting. When the officers of the five staff offices got together, they inevitably talked about the war in Europe.

"Poland is completely finished, the Soviets have occupied Bialystok and Lviv, and Timoshenko has already met with the Germans." Bradley said with emotion while drawing cards: "In just one month, the third army power in Europe is finished." ”

"It's also a third army power, it's like paper." Martin, who sat on the sidelines and watched the battle, was dismissive of Poland's claim to be Europe's third largest army power.

"I heard that Ribbentrop had gone to Moscow to discuss the demarcation of the new Soviet-German border. At this point, Poland became the fat in the mouths of Hitler and Stalin. Clark said.

"Since General Sikorski ordered the 230,000 troops on the Eastern Front to stop resisting, Poland has been finished. It is already a miracle that the Modlin Fortress was able to hold out until the 29th. John knew that Stalin would soon cause a massacre in the Katyn Forest, in which more than 4,000 officers of the Polish army on the Eastern Front would be slaughtered.

This will be followed by the execution of more than 20,000 Polish soldiers, intellectuals, politicians and public officials by the NKVD. The matter was not made public until after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and any previous investigation into the matter was dismissed as a smear against the socialist camp.

"The good thing is that the Maginot Line is almost complete, and 300,000 French and 200,000 Belgians are waiting behind the line. The British Expeditionary Force was also arriving in Europe, and the Western Front was generally calm. "Crawford, who is an engineer, still has a lot of confidence in the Maginot Defence.

"This time the Germans have learned to behave, and they will not make a move on the Western Front until Stalin is stabilized. They have already suffered enough from the two-front battle in the last war, and they should become smarter. "Martin, like Clark, had little affection for either Hitler or Stalin." In this way, Stalin was cheapened for nothing. I heard that the Soviets began to attack the three Baltic countries again. ”

When Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were incorporated into the Soviet Union, John could not remember, but before the German invasion of the Soviet Union. However, Martin's words also reminded John that the Soviet-Finnish war was about to break out.

The Soviet Union made territorial claims to Finland as early as March this year, but Finland refused. At that time, the Soviet Union offered the Soviet territory of the Karelian Isthmus in exchange for the Finnish territory of the islands of Suhr, Lafan, Seyskari, Tiulin and part of the Rybachi Peninsula in the Gulf of Finland.

Now that the Soviet-German border was officially met, Stalin's desire to build a strategic buffer zone in the northwest was even stronger. Leningrad (St. Petersburg), the second largest city in the Soviet Union, is only 32 kilometers from the Soviet-Finnish border. In 1918, the foreign intervention forces entered the Soviet Union with Finland as a springboard.

These things thousands of miles away had nothing to do with John. But it appears that the Roosevelt administration's efforts to revise the Neutrality Act have made recent progress. Under the dollar offensive of the arms dealers, Congress finally relented.

Hughes said that the new revised law would still prohibit U.S. ships from entering the war zone, but would allow belligerents to purchase weapons from the U.S. on a "cash and carry-on" basis. This was good news for the British and French, who had far more cash and ocean-going cargo ships than the Germans.

Historically, however, John remembered that after the passage of the new Neutrality Act, it was not Britain and France that benefited first, but Finland, which was being invaded by the Soviet Union. The United States seems to have donated $10 million in military supplies and exported equipment from almost four infantry divisions and dozens of aircraft.

John estimates that it won't be long before he is inundated with a flood of arms export applications. Now the three applications in his hands cannot be delayed any longer, and must be resolved before the new regulations are voted on in Congress.

"John, is it really okay with those few export applications? I heard that Colonel Wells will talk about it at the office meeting of the Operations Planning Division tomorrow. Martin, who had just taken over from Crawford as his bridge partner, finally asked a question that had been buried in his heart these days.

"I thought you'd never ask." John smiled, "Don't worry, tomorrow morning Mobil Oil, Ford Motor and Kaiser Steel will send someone to the staff and voluntarily withdraw the previous application." ”

Seeing Martin's stunned look, Bradley smiled: "Didn't Ike tell you, Wells and John are not in the same heavyweight class at all." He deserved to be unlucky this time, and his opponent didn't even inquire clearly. ”

Martin had served overseas for many years, and after returning home, he had been studying at the Staff and Command College, and he didn't know much about John's situation. Clark and Crawford had heard a little about John's "prestige" in the business world, but they were still shocked by John's "great powers". It is truly a rising star of the top family in the United States, and a giant company like Mobil Oil has done it. Wells worked hard to dig a pit for a long time, but instead of harming him, he trapped himself.