ABSTRACT
In North Africa, rain and cold complicated operations but the Royal Air Force remained active. The Germans launched a major offensive against irregular forces in Yugoslavia. The Washington Post portrayed a very different Secretary of State from the one who spoke of friends and friendship and exhaled pieties about the virtues of American principles. In the end the conclusion reported in The Washington Post coincided with The New York Times report: the gulf between the two nations had never been wider and had never reached a stage at which fruitful negotiations could begin. Arthur Krock in The New York Times reported a conversation with an unnamed policy maker who expected nothing good in Japan's response to Secretary Hull's statement. Mr. Hull had diplomatically referred to the Japanese envoys as friends and the President had in his own press conference called Japan a "friendly power" and moreover one "with which the United States was at peace".
