Having heard from assorted armchair generals, radio oracles and ink-stained bums that the heart of the American home front was not in the fight, journalist Quentin Reynolds bought some train tickets to scour the country and see if it was true:
"I found a little old lady in Dallas, Texas, who meant it when she told of how she and her friends would throw homemade bombs at any tanks that had the temerity to pollute the soil of Texas. I found men sweating and toiling in aircraft and munition factories; I found them working as hard as men ever worked in Manchester or Moscow. I found college students studying as no students I ever saw study, intent on hurrying the day when they would be granted commissions and could get into active service. I saw Negro Pullman car porters collecting tin foil from cigarette packages: a small thing, granted, but a bit of evidence to prove that our citizens are war-minded and that they are not letting MacArthur and his men do it all. Two months of traveling around America, discovering America, makes me awfully impatient with the writers and radio prophets who so smugly talk of the complacency of our fellow citizens."
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