Conferences, In Church & Out

When nightfall shut off the brief winter afternoon, the train was sliding swiftly south toward Vermont. Newsmen on the train were bored, listless, let down after the four days of pressure in Ottawa. They had watched 12,000,000 Canadians having their greatest day since the King & Queen visited in 1939; had heard the sturdily sesquipedalian Prime Minister of England wow the House of Commons with his oak-hearted phrases, with a tactful tribute (in French) to the loyal French-Canadians; they had listened as he recalled the 1940 prophecy of French generals, that "in three weeks England will have her neck rung like a chicken," had roared with delight as he growled: "Some chicken! . . . Some neck!" Now the newsmen glumly dined, glumly conversed. This was the heel of the last day of the last year of a decade of defeat.

A few minutes before midnight, footsteps clumped swiftly down the corridors, doors were rapped in staccato, a voice called: "Everybody up in the diner. The Prime Minister wants to see you."

In five minutes a half hundred reporters, photographers, British military and naval attaches filled the diner. At 11:58 Winston Churchill waddled in, waved, moved to the middle of the car. His left hand clutched a tall whiskey-&-soda.

Toward the stroke of twelve, Churchill raised his glass high and steady, spoke clearly in his soft growl, pausing an instant between each phrase:

"Here's to 1942. . . . Here's to a year of toil ... a year of struggle and peril.. . and a long step forward to victory."

Everyone drank, shouted: "And a happy New Year to you, sir!"

Churchill set his drink on a table, crossed his arms, reached for the hands of those nearest him, and struck up, in his flat, heavy baritone: "Should auld acquaintance be forgot. . . ." There were more cheers at the end. "God bless you all," said Churchill. He raised his glass for a' final toast: "May we all come through safe and with honor."

The Englishmen broke into For He's A Jolly Good Fellow, and the Americans joined in. The Prime Minister turned, flipped up his V-for-Victory salute, and left as he had entered, with an odd combination of dignity and familiarity.

Fireside Chats. At the White House that afternoon President Roosevelt and Mr. Churchill renewed their conferences. First upshot: 26 nations of the New and Old Worlds formally pledged themselves to employ their full resources against the Axis powers and to enter into no separate armistice or peace.*

Next was the selection of the first Allied generalissimos of War II (see p. 17).