U.S. At War: Post-Yalta Tactics

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While Franklin Roosevelt was still on tour, a carefully planned campaign was set rolling on the home front to: 1) publicize the Crimea Charter and the President's hand in it; 2) win the friendship of Congress.

The President has a clear objective; he also has a timetable worked out for it. He wants the agreement setting up an international organization to be submitted to Congress by June 1, and he would like ratification of it by the end of summer.

Accordingly, the President's recent conciliatory attitude to Congress was not only continued, but emphasized with utmost care. First off, on the day the Yalta communiqué was issued, amiable Presidential Assistant James M. Barnes, onetime Congressman, rushed to the Capitol with the document, gave both Democratic and Republican Senators a look at it before its public release. This special treatment had its effect: a chorus of immediate cheers for the charter echoed through the Senate and House chambers.

Next day, OWMR Boss Jimmy Byrnes suddenly reappeared in Washington, having made the 6,700-mile trip from Yalta in 38 hours. Without wasting a minute, he called a press conference. It appeared that Jimmy Byrnes's role was to be the official interpreter of the Crimea Charter to the U.S. people and the Congress.

To 125 newsmen, Jimmy Byrnes disclosed some new facts about Franklin Roosevelt's activities in the Crimea (see INTERNATIONAL). He said the President had: 1) chairmanned the conference; 2) devised the compromise on the Dumbarton Oaks voting formula; 3) written the section on treatment of liberated countries. Later the assistant President went to Capitol Hill, talked over Yalta with Senators and Representatives of both parties. Among his guests at a Senate lunch: Montana's articulate, isolationist Burton K. Wheeler, who seemed impressed if not satisfied with what he heard.

Help from Democrats. Meanwhile other Administration bigwigs were dramatizing the role of the U.S. in international affairs. Treasury Secretary Morgenthau appeared before the St. Louis Chamber of Commerce with a fervent plea for adoption of the Bretton Woods monetary agreement. Before a House committee, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson made an able argument for the continuation of Lend-Lease. And Secretary of State Stettinius turned up in Moscow, where he chatted with Molotov and made the required visit to the ballet. Four days later he appeared at Brazilian President Getulio Vargas' summer home in the mountains above Rio, for a chat on his way to the Hemisphere conference at Mexico City.

In choosing the U.S. delegation to Mexico City, Franklin Roosevelt had shrewdly picked five members of Congress, with a sprinkling of businessmen. Now, just one day after Yalta, he announced his nominations for the U.S. delegation to the world security conference at San Francisco in April. His choices included a few surprises.

Help from Republicans? As the top-ranking Republican members, Franklin Roosevelt did not pick, as he might have, the ranking minority member of the Foreign Relations Committee (Hiram Johnson), nor the titular leader of the party (Governor Dewey). He chose Michigan's Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg and Commander Harold E. Stassen, ex-Governor of Minnesota, flag secretary to famed Admiral "Bull" Halsey.