The U.S. At War, Great Decisions

(3 of 3)

For Victory. At the White House, visitors streamed in & out through the day and late into the night. With Churchill had come his Minister of Supply, Lord Beaverbrook, and 82 other civilian and military aides. There was Admiral of the Fleet Sir Dudley Pound. Britain's First Sea Lord; General Sir John Dill, retiring Chief of Staff of the British Army; Air Chief Marshal Sir Charles Portal.

With these visitors met the members of Franklin Roosevelt's War Cabinet, his production chiefs, the top men of Washington's scattered defense and quasi-defense agencies. Their decisions could be no better than the secrecy in which they were kept, and for the time at least those decisions were real secrets.

But the subjects on which decisions had to be taken were as plain as the cigar in Winston Churchill's face:

Foremost was the question of priorities in between world battlefronts—an agreement, since there is not enough strength for all fronts, on how and where all possible aid should be sent. There was also the question of arranging the mechanism of cooperation in the vital theaters where both nations operate together, and possibly the question of who should have strategic control in each area.

As the conversations progressed, President Roosevelt talked to Russia's Ambassador Maxim Litvinoff. to China's Dr. Hu Shih and Dr. T. V. Soong, Dutch Minister Alexander Loudon, representatives of the Latin American republics and occupied European nations. Prime Minister W. L. Mackenzie King arrived from Canada.

At the same time Britain's Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden was in Moscow (see p. 27), and the two conferences kept in close touch. This was to be no mere U.S.British meeting of minds. It was, as far as possible, to embrace foes of the Axis all over the world.

At week's end Churchill boarded a train, again with elaborate secrecy, relaxed in zippered grey coveralls, ordered an unrationed dinner of sherry and rare beef, an unrationed breakfast of sliced chicken, ham, bacon & eggs. Next day he showed up in snow-covered Ottawa to address a joint session of the Canadian Parliament.*

There had been little time to talk about the post-war world. Unless victory were won, there would be no post-war world for which Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, or any of the people they represent, would care to plan. But the historic meeting in Washington, the historic speech before Congress, had made the future a clearer outline, a brighter shadow.