Foreign News: The Main Goal

At last the United Nations felt strong enough to admit their differences, to start being practical about unity.

Said Winston Churchill at Quebec: a second front would be established only when “we are satisfied that . . . our soldiers’ lives are expended in accordance with sound military plans and not squandered for political considerations of any kind.”

Said Russia’s Government-sponsored War and the Working Class: “Of course it is a well-known fact that many excuses are given to justify the postponement of the second front in Western Europe. . . .”

Winston Churchill: “The President and I will persevere in our efforts to meet Marshal Stalin. … It would be a very great advantage to everyone, and indeed to the whole free world, if a unity of thought and decision upon practical measures . . . could be reached between the three great opponents of the Hitlerite tyranny.”

War and the Working Class: “The Government of the Soviet Union is blamed for failing to reveal its aims, i.e., to publish a complete blueprint for postwar peace. Those who say this forget that neither the British nor the U.S. Government has yet done so; that such a blueprint must be the product of joint decisions; that a premature discussion of controversial issues might unfavorably affect the unity and the intensity of the efforts necessary to achieve the main goal: victory over the common foe.”

Tri-Power Preparations. Despite Russia’s doubts about “premature discussion of controversial issues,” Vice Commissar for Foreign Affairs Ivan Maisky, popular former Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s, had returned to London last week to meet with Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden and U.S. Ambassador John Winant. Their talks would prepare an agenda for a conference among Foreign Commissar Molotov, Foreign Secretary Eden, Secretary of State Hull. Then, according to the urgent schedule, would come the meeting of Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin.

Russian Preparations. Against the possibility that the United Nations could not agree on a plan for individual and collective security in the postwar world, Russia last week continued to fill in its independent blueprint:

> In Moscow a “Free Austria Movement” was created, modeled on the lines of the Free German National Committee (TIME, Aug. 30).

> Russia had caustic words to say against General Draja Mihailovich; the Polish Government in Exile (with which Russia broke relations five months ago); the Allied Military Government; neutral Turkey (by insuring Germany’s Balkan flank it is prolonging the war).

> Soviet Economist Eugene Varga said that Russia would demand reparations from the Axis first, before they are paid to Britain and the U.S. Besides payments in money, goods, livestock and machinery, Professor Varga said that 10,000,000 skilled German workers would be required to repair Russia’s property damage.

Allied Preparations. Britain and the U.S. last week gave Russia two earnests of their good intentions:

> The Allied Military Government abolished all Fascist labor and corporative organizations in Sicily, gave workers the right to join organizations of their own choosing, subject temporarily to military restrictions.

> Washington announced plans for an Anglo-U.S.-Russian committee to consider Mediterranean issues, possibly administer captured territories.