INTERNATIONAL: Preface to Peace

Winston Churchill waited until near the end of a two-hour report on the war to give his biggest news: President Roosevelt, Marshal Stalin and the Prime Minister would, he confidently hoped, meet before the end of the year—at a time and place to be announced after their talks were over.

To clear away the underbrush, the three Foreign Secretaries or their understudies will meet in Moscow the second week in October and no questions barred. This week it was definite that Viacheslav Molotov and Anthony Eden would be on hand, probable that 72-year-old Cordell Hull would decide to make the long flight. The talks would be not a week too soon (see p. 38).

Monkey Wrenches. Busy Japs were reported trying to get peace negotiations started between Russia and Germany. Madrid was spreading disquieting rumors of German plans to reach a stalemate on the Eastern front, heave a staggering number of men across the Reich at Anglo-U.S. bridgeheads wherever they might appear in the West. The Red Army’s Red Star was still loudly asserting that no second front had come into being. The new outlet for official unofficial Russian views, War and the Working Class, was politely calling departed U.S. Ambassador William Standley a spreader of statements (about publicity for Lend-Lease) “which did not correspond to the truth” and labeling AMG as too closely concerned with “security for Anglo-Saxon banking, industrial and trade circles.” In London a Free Germany Movement emerged, perhaps to match Moscow’s Free Germany Committee. Like its Russian counterpart, the Movement plugged unity and a free and democratic Germany, left the world wondering what next.

Clearly the value of Lend-Lease to Russia, the future of AMG and the shape and texture of postwar Germany would have places on the Moscow agenda. Said Eden in the House of Commons: “We must be frank with one another. . . . There can be no cooperation if it is not based on confidence. . . . Confidence cannot be created by one side alone.” Urbanely he intimated that the Russians were not the easiest people in the world to deal with.

Steppingstones. On the other side of the ledger the week recorded a major piece

of practical collaboration: the Russians

named a vice commissar of Foreign Affairs, Andrei Januari Vishinsky, to be their representative on the Inter-Allied Mediterranean Commission in Algiers. Minister Harold MacMillan will represent the British, and presumably Robert Murphy or his successor as Civil Affairs Adviser to General Eisenhower will sit for the U.S. As War and the Working Class understands it, the Commission will not only supervise the carrying out of the Italian armistice but discuss terms for other satellites who may wish to quit. At Russia’s request a representative of the French National Committee will be asked to join. It will be the first time since the war began that official Russians, Britons, Americans have met in a permanent war policy committee.

Last week, too, Stalin rewarded an amateur promotion man beyond the wildest dreams of any professional: upon the solicitation of Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr., he sent a message to the people of the U.S., urging the purchase of war bonds.

It was plain that the curtain would rise on Act I—the Foreign Secretaries—in an atmosphere compounded about equally of good will and doubt. The setting of Act II —the Heads of State—would largely be determined as Act I was written.