Results at Quebec

The Second Quebec Conference, concluded last week after six days of discussion, fell into two main divisions.

Area No. 1 was the Pacific. The overwhelming fact was that, at the end of the war in Europe, the Allies will have an embarrassment of war-making riches. Apparently not even the Pacific will be vast enough to hold the supply of arms and men which the U.S. and Britain could bring to bear on Tokyo.

Some commentators, notably Walter Lippmann, were still debating which of several strategies the Allies would employ against the Jap. But it now became clear that all possible strategies could be used, all routes to Tokyo could be traversed. Said the conference's sole communique: the "barbarians of the Pacific" will be destroyed.

The conference, on the word of Franklin Roosevelt, did not discuss the selection of one, overall Pacific commander. The Pacific theater is too vast, said the President, for one human being to grasp. Thus the routes, and the commanders, presumably remain as they are:

P: The drive through Burma to Singapore, under Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten.

P: The drive to the Philippines, under General MacArthur.

P: The "floating command" aimed at China and the Jap homeland, under Admiral Nimitz.

P: The possible drive through the Kuriles, also under Nimitz.

No decision was announced on what may be a considerable secondary problem: how exactly to employ Generals Eisenhower, Patton, Bradley, Patch, Devers, Eaker, Spaatz, et al. Will they serve under General MacArthur and Admiral Nimitz?

The principal problem, after that of command, was that of supply. Britain's Minister of War Transport, Lord Leathers, and the U.S. War Shipping administrator, Vice Admiral Emory S. Land, were high on the list of advisers. Land knows how to build ships and Leathers has demonstrated a miraculous capacity to fill them. Together the Lord and the sea dog pored over routes and cargoes.

Chief difficulty of the conference, said the two beaming principals, as they lectured the press* on the sundeck of Quebec's Citadel, was how to find enough work for all hands in the Pacific. Winston Churchill had come to Quebec alarmed at the U.S. Navy's rambunctious theory that it could finish the Pacific war by itself. Said he: "You shan't have all those good things to yourselves. You must share." Final results at Quebec seemed to promise just this.

But what of Russia? With Germany's defeat, would she too want to share in the crushing of the Jap juggernaut? Would her help be needed? The answer: probably not, but it would be welcome.

Area No. 2 of the Quebec discussions was on the fate of postwar Germany. Here the two principals kept mum. But it was obvious that a plan for the management of postwar Germany had received much attention. Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden flew through heavy weather to bring a brief case full of British proposals. Treasury Secretary Morgenthau rushed to Quebec, presumably to discuss monetary and economic problems of occupied Europe. And Winston Churchill had with him a close chum, Lord Cherwell, whose genius for reducing difficult problems to clear charts and graphs has recently been applied to matters of currency and trade.

But beyond the technical details of occupation, the question of Germany's fate was largely political. Russia, unrepresented at Quebec, must be considered. Reports from London said that Russia was disturbed over an Anglo-American "frontier" in Occupied Germany.

From reliable reports, Russia wants two things from a defeated Germany: 1) machinery; 2) enough tough young Germans to help rebuild the devastated areas of Russia. Would Russia attempt to turn these transplanted Germans, perhaps running into the millions, into Communists? Here there might be Anglo-American suspicions to allay.

There was little panoply in the six days at Quebec. The principals, and the military staffs, sat through several formal dinners. But mostly Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill worked in their comfortable rooms in the Citadel, surrounded with maps, barging in on each other at all times of day & night. Almost the only informal diversion came when Eleanor Roosevelt showed Fala's tricks to the Earl of Athlone (see cut).

By a deft indirection, Winston Churchill touched on the U.S. election campaign. He remarked that the conference was called at his insistence, indicated that others should and would be held. The meeting, he added, was held in "a blaze of friendship."

* No questions were permitted.

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