After the Inauguration

The formal event of the week was Franklin Roosevelt's fourth inauguration as President of the United States. But the big event, soon to follow, was his second meeting with Churchill and Stalin. The President let it be known that he hoped no one, especially no one in Congress, would say a word that might get the meeting off to an unfriendly start.

He had said as much in his twelfth annual speech on the state of the nation. He repeated it last week to the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee, summoned to the White House to discuss foreign policy.

Almost certainly, Franklin Roosevelt's injunction would be disregarded in Congress. Sure enough, this week Montana's Isolationist Burt Wheeler broke the ice. He asked for the formation at once of a United Nations Political Council to keep Europe out of Russia's clutches, reiterated his demand for less than unconditional surrender terms for Germany.

But Michigan's Vandenberg, himself a longtime isolationist, had already made his historic speech on foreign policy (see below). Thereby President Roosevelt was assured of more support in Congress for decisive international dealings than he could ever have hoped for. He would need it more than ever before; the problems that he, Stalin and Churchill would discuss had grown far beyond the relative simplicities of military cooperation. Some of the things that Franklin Roosevelt hoped to settle around that conference table were discussed this week by Washington observers:

P: The Dumbarton Oaks proposal had left a basic question to be thrashed out by Churchill-Stalin-Roosevelt: how can the new world order stop an aggression by one of its own Big Four? Russia had insisted on its right to veto any Security Council decision involving the Soviet Union. The U.S., Britain and China did not. But there seemed no sound prospect that Joseph Stalin would change his position on aggression. Some workable compromise, acceptable to all, was what Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill had to try mightily to get.

P: In his message to Congress, the President had promised to speak up for a reaffirmation and strengthening of the Atlantic Charter--now revealed as not a charter at all but a verbal agreement on high principles between Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. A reiteration of those principles, signed by Stalin too, could make the Charter strong. Would Stalin sign?

P: U.S. public opinion has expressed its discontent with the actions of Russia and Britain in Poland, Greece, the Balkans. If these actions are to be reviewed by the world security organization after the war--in return for a guarantee of security, as Michigan's Vandenberg suggested--the agreement for review must be reached this time.

There were plenty of other grand items, notably a smoothing-out of worsening British-Russian relations, the preparation of Big Three agreements which would put a powerful French Army back into the fight on the western front, where the Allies are up against their first direct combat manpower shortage since Dday.

To make his trip worthwhile, Franklin Roosevelt would have to come home with some firm commitments, some firm promises on these and many other major issues. They were delicate enough to make any politician plead for silence, at least until the meeting had ended. After that, the lid would be off, whether the President liked it or not.

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