Secrets

Never had the Office of Censorship been more determined in warning the press: let there be no slightest hint about the where & when of the Big Three meeting.

Whether or not the U.S. press did its best, plenty of others did their worst. At the President's Birthday Ball (which the President did not attend), Cinemactress Veronica Lake prayed: "Godspeed him home, wherever he is." Senate Majority Leader Alben W. Barkley, rushing to the rescue of Henry Wallace, told the Senate that Franklin Roosevelt was "on the verge" of meeting Stalin and Churchill. London correspondents cabled about a mysterious high U.S. visitor; two days later Britain's Official Court Calendar revealed that Harry Hopkins had conferred with King George VI. Hopkins went on from there, talked freely to newsmen in Paris and Rome (TIME, Feb. 5).

Meanwhile the U.S. press began playing at evasions, adding up small facts for its readers but stopping short of real information. Washington newsmen, who had watched Jimmy Byrnes, Harry Hopkins, Ed Stettinius, Judge Samuel I. Rosenman, and Anna Roosevelt Boettiger disappear frcm town, were nettled to read about it in Manhattan gossip columns. Picking up the ball, the New York Times's Cy Sulzberger cabled from Cairo that the Big Three were rumored to be already in session "in the Black Sea area . . . near the Soviet Union's southern borders."

In Washington, the Office of Censorship, catching up with one small part of the week's rumors, finally admitted that Hopkins was abroad. At the White House, newsmen badgered ex-Newsman Jonathan Daniels, filling in for Steve Early as press chief, reminded him that they had been scooped by London on Casablanca, scooped by Reuters in Lisbon on Cairo, scooped by Moscow on Teheran. Mr. Daniels, harassed but sympathetic, would not even agree with the Office of Censorship that Harry Hopkins was out of town.

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