What Winant Said

Ambassador Winant stepped out of the White House last week as gingerly as a man who feels he is loaded with dynamite and may blow up if anybody bumps into him. He had reason to step warily. Before he left England, the British Government had shown him a confidence that few Ambassadors have received. It turned over to Gil Winant an account of British war plans and British war experiences, as well as analyses of Britain's shortcomings, tragic mistakes, and lessons learned, at a frightful cost, during the war.

Obviously Ambassador Winant could not talk freely, even to himself. His voice, ordinarily very low, almost died away entirely. Prolonging the agony was the fact that President Roosevelt, resting after his speech, had kept him waiting for four days. When Ambassador Winant, having reported to his chief, eventually emerged from the White House last week, he apologized to reporters, in his slow, pained voice: "It's easy to understand that there is a hesitancy, when a country is at war, to make public statements which might endanger their fighting forces."

Then Ambassador Winant hurried on to meetings and interviews--with Secretary Hull, Harry Hopkins, Secretaries Stimson and Knox, many others--until 2 every morning.

Partly because the U.S. public does not know John Gilbert Winant very well, extravagant stories about his mission nourished. A shy, sincere man who usually gives the impression of being much more ill at ease than he actually is, he is an effective Ambassador because he has a quality more valuable than any amount of diplomatic training--an imaginative sympathy for the suffering of people with whom he lives.

As Ambassador Winant made his rounds in Washington, the stories about him multiplied. Irritated particularly by one--that the Ambassador had brought word of a peace offer which Britain was considering --President Roosevelt held one of his hottest press conferences in eight years. Glaring sternly at the reporters, the President said he had on his desk copies of two orders sent from Germany to Nazi dupes and Nazi agents in the U.S. One order was to spread the story that Germany had no intention of ever moving against a country in the Western Hemisphere (and the President mentioned Adolf Hitler's remarks to ex-Ambassador John Cudahy--last week published in LIFE--as one example). The other order was to spread the story, as soon as Mr. Winant arrived in the U.S., that Britain was all in and ready to sue for peace.

"There was not even a tenth cousin of a peace offer or anything like that," said the President, letting correspondents quote him directly ("provided you use this, not as a denial by the President, but as an accusation by the President").

Whatever the Ambassador had brought back, it was not peace talk. The U.S. could no more learn the details of Ambassador Winant's report than it could learn the plans of the British General Staff, but it could learn the general outline of his views.

Soon after the President's blast, Ambassador Winant appeared in Vice President Wallace's office. Besides the Vice President, four Senators were there: Texas' portly Tom Connally, Alabama's tall, drawling Lister Hill, South Carolina's Jimmy Byrnes, Georgia's Senator George. The Ambassador is a levelheaded man, and his carefully expressed views about Britain's chances of surviving were not so extreme in either direction as some head lines proclaimed. For two hours he answered questions, talked about what he had heard and what he believed. He said:

> The British believe they have "a pretty good chance of holding Suez and Egypt," are reasonably confident about the struggle for the Mediterranean basin, expect a bitter scrap, believe Gibraltar can withstand a land attack.

> The U.S. Atlantic Patrol is beginning to help the British, though the rate of sinkings is still serious.

> The British have air equality or even air superiority during the daylight hours over the British Isles and the Channel, and probably over some nearby invasion points, are approaching the point where they will have air superiority at night.

> British opinion is divided about Rudolf Hess. But Ambassador Winant believes he fled in fear of his life, as the German military forces took more & more power, and old Nazi politicos like Hess were forced to take a back seat.

> British morale is high, and it is a fighting morale. Britons do not blame the U.S. for not being in the war (though many Britons would like to see the U.S. in). How long British morale can be maintained without more effective U.S. aid is a question even Britons cannot answer. But they believe they must go on fighting, and there is no thought of giving up.

People who saw Ambassador Winant found it easier to fathom his feelings about the U.S. attitude toward war than about Britain's chances. He was obviously depressed by the U.S. attitude. U.S. citizens talked a lot about British morale. They did not understand that Britons who could keep a stiff upper lip in their own defeats were disheartened by news which the U.S. took for granted. It shocked them to learn that American automobile production, in the first three months of 1941, was up almost 20% over the same period of 1940--for Britons had learned the fatal cost of neglecting any possible resources. And automobile production was only one such resource. How could people be so absorbed in every rumor, follow their own advantages in such a crisis, pursue their old rivalries, go way up and way down in their views of the war and their own responsibility? In effect, Ambassador Winant asked: "How can people take the defense effort so lightly when the fate of two great peoples--the British and the American--is at stake?"

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.