Great Decisions

The hour made the meeting dramatic. For the first time since Belleau Wood a U.S. Army was fighting with its back to the wall--in far-off Luzon. Only a little more than a fortnight after the U.S. had gone to war, the democracies were faced with a possible defeat as serious as the fall of France--the loss of the entire Far East if Malaya and the Philippines succumbed. And at this juncture the leaders of the two biggest democracies took a step that filled their nations with satisfaction out of all proportion to its simple practicality and logic.

For Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill to meet in Washington face to face was as elementary a step as for two men who had agreed to enter into a deal jointly to join to map their campaign. But never before had a wartime Prime Minister of Great Britain visited the U.S.

Cloaked in wartime censorship, Churchill dropped out of the sky with breathtaking suddenness. The official announcement said only that he had come to plan with Franklin Roosevelt "the defeat of Hitlerism throughout the world." But Churchill arrived like a breath of fresh air, giving Washington new vigor, for he came as a new hero. Churchill--like Franklin Roosevelt, not above criticism at home --is, like Franklin Roosevelt in Britain, a man of unsullied popularity in his ally's country.

Their former meeting, last August, was remote and far away, somewhere in the fog of the North Atlantic, and the eight-point Atlantic Charter it produced (TIME, Aug. 25) seemed as blurred and fuzzy as the inexpert newsreels which gave the U.S. public its only presence at that meeting. This meeting might possibly be the first broad hint that some day the two nations might draw together--perhaps in some sort of federation like Clarence Streit's Union Now, perhaps in some other form, perhaps in a friendship which would require no blueprint at all. But right now their meeting chiefly concerned the concrete present.

Now thousands of U.S. citizens could see the President of the U.S. and the Prime Minister of Great Britain together on U.S. soil. Millions heard their voices over the radio (see p. 40). The sight & sound of the two men side by side, the big American and the chunky little Britisher, was a living demonstration of how history walks and talks.

Churchill the Man. Day after his arrival, Winston Churchill sat beside Franklin Roosevelt behind the broad desk of the oval office in the Executive Offices, waiting with the poker-faced calm of a veteran political speaker while 200-odd U.S. and foreign newsmen gathered for a press conference unique in White House history.

Those who crowded up front saw a pudgy man with cheeks like apple dumplings, blue eyes beneath crooked restless eyebrows, the merest foam-flecking of sandy gray hair on his bald pink pate, a long black cigar clenched at a belligerent angle above his bulldog jaw. From the sleeves of his blue sack coat extended long cuffs, half hiding the small hands folded placidly across his middle.

Franklin Roosevelt, less jaunty than usual, full of the precedent-breaking importance of the conference, his style a little cramped by appearing as one of a duet, introduced his guest. There were shouts from the rear by newsmen who couldn't see. Churchill stood up, grinned, climbed on his chair, waved his hand. The applause and cheers rattled the windows.

He had won his first U.S. audience. This stubborn little man, wholly British and half American, cocky, droll, grumpy, charming, cherubic, tough, with his head thrust close to his shoulders like a young bull undecided whether to be ferocious or playful, was a man Americans liked at first sight and at second.

Churchill the Speaker. On Christmas Eve Winston Churchill stood bareheaded while Franklin Roosevelt, on the south portico of the White House, went through the annual ceremony of turning on the outdoor Christmas tree's lights before, some 2,000 spectators inside the grounds, more thousands outside. Then he joined the President in broadcasting Christmas greetings to the nation.

Said the Prime Minister: "I spend this anniversary and festival far from my country, far from my family, and yet I cannot truthfully say that I feel far from home. ... In God's mercy, a happy Christmas to you all."

The real Churchill eloquence came later, at a joint session of Congress which Senate Majority Leader Alben W. Barkley, who arranged it, will always consider one of his proudest accomplishments.

Never before had any foreign dignitary addressed Congress in such a crucial time. Congressmen who had gone home for the Christmas holiday scurried back to Washington. A thousand men & women, after a day-long struggle for tickets, crowded into the small galleries; another 5,000 stood in the damp weather outside the Capitol, just to be near.

There were tears in Winnie Churchill's eyes at the ovation which greeted him, from isolationist and interventionist Congressmen alike. He shoved his thick, hornrimmed glasses over his nose, blinked, balanced himself like an old sailor. With a sly grin, he made his joke, established himself as one of the boys.

Then he let go: eloquence, blunt, polished and effective as an old knobkerrie, the growling, galling scorn for his enemies, the passages of noble purple for his friends. Between bursts of applause in which Supreme Court Justices and diplomats joined as lustily as doormen, the galleries wondered whether ever before had such a moving and eloquent speech been made on the Senate floor. Actually it was not so much the speech as the personality that put it over.

When he had finished, white-haired, sedate Chaplain Ze Barney Phillips leaned over and whispered: "Mr. Prime Minister, you are the most perfect master of the English language in all the world." The Prime Minister grinned, replied: "After hearing your sermon yesterday [at Christmas services in Foundry Methodist Church] I know you should be a good judge."

For Victory. At the White House, visitors streamed in & out through the day and late into the night. With Churchill had come his Minister of Supply, Lord Beaverbrook, and 82 other civilian and military aides. There was Admiral of the Fleet Sir Dudley Pound. Britain's First Sea Lord; General Sir John Dill, retiring Chief of Staff of the British Army; Air Chief Marshal Sir Charles Portal.

With these visitors met the members of Franklin Roosevelt's War Cabinet, his production chiefs, the top men of Washington's scattered defense and quasi-defense agencies. Their decisions could be no better than the secrecy in which they were kept, and for the time at least those decisions were real secrets.

But the subjects on which decisions had to be taken were as plain as the cigar in Winston Churchill's face:

Foremost was the question of priorities in between world battlefronts--an agreement, since there is not enough strength for all fronts, on how and where all possible aid should be sent. There was also the question of arranging the mechanism of cooperation in the vital theaters where both nations operate together, and possibly the question of who should have strategic control in each area.

As the conversations progressed, President Roosevelt talked to Russia's Ambassador Maxim Litvinoff. to China's Dr. Hu Shih and Dr. T. V. Soong, Dutch Minister Alexander Loudon, representatives of the Latin American republics and occupied European nations. Prime Minister W. L. Mackenzie King arrived from Canada.

At the same time Britain's Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden was in Moscow (see p. 27), and the two conferences kept in close touch. This was to be no mere U.S.British meeting of minds. It was, as far as possible, to embrace foes of the Axis all over the world.

At week's end Churchill boarded a train, again with elaborate secrecy, relaxed in zippered grey coveralls, ordered an unrationed dinner of sherry and rare beef, an unrationed breakfast of sliced chicken, ham, bacon & eggs. Next day he showed up in snow-covered Ottawa to address a joint session of the Canadian Parliament.*

There had been little time to talk about the post-war world. Unless victory were won, there would be no post-war world for which Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, or any of the people they represent, would care to plan. But the historic meeting in Washington, the historic speech before Congress, had made the future a clearer outline, a brighter shadow.

* Reports from Ottawa said that Canada would cancel Britain's war materials debt, more than $1,000,000,000, as a token of unity.

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