Washington Wonders

Like the pea in a shell game, Britain's Prime Minister had vanished from Washington and reappeared (could it be the same cigar?) in London. Gathering its wits again, Washington felt not unlike a bewildered yokel. What had Churchill and Roosevelt been up to? What had been accomplished? In the troubled air, like motes in a just-dusted room, hung questions, not yet answered, perhaps unanswerable.

Some people in Washington--still suffering from the national inferiority complex--which holds that an American is always out-traded by a Briton in a conference--feared that the Prime Minister had sold the President a bill of goods. But no man had grounds to say so unless he knew what the two had decided. They had got along together like a house afire, had sat up together, alone, talking away into the small hours. Presumably these private conferences were over the great question of how to win the war. They had parted, according to the White House, in "complete understanding." But what was the understanding?

What, for instance, was the position of General Sir Archibald Wavell, supreme commander of the Allied forces in the Far East? Whose orders was he taking?

Was this some kind of private war, Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt against Adolf Hitler? Was such a decision indicated by Navy Secretary Knox's sounding off that Hitler was the No. 1 enemy? That would be a shock to U.S. civilians, who had picked the Japanese as their enemy, who were fighting them in bars, on benches,over tables, at their desks, in their armchairs and with their imaginations.

The one positive, known result of the Churchill-Roosevelt conference was the creation of the Allied Supreme Command. And for weeks the top military and naval men of Britain and the U.S. had had their heads together. Field Marshal Sir John Dill remained behind to continue the discussions after the Prime Minister went home. He and Admiral Sir Dudley Pound (who returned to England) had had long discussions with the U.S. Army's General Marshall, the Navy's Admirals King & Stark, the Army Air Forces' Major General Arnold. Henceforth the fighting plans of the two nations would be made concertedly, at least in theory.

Washington did not expect to be told everything at once. It realized that there was a war on. But it hoped that the President would soon keep his promise not to keep important news from the country, that he would reveal the nature of the major policies that he and his Great & Good Friend Winston Churchill had agreed on.

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