Conference in the Citadel

The train stood on a siding at Halifax, N.S. In the observation car sat a pudgy little man in a visored naval cap, a cheroot in his mouth, his horn-rimmed glasses focused on a newspaper. Outside, a huge crowd swirled and pushed, straining against police lines. The crowd, dressed in its Sunday best, burst into song: first, Roll Out the Barrel; then There'll Always Be an England. Finally, the pudgy man, not relinquishing his cheroot, shuffled to the rear platform, acknowledged the crowd's cheers, and asked for Tipperary. The crowd gave it to him, while Winston Churchill beat time.

The P.M. had arrived in Canada for his eighth wartime conference with Franklin Roosevelt. He had crossed on a transport crammed with furloughed G.I.s. The singing ended with God Save the King and the train pulled out. Next day it ground to a stop on a siding at Wolfe's Cove, at Quebec. Franklin Roosevelt was there, sitting in an open car, his eyes shaded by a big Panama. The sky was cloudless, a paler blue than the blue St. Lawrence hard by.

"Hello, I'm glad to see you," he called. "Eleanor is here. Did you have a nice trip?"

Said the P.M., picking up the small talk: "We had three beautiful days."

Added the ex-First Lord of the Admiralty: "But I was frightfully sick."

"I've lost some weight," said Franklin Roosevelt.

"I've lost some color," replied Winston Churchill.

Mrs. Churchill spied Eleanor Roosevelt, in a flame-colored dress, with matching hat. "Hello, there," she said, and they began a brisk conversation, walking over to greet the Princess Alice, wife of Canada's rigidly correct Governor-General, the Earl of Athlone. Fala scurried about, sniffing the shoes of the famous.

Turning to reporters, Winston Churchill exclaimed: "Victory is everywhere."

In separate cars, the Churchills and the Roosevelts motored up the steep hills to Quebec's Citadel, an ancient fortress, surrounded by a deep moat, its entrance barred with iron chains the width of a man's forearm.

Braid and Brains. For their second Quebec conference, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill were each accompanied by his country's general staff. Their top diplomatic aides were believed en route. And the number of lesser lights and technical experts ran into the hundreds, enough to fill the Chateau Frontenac's 800 rooms. No less than 300 WACs were detailed for clerical work. Both Winston

Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt had their personal physicians along.

All last week Franklin Roosevelt had been busy with conferences pointing toward Quebec. He appointed Secretaries Stimson, Hull and Morgenthau as a special Cabinet committee to work out U.S. proposals for unkinking the economy of liberated countries, met the committee three times in three days. He had his first full-dress session with the Chiefs of Staff since his return from the Pacific. He summoned Robert D. Murphy, soon to be the top U.S. diplomat in Germany. He had a chat with British Ambassador Lord Halifax (and made a bet with him--amount undisclosed--on the war's end--date undisclosed). He also did some quick shoring-up of his political defenses, calling in the Governor of Texas and ordering Jimmy Byrnes to pull out all stops on reconversion.

Questions & Answers. The potential scope of the Quebec conference was enormous. Two topics stood at the very top of the agenda:

P: What to do with a beaten Germany.

P: How to beat Japan faster.

But beyond these, there were literally hundreds of other questions, major & minor, calling for prompt answers. Previous Roosevelt-Churchill conferences had been largely confined to military strategy. Now they faced tougher and knottier problems. Some of them: should France take part in the Pacific war? What of Rumanian peace terms (the Russians were waiting for an Anglo-American reply)? What if revolution hits Spain after Germany's collapse? What of the old, graveling question of Polish boundaries? What of postwar lend-lease to Britain? What--and this might not be too small an aside-- of the U.S. election? And, finally, what of another conference with Stalin, who had sent a message saying that he was too busy with the war to come to this one?

BBC in London, which has frequently scooped the world on big diplomatic maneuvers, announced that a three-power conference would follow Quebec. And through Moscow censorship came a dispatch hinting that Russia might soon join the war against Japan.

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