Missourian Abroad

Missourian Aboard

Berliners lifted startled eyes one day this week. Pursuit planes and great transports were thundering from the west, over the same routes the destroying bombers had once followed. This time the planes carried peacemakers. On Sunday Harry Truman, President of the U.S., landed at Potsdam. On Monday he sat down at the conference table with Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill in a refurbished castle once owned by Kaiser Wilhelm.

The man from Missouri had crossed the Atlantic on the cruiser Augusta in eight leisurely days, had had plenty of time to ix in his mind the definite offers he would carry to the conference: friendly help in reconciling the differences between America's European friends; practical help in putting Europe back on its feet. But if there was bickering, there would be less U.S. aid for the bickerers. The deal would be: get along together and the U.S. will work with you.

Across the Wastes. He had disembarked at Antwerp, at Brussels had boarded the same plane in which Franklin Roosevelt had flown to other Big Three meetings. Some of the time on the way to Germany, he sat in the co-pilot's seat discussing with Lieut. Colonel Henry Myers the problems of farming and transportation in Europe. He ate a lunch of chicken and buttered carrots.

The devastated areas of northeastern France and northwestern Germany unrolled before him. Over the wastes of Berlin, over the roofless houses and the crumbling church towers, Pilot Myers banked and circled and finally settled down at the airport, where honor guards had been waiting since early morning.

Ahead of Harry Truman, and behind him, were other Americans and Britons who had come to sit with the Russians at Potsdam: Field Marshal Sir Bernard Law Montgomery, General of the Army George C. Marshall, Field Marshal Sir Harold Alexander, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson -- finally, in the 14th plane, Winston Churchill himself.

A British Army band in white helmets blared Rule, Britannia. The Prime Minister, dressed in the uniform of a colonel of the British Hussars, inspected the guard of honor, set off in his car.

U.S., British and Russian guards lined the roads from the airfields; the cavalcade of cars rolled behind motorcycle escorts to the thickly guarded compound where the Big Three and their aides will live.

The Russian, U.S. and British Quartermaster Corps had worked hard to make the conferees comfortable. U.S. quartermasters were proudest of all of the liquor they had ready for the President to offer his guests: Scotch, gin, bourbon, wines, cognac, even curac,ao and creme de menthe.

The Meeting Place. Several miles from the compound was the meeting place of the Big Three. There, on the castle grounds the Russians had planted a courtyard with red flowers in the shape of a huge red star, set against a background of smooth, carefully mowed lawn. Inside was a dark-paneled main room, furnished with a crimson carpet overlaid with a red and purple Oriental rug, a 12-ft. circular table and 15 chairs, desks for secretaries and stenographers. From the room, hallways led to private suites. Off the main room was also the main dining room, where Baptist Harry Truman, who prefers bourbon, will have to drink many a toast in vodka.

The table was large enough for 31 people. In the ceiling above it was a galleon in plaster bas-relief sailing majestically under white clouds. In the plaster sky the Russians had painted a red star, which shed its rays on the galleon's sails.

Here the Big Three would meet, and meet, and meet again to decide, quite literally, the fate of nations. It was a long way from Missouri, a long way from the U.S.--whence, for the first time since Woodrow Wilson, a U.S. President had come to try for peace again.

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