THE NATIONS: The Ticket Window

Seats at the peace table sold like hot cakes at the price set at Yalta: that those nations actively at war with Germany by March 1 would get tickets to the San Francisco World Security Conference. Turkey and Egypt stepped up to the ticket window,the former making no bones whatever about its motives for declaring war. Several South American countries, warned in advance by President Roosevelt, beat the deadline by a more dignified margin. Now all Latin America, except recalcitrant Argentina, was technically at war.

This influx of last-minute belligerents called attention to the legalistic aspects of the Security Conference’s voting roster. Would Russia, for instance, ask to see the list of Peru’s war dead? If, as the British and U.S. governments feared, the U.S.S.R. would claim a vote for each of its autonomous republics, could the point be made that none of the 16 nor the U.S.S.R. itself had formally declared war on Germany?

Such questions were interesting but academic. If the San Francisco conference descended to such sordid legalistic maneuvering, world security would be a dead duck.