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Life on the Fringes. Brown-haired Subaltern Mary Churchill had a busy, flattering vacation. Quebec girls sent her bundles of fan mail. She went shopping, headed straight for the underwear counter, confided to the clerk: "The ones I've got on, I made out of the skirt of an old evening dress." She held a press conference, described her father as "awfully nice to work for and not a bit difficult."
At the Clarendon Hotel, 150 newsmen, the cream of the international press corps, waited for news, soon discovered they would get none at all. Britain's redheaded Minister of Information, Brendan Bracken, held a press conference to console them, described Roosevelt, Churchill and King as "the three oysters." Said he:-"News is scarcer than water in the Sahara."
Newsmen learned that Roosevelt, who likes to work mornings, and Churchill, who likes to work over a Scotch & soda at night, had reached a compromise. They worked late, but got up for an 8:30 breakfast and began working again. One day they went fishing for the speckled trout in
Grand Lac de l'Epaule. They ate the proudest concoctions of three chefs, a head baker and a head pastry cook.
Otherwise the conference was shrouded in secrecy. No one could get near the Citadel. On Sunday morning the Anglican Bishop of Quebec, the Rt. Rev. Philip Carrington, felt justified in complaining mildly to his congregation that the conference might as well have been held in another world for all that Quebec residents could see of it.
Life to Come. Bishop Carrington and the rest of the world could only wait and hope. Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill had doubtless solved their immediate military problems. Their political problems were much harder. The Russian demand for a second front had always conflicted in the past with U.S.-British military policy (after the bitter post-Pearl Harbor defeats) of attacking only in overwhelming force, after a thorough pasting from the air. And in spite of Russia's blandly ignoring the fact, the U.S. and Britain were now busily engaged on five major fronts, all over the world. Conflicting Russian-British-U.S. attitudes toward postwar Europe can be resolved only in an atmosphere of faith and close communication which last week was obviously still lacking.
Unless the U.S., Russia and Britain can reach an agreement out of last week's conferences and those to follow, peace planners may as well stop talking about international cooperation and go back to power politics. Perhaps Russia, now proved unbeatable by arms and economically self-sufficient, is determined to play a lone hand anyway—but the U.S. and Britain must still try.
Life As It Was. Many a hardheaded American, secretly scoffing at punditical peace planners, believes his nation already has a long-range foreign policy. Such Americans see the world on a status quo basis, with Germany left as a nation under a new government, conquered nations restored to about their prewar boundaries, the gold standard re-established and attempts to expand foreign trade limited to bigger and better reciprocal trade agreements and whatever reduction of tariffs could be worked out.