Africa confab disappointing, Willkie says
Cites the absence of Chiang Kai-shek and Joseph Stalin
Wendell Willkie maintained today, in commenting on the conference between President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill, that first reports as to decisions reached at the meeting were disappointing.
It had been hoped, the Republican leader said in a radio address, that Joseph Stalin and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek would attend the conference and that a board for grand military strategy, in which Russia and China would have an equal voice, would be created.
Willkie said:
Perhaps we will learn later that some of the matters not mentioned in the communiqué were discussed and clarified between Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Churchill.
He deplored the fact the communiqué made no specific reference to a solution of “the tangled and ugly problems of North African politics,” but added that:
Perhaps the French collaborators were reduced in status and the men who have risked their lives for freedom have at last come into their own in North Africa.