Québec sure Reds won’t make peace
Allied strategy based on belief that Russia will stay in war
By Henry J. Taylor
Québec, Canada –
The overwhelming fact which emerged from this conference cannot be told officially. The absolute conviction among the conferees in the Québec discussions is that Germany and Russia will not make an armistice or in any way arrive at a separate peace.
The reason this cannot be told officially is, of course, because this source of widespread anxiety and speculation throughout the United States and Great Britain cannot be recognized officially. But this correspondent has established the fact through direct contact and individual inquiry.
The directives emanating from this conference and every plan decided here are based on the conviction that there will be no diminution of fighting on Germany’s Eastern Front.
This possibility effects every fundamental in Allied strategy. In a military problem so large as this you cannot make alternate plans which include such an eventuality as this. It bears directly on the size of our forces needed for victory., the time and place of opening the so-called second front, the disposition of the British Navy from European waters to help us in the Pacific, the design of our Air Force equipment and organization, the type of it we are willing to supply Russian under Lend-Lease and, most of all, the length of the war and its cost in blood, sweat and tears.
The time comes when you have to make up your mind. The time has come. The minds are made up. Plans which would be disastrous if the Germans were in any way released from fighting on their Eastern Front have been agreed to here and the die is cast.
The news value of this dispatch – and it is vastly important news – is that anyone in our country or abroad who believes that there may be a reproachment between Russia and Germany differs with the final judgment of the conference of Québec.