Mr. Willkie in Russia
The roving mission of Mr. Wendell Willkie in the East as an unofficial .representative of America and a friend of this country has been helping to interpret the Western Allies to Russia and Russia to them, and is likely to serve a similar purpose in China, where he has now arrived. He has had long talks with Mr. Stalin and other Russian leaders, and has been at pains to discover all that he can about the Russian armies and the Russian workers. He is convinced that the soldiers and the people have their hearts in the war and are desperately resolved to fight and work under how- ever terrible conditions until victory has been won. He is an out- spoken person, and tells us and his American fellow-countrymen that the pace of the war in the West ought to be forced as much as possible, and -that a real second front in Europe ought to be opened at the earliest possible moment when the military advisers think it can be successful. The qualification is, of course, very important, and there is little doubt that he has emphasised its im- portance in Moscow. He asks for other things—an increase in military and other supplies and an ever-heavier bombing of Germany, loth of which this country is able to promise, as is shown by the manner in which our latest and biggest convoy has been got through to the North in spite of terrific, incessant attacks from the air and the water, and by the increasing scale and frequency of our bomb- ing expeditions. If Mr. Willkie tells us so convincingly what Russians are doing behind the fighting lines, he has also, it is under- stood, told them what Great Britain is doing, in the Battle of the Atlantic and in the workshops. And now he is in China, once more an intermediary bearing information and messages of goodwill between the United Nations.
