A MOMENTOUS CONFERENCE

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 7, Issue 30, 3 December 1943, Page 4

A MOMENTOUS CONFERENCE

YESTERDAY'S news flash that somewhere in North Africa a vital conference between the Allied heads of Great Britain, America and China, was taking place has come: like a renewed warning - of the near approach of the final and concerted effort by the great belligerent states championing the cause of democracy. To the. council table of the two great English-speaking nations has been invited the lean heroic figure of Chiang Kai Shek, whose determination and leadership in the East has made his name a revered tradition and his dogged exploits to be written deep into the immortal script of China's storied archives. The three who will confer, may well represent the interests of the peoples courageously facing up to the forces of aggression and dictatorship. The rugged Churchill with his inevitable cigar; the grimly determined Roosevelt, the great American leader. These men will join in the pooling of world-shaping ideas, with one who is the very essence of the freedom-loving Orient. The recent visit of the English diplomats and military strategists to the Kremlin, where Marshal Stalin is reported to have also given his fullest accord to the Allied proposals makes it apparent that the latest meeting is but the consolidation of a welllaid and carefully-formulated plan of action which must vitally concern each partner in the vast and shatteiing tide of attack which will announce the commencement of the combined all-oitt effort of the freedom-loving nations. From the point of view of war there can be no doubt but that we are living in tremendous times and may take it that the conference between West and East now taking place in North Africa is probably the most important milestone in the later chapters of the progress of the war.