Browning chief. [volume] (Browning, Mont.) 1941-1953, 1944-02-18
Cairo Conference
By Frank Ceruasi
(WNU Feature-Through special Arrangement
with Golfers WeekIy)

with Golfers Weekly
Long before the great Cairo con-
ferences opened, knowledge of the
Forthcoming meetings was general.
The conferees met behind barbed-
wire barricades, minefields, antiair-
craft batteries, cordons of troops and
secret police. Even more formula
BILE was the protective barrier of
censorship.
Madame Chang, fragile and love-
ly as a lotus blossom, shopped for
silk stockings, visited mosques and
Saladin's Citadel and had her hair
done.
Roosevelt and Churchill went to
the Pyramids and listened to a half
hour condensation of their aeonic
history by the No. l Dragoman,
Hail Ali ell Robeishi, who declined a
large Rooseveltian tip and made
fortune selling exclusive" inter-
views to 10 war correspondents, and
will have all the Freedom from
Want" man could wish for.
The Generalissimo wasn't i'm
pressed by the Pyramids, which he
saw with Madame. The Great Wall
of China, he said, gets less publicity
but is a better job. The Sphinx,
however, got him. HE emanates
majesty" said Chang.
Churchill, described by Roosevelt
as the writer of the group, wrote the
communique. 1t was edited by the
President, who changed the phrase
territories Japan has taken from
China" to territories Japan has
stolen"
Madame Chang, who witnessed
the signatures, clapped hands and
blurted happily, That's great"
Then everybody posed for pictures.
The original of what became known
as the "China Communique" was
presented to Chang as a souvenir.
Stain and Inonu.
The subsequent meetings with Pre-
micr Joseph Stain in Teheran and
with Turkish President Ismet Inonu,
were covered for the correspondents
by proxy-by two British civil serv-
ants and two American ex-newspa-
permen employed by the Office of
War Information. They did as well
as could have been expected.
The plans-as made long before
they started remodeling Mena House
from comfortable hotel into an Of
fee building and wiring it with 400
miles of cable connections with AZ
villas where the bigger shots were
housed with their stats in the vi
cinity-didn't include Stalin's pres
ence in Cairo. Arrangements were
being made for the Mahomets of
Anglo-American democracy to come
to the mountains of Sovietism in
Teheran.
When, after five days of political
and military talking, planning,
lunching, winning and dining in Mena
House, the scene shifted to Teheran
for Act Two, the China Conference
in Cairo had lost its interest for re-
porters and perhaps for the world.
Stain had propagandistically DOM
mated the Cairo Conference in ab-
sentia. In Teheran, he dominated
it in person. But all we learned
directly in Cairo was that the Rus
sian uniforms are OF excellent ma
terial, that the Soviet Secret Police
is efficient and omnipresent, and
that all carried gats, including serv-
ants. We covered Act One with per-
iscopes, and Act Two by remote con-
troll. Stain returned to Moscow,
and Roosevelt and Churchill to Cairo
to meet the Turkish delegation head
ed by Inonu for Act Three.
Turkey Leans Toward War.
All three conferences were Of
acute importance, but in some ways,
the most significant was the one in
volving Turkey. The very fact that
Inonu, cleverest knife-edge walker
in the diplomacy of neutrality, came
to see Roosevelt and Churchill was
a slap in the teeth for Hitler, who,
poor fellow, simply hasn't anyone
with whom to hold conferences now.
Inonu's presence in Cairo strongly
indicated that Turkeys balancing
act was about over, and that the
country would enter the war at
11:59l2 p. m. before the fateful mid
night hour of victory, to secure a
reservation at the peace conference.
1t was apparent that Turkey had at