WIDE PUBLIC INTEREST

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 102, 2 May 1944, Page 5

WIDE PUBLIC INTEREST

COMMONWEALTH AFFAIRS

.(Special P.A. Correspondent) Rec. 9.30 a.m. LONDON, May L The opening of the Prime .Ministers', conference has had the ' effect of heightening the public's anticipation that the beginning of invasion may now be not far distant. The conference has aroused the widest interest in Commonwealth affairs. The "Daily Telegraph" says in a leader: "It 'is Upon all counts very timely that the .conference should be meeting in London at the moment when the preliminaries to victory are in full swing," and adds that those Prime Ministers who have previously been in England during the war will be able to see for themselves to what an incredible extent the air offensive lias been stepped up and continues. This stepping up is not confined to what may soon be called the Western Front, but also applies in Italy, while on the Russian front air • operations have temporarily displaced the Russian armies' long monopoly of the communiques. "Indeed, one who is not in the secrets of the conference might be tempted to deduce that the lull in Russia and Italy is not unconnected with the desire to strike simultaneously on the old fronts and the new." "The Times" diplomatic" correspondent says:- "The conference will open as a council of war. Leaders of free nations whose unity • and faith confounded everyone except themselves in the bitterest months are meeting together for the first time since they took up arms. The Prime Ministers already know the courses ahead: without any formal conference they have joined in planning those courses through the varied means of Imperial collaboration and within the wider Allied direction of the war. They come now, first of all, to. hear a detailed exposition by Mr. Churchill of a type which can only be given personally, and then to join him, probably with the British Service chiefs, in ■ a thorough discussion over all fields." The/"Manchester Guardian" says in a leader that the assembling of the Dominion Prime Ministers on the eve of invasion of the Continent is "a dramatic event," and adds: "All are agreed that, closer co-operation and more intimate and regular discussion are needed in order to strengthen the Commonwealth, to prepare and concert measures for defence, and to study all aspects of the problems of foreign policy." Mr. J. L. Garvin, writing in the "Sunday Express," says that the deliberations of the conference will proceed while the calculated mystery of the second front occupies all minds. "It is a vivid conjunction in the annals of the British Commonwealth," he says. "This meeting of Prime Ministers has been ardently urged since the outbreak of the war, and repeatedly prevented. Now that we are able to have it at last, we must remember that it has two very different aspects. One presents the far-reaching question of whether some permanent form of closer council can be established between the Mother Country and the; Dominions. The other aspect con-' cerns the marvellous part of the Dominions in the war itself. Some fundamental lessons about the nature of the British Commonwealth have been made plain to friend and foe." Referring to Mr. Fraser, Mr. Garvin says: "In Mr, Fraser New Zealand has found a man who is as steady as a rock." "Peterborough," in the "Daily Telegraph," says that Field-Marshal Smuts and Mr, Fraser spent the weekend in the country with Mr. Churchill. "With Mr. Fraser the Prime Minister is now renewing the friendship which began when the head of the New Zealand Government was here in the summer of 1941. Mr. Churchill was then impressed by the keenly analytical mind which Mr. Fraser showed at the meetings of the War Cabinet."