Empire Lost - Andrew Stewart [112]
Wider public attention was inevitably increasingly focused on the myriad discussions to determine the nature of the post-war international system. One of these was the meeting held in Chicago in November and December 1944 involving delegates of 52 nations to plan for international cooperation in the field of air navigation in the years following the war's end. As Attlee had explained at the beginning of a long debate in the House of Commons the year before, Britain's need was urgent as it was at the centre of a great Commonwealth and Empire, a quarter of the world's inhabitants 'scattered over every Continent'.13 What he did not say was that concerns about American rivalry over air routes, which had existed since before the war, had worsened as its attempts to dominate had become much more obvious. A November 1944 high commissioners' meeting in London was dominated by bitter warnings that the United States now regarded the air as 'something created by divine providence for them to dominate' and it degenerated into 'a chorus of anti-Americanism'.14 In this light the International Conference on Aviation might not have been the best venue to test the cohesive nature of the alliance. This proved to be the case; following the meeting a long and secret report was produced by the DO's representative and it made for difficult reading. It was a 'depressing' account for Cranborne to read, who claimed to have had no idea of 'the divergences in the British Commonwealth' when the intention should have been to settle on 'a united Empire policy'. The Canadian delegation had been especially difficult and it was feared that there might be a rift as an outcome. It was believed that the Ottawa attendees were more concerned with modifying the British viewpoint to meet that of the United States' delegation than arriving at a common Empire policy. The result was that they were 'unfortunately mistrusted', and not just by the British but also by the other Dominions. There were nightly meetings of the British Commonwealth delegates to discuss progress and future policy but the Canadians declined to attend and generally appeared to have a tendency to disappear for long periods of the conference.15 It was recognized that there had in fact been a breakdown of the alliance during these discussions, the Canadian delegation being in much closer touch with its American counterparts than the British.16 The conclusion was that relations with the Dominions had in this case been adversely affected, and what Cranborne read certainly made him pessimistic in terms of preparing for future meetings.
The major focus of the many proposed conferences facing him was obviously to bring together an effective post-war global security organization. It has already been seen that Churchill favoured regional councils and blocs and proposed a network of them. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion though that the British leader's policy towards such ideas was prone to sporadic bursts of imaginative energy but lacking in any real substance or, for that matter, a policy that was coherent and workable. Planning on the British side was achieved in spite of his efforts while his most consistent characteristic was that of 'obstinate apathy'.17 There was also little reference to Gladwyn Jebb's Economic and Reconstruction Department within the FO, which had been tasked with planning for the postwar organization. As Jebb commented, the prime minister was quite allergic to any proposals for post-war action that he had not himself engendered, or at least discussed personally with his American counterpart.18 An obvious example had been when Roosevelt apparently proposed the term 'United Nations' because 'Associated Powers' sounded flat and when he tested it on Churchill, who was taking a bath at the time, he concurred.
The Moscow