Route to Potsdam

1 he atomic bomb, ready-fused, warns people that their whole study during the next few years should be to make certain of peace. This book tries to outline for the every-day reader many of the problems which the war brought and which the peace has yet to settle. While not claiming to be a complete recital of the peace aims—that can only be written much later—it does attempt to show the wishes and beliefs of the Democracies as they fought their desperate crusade; what the leaders of Britain, America and Russia strove for and the difficulties that Allied statesmanship had to meet. Quotations are usually presented only as samples of what was being thought at the time—authors and journals mentioned need not be supposed to maintain the same opinions today. Nor in noting opinion do the writers emphasise one set of ideas at the expense of another. Enough has been given of the texts of pronouncements which were milestones in the war—for example, the Atlantic Charter, Mr. Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms speech, the San Francisco and Potsdam Agreements—to provide references which may be useful. The survey of six war years busied with an intense search for ways to peace will be justified if it equips anyone to share knowledgeably in a work that must anxiously go on; and if it helps the citizen to estimate the peace presently to be made in his name.