860F.01/417
President Roosevelt to the President of the Provisional Government of Czechoslovakia in Exile (Beneš)
My Dear Dr. Beneš: I have read with close attention your letter of June 4, and recall with pleasure the talk we had at Hyde Park two years ago. We then discussed, as you remember, the unhappy events which had befallen Czechoslovakia, and the projects for carrying on the struggle for your country’s freedom.
The cause of the Czechoslovak nation has always been close to the heart of the American people. We do not forget their struggle for independence and recall with pride the wholehearted participation of the Government and people of the United States a generation ago in the efforts of that great statesman Thomas Masaryk and his collaborators, including yourself, to found a democratic republic in Central Europe to safeguard the liberties and provide a means of free political expression to the Czechoslovak people.
From that day there has been a particularly intimate relationship between our two democracies. We have unlimited confidence in the vitality of your people as a nation, and we look forward with eagerness to the day when democratic institutions will again flourish in your beautiful country.
That the bond connecting our two peoples should not be broken we have continued to recognize the diplomatic and consular representatives of Czechoslovakia in the United States in the full exercise of their functions. We have been equally mindful of the courage and resourcefulness of the armed forces and political leaders of Czechoslovakia who have organized themselves abroad for continuing the struggle for the restoration of your country’s freedom. It is therefore with a very real pleasure, which I am sure I share with the whole American people, that I can inform you that the American Government has decided to accredit an Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary near the Provisional Government of Czechoslovakia in London for the closer conduct of relations in the common interest of the two countries pending the re-establishment of the institutions of free government in Czechoslovakia. Instructions are now being forwarded to the American Ambassador in London so to inform the Provisional Government.
I take this opportunity to assure you of the earnest hope of the people of the United States that the cause of Czechoslovak liberty will prosper.
Very sincerely yours,