Roosevelt Papers: Telegram
Prime Minister Churchill to President Roosevelt 1
Prime Minister to President Roosevelt, Personal and Top Secret number 825.
1. Naturally I am very sorry to receive your numbers 6492 and 650.3
2. Your message to U. J. will, of course, make it certain that he will not come anywhere before the end of January. Also you yourself give independently the important reasons which make it difficult for you to come earlier.
3. These reasons, I fear, destroy the hope which we had cherished that you would now pay your long-promised visit to Great Britain, and that we two could meet here in December and ask U. J. to send Molotov, who would be an adequate deputy. It is a great disappointment to me that this prospect should be indefinitely postponed.
4. There is, in my opinion, much doubt whether U. J. would be willing or able to come to an Adriatic port by January 30th, or that he would be willing to come on a non-Russian vessel through this extremely heavily-mined sea. However, if he accepts we shall, of course, be there. I note you do not wish the French to be present. I had thought they might come in towards the end in view of their vital interests in the arrangements made for policing Germany, as well as in all questions affecting the Rhine frontiers.
5. Even if a meeting can be arranged by the end of January, the two and a half intervening months will be a serious hiatus. There are many important matters awaiting settlement, for example, the treatment of Germany and the future world organization, relations with France, the position in the Balkans, as well as the Polish question, which ought not to be left to moulder.4
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